July 7, 1973: The Triple

Billie Jean King with her newest hardware

After twelve days of sunshine, the rain finally arrived. The women’s singles final, scheduled for its traditional Saturday, was pushed to Sunday, alongside the men’s championship match. It wasn’t exactly the equal treatment that Billie Jean King had in mind when she hinted at a boycott before the event began, but it invited its share of direct comparisons.

The women’s showdown, on July 7th, would feature greats of the present and future, King and the teenage Chris Evert. The men’s title came down to two Eastern Europeans, Jan Kodeš and Alex Metreveli. Both were excellent players; Kodeš had won the French Open twice in the last four years. But they were clearly beneficiaries of the 80-player ATP boycott. At this “Women’s Wimbledon,” the American ladies could claim responsibility for yet another packed house.

Billie Jean had no problem getting herself psyched up for the match. In early 1972, Evert destroyed the Old Lady on a clay court in Fort Lauderdale, allowing King just one game. While they had played three times since then, the memory was still enough to motivate the veteran.

For a little while, King was on track to return the favor. She took the first set 6-0. Evert looked lost. “It was the loveliest, meanest set of tennis I’d ever seen,” wrote Grace Lichtenstein. “From the first point, she carved up Chris’s game like a Benihana chef slicing up meat on a hibachi table.”

The 18-year-old found her way back into the match, winning ten straight points as part of a push from 0-2 to 5-4 in the second set. But King wasn’t going to let this one slip away. “When I thought I was getting into it in the second set,” said Chrissie, “well, Billie Jean just served and volleyed even better. She didn’t make a mistake all afternoon.”

The final score was 6-0, 7-5 to King, in a little more than an hour. It was her fifth Wimbledon title, and she already had her eye on Suzanne Lenglen’s mark of six.

Before she could look too far ahead, though, she had two other campaigns to see out. With Rosie Casals, King polished off another title, winning the semi-finals and finals in the women’s doubles. She also teamed with Owen Davidson to take a mixed doubles quarter-final. (Their victims: Kodeš and the girls’ runner-up, Martina Navratilova.)

No one could blame Billie Jean when she skipped the traditional Wimbledon ball. She had spent five hours on court, with at least one more match to play the following day. The rest was somehow sufficient: She and Davidson came back to secure two more victories on Monday. The Old Lady had won everything there was to win, the “triple,” a feat she had also accomplished at Wimbledon in 1967.

The champion had once said, “We’ve got to get women’s tennis off the women’s pages and into the sports pages.” Mission accomplished, at least this fortnight. Newspaper editors around the world could lead with either King or Kodeš. Nearly all of them broke with tradition to focus on Billie Jean.

Madame Superstar, as couturier Teddy Tinling called her, was finally ready for a rest. She had played six matches and 139 games on Centre Court in two days. “I’m gonna sleep twenty hours a day for six days,” she told Lichtenstein. “Zonkereno!”

She already knew what her next challenge would be. It wasn’t official yet, but it had to be done. She was ready.

“Bring on Bobby Riggs.”

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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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July 4, 1973: An American Day

Chris Evert en route to victory

The Wimbledon crowd had no trouble picking sides in the 1973 women’s semi-finals. Australian veteran Margaret Court was a three-time champion, including her dramatic 14-12, 11-9 defeat of Billie Jean King for the title three years earlier. She got the nod, both analytically and sentimentally, over 18-year-old American Chris Evert in the first match.

The second semi was an even easier call. If the Brits couldn’t have a local product in the final, they’d happily settle for Evonne Goolagong. The young Australian was a crowd favorite everywhere she went, and she had taken Wimbledon by surprise with her title in 1971. The London public wasn’t so positive about Billie Jean, the defending champion. Americans were widely thought to be responsible for the ATP boycott of the event, and King’s role with the new Women’s Tennis Association made her seem even guilty as well, if only by the flimsiest logic.

“I am tired of being portrayed as a villain,” Billie Jean told the press earlier that week. “We just wanted to form an association, and we have.” Still, emotions ran high, and the American wouldn’t get much love from the gallery.

On July 4th, both Evert and King silenced the crowd. Chrissie finished the job that she left undone at Roland Garros. No one gave her much of a chance against Court on grass: The last time the two women met on turf, Evert won just three games. But she seized an early lead, taking the first set, 6-1, with a dazzling array of lobs over her six-foot-tall opponent.

Margaret chose her spots more carefully in the second and evened the score with a 6-1 frame of her own. But on this day, she couldn’t overcome her reputation as a choker. By the third game of the decider, wrote Fred Tupper in the New York Times, “you could almost hear Margaret’s nerves twanging.” The former champion piled up nine double faults. There was none of the drama of the Paris final: Evert took the final set, 6-1.

In the second semi-final, King didn’t execute much better than Court had. “Her volleying was off-key,” Bud Collins wrote of Billie Jean, “her serving mediocre.” Not a good combination for a serve-and-volleyer.

Her mental game proved considerably stronger. The Old Lady could still befuddle an opponent. “Billie Jean has you in a tizzy,” said Goolagong. “I worried so much about where she was I took my mind off what I was doing.” The Aussie was right to worry: King was usually at the net, coming in behind every serve and many of her returns as well.

With an erratic King and the always unpredictable Goolagong, the match was topsy-turvy. Billie Jean won the first set, closing out the final five games with the loss of just six points. She reached match point at 5-4 in the second, but Evonne passed the attacking American for a winner. Goolagong rode her momentum to a break of serve and two more games, and the two ladies headed to a decider.

Finally, King earned another match point at 3-5 on the Australian’s serve. Goolagong chose this moment to play her most glittering tennis of the day, keeping herself alive with a nifty half-volley, an untouchable drop, and a series of shots that kicked up the sideline chalk. Billie Jean needed seven match points before Goolagong finally missed a backhand volley.

It wasn’t the outcome that the viewing public would have chosen, but it set up one heck of a final. Evert had proved she could compete with the elites on grass; no longer was she the novice who had won just five games against King at Forest Hills in 1971. Billie Jean had an injury-marred season to salvage, and she’d take aim at her fifth Wimbledon title.

This was a women’s Wimbledon, something that had been clear from the moment that the ATP boycott devastated the men’s field. So far, the ladies had exceeded expectations.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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July 3, 1973: Justice Done

Roger Taylor in the 1973 Wimbledon quarter-finals

With matchups like these, who needed the ATP? The 1973 Wimbledon quarter-finals pitted 31-year-old Yorkshireman Roger Taylor against the tournament’s 17-year-old sensation, Björn Borg of Sweden.

It was a study in contrasts. Taylor, a left-hander, was a veteran with an attacking serve-and-volley game. Borg was more comfortable at the baseline, where he astonished spectators with both his topspin and his go-for-broke approach whenever the opportunity for a groundstroke winner arose. Taylor had the backing of a nation; Borg the support of legions of screaming teens.

On July 3rd, the match proved as scintillating as promised. Taylor crashed his way to a 6-1 first set before the young Swede found his bearings. Borg, however, had already played two five-setters (not to mention a 20-18 tiebreak) and wouldn’t go quietly. He swung away against the Brit’s second serves, forcing Taylor to take more chances. The left-hander ultimately tallied 20 double faults.

Borg rode his high-risk backcourt tactics to a two-sets-to-one advantage. But his energy ebbed, and Taylor grabbed the fourth set with a break to love in the sixth game. The Swede swung so hard at one ball that he shattered his racket.

For a few minutes, it appeared that the contest would end in a whimper. The Brit raced out to a 5-1 lead in the fifth and earned two match points at 15-40 on Borg’s serve. Björn saved them both–with a smash winner and an ace–and suddenly it was Taylor who looked tired. Borg held serve and took control, tying the score at 5-all. Only then did the Yorkshireman find another gear, and he broke for 6-5.

Taylor reached match point again at 40-15 on his own serve. He squandered the first with a double fault. His next serve was an apparent ace, an untouchable wide delivery that failed to draw a call from either line judge or chair umpire. But Borg protested, and Taylor agreed: One point away from a Wimbledon semi-final, and the third seed called a fault against himself.

“I did not want to win on a ball which was three inches out,” Taylor said after the match.

“This was too good a match,” wrote David Gray in the Guardian, “to be ended by an umpire’s mistake.”

Borg responded with a backhand winner to tie the game at deuce. Taylor struck a service winner for a fifth match point, and sealed the victory when the Swede missed a backhand. The final score was 6-1, 6-8, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5.

More than one British journalist reached the same conclusion: Justice was done. Yes, Taylor had done the right thing when he refused to accept the match-winning ace. But it was more than that. The veteran had defied the boycott and given home fans their greatest chance of a native champion since World War II. Whatever his ATP colleagues would say about it, Taylor’s participation in the tournament was, to so many of his countrymen, nothing less than an act of bravery.

Borg, for his part, could find consolation in the teenyboppers who streamed on court after the final point was played. Unlike Taylor, he would have many more chances to win Wimbledon. “Yesterday he was good; very very good,” wrote David Talbot of the sensational Swede. “One day he will be great.”

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 30, 1973: Exit the Captain

Sandy Mayer at Wimbledon

Two days before Wimbledon began, 21-year-old Sandy Mayer was still in New Jersey. He reached the finals of the National Collegiate tournament in Princeton, stepping up at the event where, in 1972, he had won the doubles title with Roscoe Tanner. Now he had a chance not only to repeat, but to claim the singles championship–and by so doing, secure team honors for Stanford over a strong challenge from the University of Southern California.

Mayer made it look easy. He breezed past USC’s Raúl Ramírez, 6-3, 6-1, 6-4. He also partnered Jim Delaney to the doubles crown.

Then he got on a plane.

Mayer was the 11th-ranked American, and among the boycott-weakened Wimbledon field of 1973, that made him a marginal contender. He had barely 24 hours to accustom himself to the grass, a tough transition from the en tout cas surface–an ersatz clay not unlike Har-Tru–at the NCAA’s. Fortunately, the draw did him favors. He reached the fourth round by knocking out three straight lucky losers. He lost just one set in the process.

The cakewalk ended in the round of 16, where the collegiate champion lined up against Ilie Năstase. Năstase was the 1972 runner-up, the top seed, and the odds-on favorite to take the title. He had won 53 of his last 54 matches. He was a member of the ATP, the players’ union that organized the Wimbledon walkout. But he was also a captain–nominally, anyway–in the Romanian Army. Orders from Bucharest said he would play. He played.

At his best, Năstase was one of the most gifted players the game has ever seen, a shotmaker who would dig out from impossible positions for the sheer joy of it. Fortunately for Mayer, Ilie on an off-day was decidedly ordinary.

June 30th was one of those days. Tournament organizers expected a blowout, so they put the match on the No. 2 Court. Ilie liked an audience, and the smaller venue was just one of the things working against him. He had stumbled through his first-round match, claiming kidney troubles and skipping a press conference. The ATP boycott had distracted him, as well: He said he had barely thought about tennis for two weeks, even if he did win the Queen’s Club title amid the distraction.

Against Mayer, Năstase “played like an artist whose normal flair was sadly impaired,” according to the Daily Telegraph‘s Lance Tingay. The Romanian lived off his reflexes, but the American was quicker. Mayer–trained literally from the crib by his tennis-coach father–played returns of serve on the rise and kept Năstase off balance. He kicked his own serves wide, taking advantage of the top seed’s deep return position.

Tournament organizers got a brief reprieve when the Romanian, down two sets to love, broke serve to save the third. But the fourth set was back to business. Mayer took it 6-4, breaking in the third game and never looking back.

The NCAA champ had shown signs of brilliance before. He took a set from Stan Smith at the Championships the year before, and he upset Jan Kodeš at the 1972 US Open. But this was something entirely different. Some pundits whispered that Năstase had tanked, that in solidarity with his fellow ATP members, he had lost at the first plausible opportunity. Maybe. Anything was possible where Ilie was concerned.

As for Mayer, he remained an underdog. Kodeš and Jimmy Connors became 7-2 co-favorites, and the Stanford man would take on 8th seed Jürgen Fassbender in the quarters.

He didn’t have to worry about breaking with the union: He was still an amateur. He didn’t know who would get his prize money, except that it wouldn’t be him. At a Wimbledon torn apart by rich men fighting over slices of the pie, the most shocking blow was delivered by an up-and-comer playing for a few bucks a day in expense money.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 28, 1973: Borgasm

Björn Borg’s fan club at Wimbledon

Bud Collins helpfully explained the sudden phenomenon that was Björn Borg at Wimbledon. If Ilie Năstase was Mick Jagger–the charismatic bad boy who could work a crowd into frenzy–Borg was Donny Osmond, a modest teen idol for the Tiger Beat generation. The Swede’s luxurious blond hair proved to have more appeal than the dozens of big-name players who skipped the event as part of the ATP boycott.

Strange, but true. Despite the absence of Laver, Rosewall, Ashe, Smith, Newcombe and the rest, Wimbledon was the hottest ticket in town. On June 28th, when Borg played his third-round match against 24-year-old West German Karl Meiler, the tournament sold 27,000 tickets, many of them to teenage girls who crammed the standing areas and deafened their fellow fans.

Björn’s doubles match was scheduled later that day for an outer court. For fear of a stampede, organizers moved it to a bigger venue. Borg himself was given full-time police protection.

“It is embarrassing, and tiring,” said the 17-year-old. “I try to put their noise out of the way, and just play. It can break your concentration. I don’t like that. But they are nice. It helps to know they want me to win.”

Borg didn’t need much help with motivation. In his first round match against Indian Davis Cup player Premjit Lall, he sealed victory on the eighth opportunity, the 38th point of a tiebreak. The 20-18 shootout set a new record for the longest tiebreak in top-level tennis and gave Borg the win, 6-3, 6-4, 9-8(18).

Opponents were baffled by his style of play. They assumed he couldn’t possibly sustain it. Then he did. Collins described his game as a “western grip forehand that shouldn’t hold up on fast grass, but does; two-handed loopy backhand that seems vulnerable and isn’t; a serve that flashes unexpectedly with power…. He’s deceptive, canny, sneaky, content to keep the ball in play until suddenly bashes a startling drive through an opening.”

Coach Lennart Bergelin described him as a “fighter,” a characteristic that the young man would need when Meiler pushed him to a fifth set. The West German broke for a 2-1 advantage in the decider. Borg struck back immediately, securing the fourth game with a half-volley lob that left Meiler splayed on the grass.

Aficionados were captivated by the new talent, but they were vastly outnumbered by shrieking schoolgirls. Borg was just one year removed from the Wimbledon junior title, and he already transcended the game. Collins, always ready with a quip, didn’t disappoint. He captured the cultural moment with a single word: Borgasm.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 26, 1973: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wade?

Virginia Wade on Centre Court

Wimbledon was nothing if not predictable: Immaculate lawns, surging crowds, and the struggles of Virginia Wade.

“She goes on to court burdened with the weight of every national hope,” wrote David Gray in the Guardian. “She has played eleven times at Wimbledon and she has reached the quarter-finals only twice…. [U]p to now she has either disappointed and slumped against less talented and less fancied opponents or else she has lost to her old enemy, Billie Jean King.”

If the tournament ever needed Ginny to pull through, this was the year. The 1973 Championships were marred by a boycott of more than half the men’s field. This would be a “Women’s Wimbledon” in which the ladies would carry more of the burden than usual.

In her first outing of the fortnight, on June 26th, Wade didn’t exactly silence the doubters. She took on 16-year-old Australian Dianne Fromholtz, a lefty who had emerged as one of the game’s top prospects. The youngster had already won four minor titles in England and put together a 12-match winning streak on grass. She arrived on Centre Court and acted like she belonged there.

Fromholtz opened play with an ace and remained on top with a barrage of forehand winners. The pressure was all on Wade, who responded with enough unforced errors to allow her opponent to cruise to a one-set advantage, 6-3.

“I wish they would not sigh every time I miss an easy shot,” Virginia said of the home crowd.

Experience, eventually, told. Fromholtz felt the weight of her half-accomplishment, and Wade zeroed in on her backhand. The veteran took control of the net, discovering that her opponent had no lob to speak of. Wade rebounded with a 6-2 second set and was even better in the third. She won the last 14 points of the match to seal it, 6-1.

Still, it was hardly an inspiring start for the sixth seed, especially on a day when her “old enemy,” Billie Jean, advanced with the loss of just two games.

At least Wade fared better than another British heroine, 1961 finalist Christine (Truman) Janes. Janes also drew a left-handed 16-year-old, Martina Navratilova. Janes had learned her name only two days earlier, yet the Czech won in straight sets. “Now that I have played her,” said the Brit, “I am not surprised that she beat me. I think that she is good enough to push most of the players here.”

* * *

Back in New York, Bobby Riggs was playing exhibition matches with his pal, 62-year-old baseball legend Hank Greenberg. At a resort in the Catskills, the geriatric pair defeated a couple of younger opponents. Bobby did the math and made sure the crowd knew the exact age gap.

Riggs continued to aim for bigger prizes. “After I beat Margaret Court, she said there were seven women, including herself, who could beat me,” Bobby said. “I want all seven of them.”

“Right now I’m on my way to scout the women at Wimbledon. My goal is a match with the Wimbledon champion for $100,000, winner take all.”

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 23, 1973: Bracket Challenge

South Africa’s Bernard Mitton, who lost in the first round of qualifying but got into Wimbledon anyway

What do you do when 80-some players pull out of your 128-man draw? It wasn’t exactly an option to skip Wimbledon or proceed with a compressed field, just because an upstart players’ union full of money-grubbing Americans wanted to make a point.

Referee Mike Gibson began by sending out a few invitations. 30-year-old New Yorker Herb Fitzgibbon was semi-retired, working as a stockbroker. Perhaps because he had beaten Niki Pilić at the Championships in 1968, Fitzgibbon got a wire telling him he didn’t need to qualify. He left his desk and headed to London.

When the withdrawals started rolling in, the qualifying tournament was underway. It quickly became clear that the 128-strong group of aspirants didn’t need to be whittled down as much as usual. The third qualifying round was never played: There would be 32 qualifiers instead of the traditional 16.

So many ATP members took their names out of the running that soon, every man who had reached the second round of qualifying was in. Even that wasn’t enough, especially when some of the lucky losers decided to back the boycott. Sherwood Stewart was one such prominent case. Stewart’s doubles partner Dick Dell was another. Dell’s older brother, Donald, was one of the ATP’s founders. As soon as Bob Maud found out he got a second-chance entry into the main draw, union representatives tracked him down and convinced him to stay out.

Ultimately, there were 49 lucky losers in the men’s draw, some of whom had failed to win a single qualifying match. That left former British Davis Cupper Paul Hutchins with a painful what-if to contemplate. Like Fitzgibbon, he was semi-retired with a day job. He entered the qualifying event, but on the first day of play, he was busy at work. He figured he didn’t have much of a chance anyway, so he called in to scratch. A few days later, he learned that had he simply shown up and lost, he could have gotten a place in the main draw.

Hutchins might have made way for Californian Dick Bohrnstedt, the luckiest loser of all. A successful qualifier in 1972, Bohrnstedt wasn’t in the draw for the 1973 preliminaries because his entry got lost. He made it in as an alternate only to lose to Australian John Bartlett in his opening match. He was given a main-draw spot anyway.

British pundits put on a brave face. “I dare say the normal excitement and tension will be far from lacking,” wrote the estimable Lance Tingay. “[A]fter all, the competitors who came in from the qualifying rounds are far from poor players.”

Some of them, anyway. 18-year-old South African Bernard Mitton was another loser in first-round qualifying. He took advantage of his good fortune–and a draw packed with journeymen–to reach the second week of the main draw. He wasn’t even the only lucky loser in the fourth round.

The real hope for the men’s tournament rested with the few stars who chose to play. ATP member Ilie Năstase defied the boycott on the orders of his national federation. When defending champion Stan Smith withdrew, Năstase became the top seed and an overwhelming favorite to win the title. Non-union youngsters Jimmy Connors and Björn Borg were moved onto the seeding list, at 5th and 6th, respectively.

The home fans would follow another ATPer, Britain’s own Roger Taylor. While union members debated whether Taylor would be shunned or merely held at arm’s length for breaking the boycott, the left-hander came within a whisker of winning the title at Queen’s Club. On June 23rd, he lost to Năstase, 9-8, 6-3, in a match with only one break of serve. Taylor would be the third seed at the All-England Club. In Tingay’s opinion, “there never was a better chance of a British men’s winner for 35 years.”

With two days left before the Championships kicked off, the press contingent had plenty of work to do. When they weren’t writing columns lambasting Jack Kramer for destroying the game, they had dozens of new names and faces to learn. This would not be a typical Wimbledon.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 20, 1973: United, Mostly

British star Roger Taylor, who would come under immense pressure to compete at Wimbledon despite his membership in the ATP

A disappointment for the top men and a disaster for Wimbledon, it smelled like opportunity to Billie Jean King. Five days away from the start of the Championships, a British High Court ruled against Niki Pilić, rejecting his request for an injunction against the All-England Club that would allow him to play. There was vanishingly little hope that the ATP would abandon its boycott of the tournament. Dozens of players–including defending champion Stan Smith and 1971 titlist John Newcombe–had already withdrawn.

Wimbledon released its seeding lists. Out of 16 men, only Czechoslovakian Jan Kodeš was not an ATP member. The event got a bit of a reprieve when second seed Ilie Năstase also said he would play, apparently because the Romanian federation ordered him to do so. As David Gray wrote for the Guardian in a front-page story, it was shaping up to be an “Iron Curtain Wimbledon.”

Many women were sympathetic; a few were even prepared to join the ATP’s boycott. Billie Jean, though, was hunting bigger game. “We are in a great bargaining position,” she said, thinking about the appeal of Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Evonne Goolagong, and herself at a sold-out showpiece tournament bereft of its leading men.

Wimbledon planned to pay out the equivalent of $70,500 in prize money to the men and $50,500 to the women. By the standard of tennis distributions in 1973, the imbalance wasn’t egregious. But King targeted full equality, even when her fellow players thought it impossible.

“As for the girls wanting more money,” said tour regular Patti Hogan, “aside from the fact that it can’t be done, there’s no way we could justify this to the public.”

Others didn’t even care. Goolagong said, “I’d be happy to play at Wimbledon even if there was no money.” Evert, who had yet to adopt Billie Jean’s way of thinking, had similar priorities. “I’ve come over here to play tennis,” said the 18-year-old, “and that’s all I’m interested in.”

Once again, King was forced to play the long game. Without a united front that could take on Wimbledon organizers, she sought to create one. On June 20th, she held a meeting at London’s Gloucester Hotel for more than the 60 of her fellow players. By the end of the evening, she had convinced her peers that they needed a players’ union of their own. The Women’s Tennis Association was born. There would be no women’s boycott at the All-England Club, but the new organization would make its presence felt before the summer was through.

In the meantime, Niki Pilić flew home to Yugoslavia. He knew that the battle wasn’t really about him anymore. But this was still Wimbledon, where Pilić had reached the semi-final in 1967. If a compromise did emerge, he was ready to fly back at a moment’s notice.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 7, 1973: Boycott

Jack Kramer (left) and Arthur Ashe

Boy, that escalated quickly.

Two days after the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) upheld the ban on Yugoslavia’s Niki Pilić, a group of nearly 100 top professionals made it clear that if Pilić couldn’t play Wimbledon, neither would they.

The voice of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was Cliff Drysdale, a veteran South African player who served as the body’s president. Drysdale represented almost every notable player in the game: Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, Ken Rosewall, Stan Smith, and more. Just a few pros stood outside the ATP’s ranks, like Jimmy Connors. Both Jimbo and his manager, Bill Riordan, had decidedly independent streaks. Some Eastern Europeans answered only to their national federations, and a handful of youngsters–such as Björn Borg–had yet to sign up. That was it.

Drysdale said that the suspension was a mistake, and that the ILTF couldn’t prove otherwise. The Yugoslavs claimed that Pilić had “refused” to play a recent Davis Cup tie. The player said he had never committed to suiting up for Yugoslavia. In the union’s view, there was no evidence that Pilić ever promised anything, and that was that. The South African claimed to be optimistic that upcoming meetings between the two organizations would result in a solution. But the general readiness to forgo the biggest event on the tennis calendar suggested otherwise.

The next few weeks would be the first real test of the ATP’s strength. The players’ union had been formed only nine months earlier, during the 1972 US Open. Two powerful factions–the ILTF and Lamar Hunt’s World Championship Tennis (WCT)–had just reached a peace pact of their own, divvying up the calendar and ending the prohibitions on some types of players at certain events. The players needed to be at the negotiating table, too. They were, as Ashe put it, “tired of being stepped on by two elephants.”

Ashe took an officer role alongside Drysdale. But the force behind the union was former player and promoter Jack Kramer. Kramer had won Wimbledon in 1947 by perfecting the serve-and-volley game, then gone on to dominate the professional ranks. He quickly moved into management, recruiting amateur stars and running the pro tours. Traditionalists demonized him for soiling the game with dollar signs, but Big Jake simply wanted the players to get their share of the action. There was lots of money in “amateur” tennis.

Kramer liked the tell a story about getting called into the office of one of the USLTA’s chief administrators. The man had heard that Jack–still an amateur in those days–was making a healthy living collecting “expenses” from tournaments beyond the amount necessary to keep him fed and sheltered on the road. It was common practice, but everyone was expected to go along with the charade of playing wholly for the fun of it. Instead, Kramer told the man: Yes, absolutely, he was earning more than he spent. He had a wife and sons to feed. In my situation, he asked, wouldn’t you do the same?

The federation bigwig sent Kramer on his way. The matter was dropped.

From the mid-1950s onward, Jack fought for Open tennis, and he made at least a handful of his fellow players rich. He saw far into the future, predicting a sort of Grand Prix tournament schedule a decade before it came to pass. His pros played tiebreaks long before the majors did. Most of all, he realized that the health of the sport depended on the players–a truism now, but a radical notion at the time. Long before 1973, he knew that the athletes needed their own organization. He told Billie Jean King that the women ought to have one, too.

Kramer’s story is important because his motivations were so often misconstrued. Tennis had given him a comfortable life, so detractors saw him as a money-grubber. His involvement in the Wimbledon boycott caused some–especially in Britain–to accuse him to trying to destroy the game entirely. History has cast him as a villain for different reasons: His support for unequal men’s and women’s prize money inadvertently triggered the formation of an independent women’s tour. But for all of his faults, Kramer pushed for a vision that was awfully close to what professional tennis ultimately became.

Ultimately, Big Jake would play only a supporting role in the drama of the 1973 Wimbledon Championships. While he had a front row seat, the decision–and the sacrifice–of a boycott was up to the players themselves. The ATP’s stated mission was to “unite, promote and protect” the interests of its members. Pilić was one of them, and it sure felt like he was being trod upon by an elephant. The ILTF didn’t recognize the resolve–or the power–of their new adversary. That would soon change.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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The Highest-Ranked Slam Qualifier

Today, Aslan Karatsev plays for a place in the French Open main draw. He is the top seed in qualifying on the strength of his ATP ranking of 62. A top-70 ranking would normally guarantee main draw entry with room to spare. But when the list was finalized about six weeks ago, Karatsev lingered outside the top 120. Since then, he reached the semi-finals in Madrid.

It is rare for such a high-ranked player to appear in qualifying. (Or to put it another way, it is unusual for a player outside the top 100 to make such gains in just a few weeks.) But it is not unprecedented. Here are the 13th highest-ranked top seeds in men’s slam qualifying since 2000:

RANK  Year  Tourney        Player              
57    2013  US Open        Federico Delbonis   
59    2017  US Open        Leonardo Mayer      
62    2009  Roland Garros  Fabio Fognini       
62    2023  Roland Garros  Aslan Karatsev      
67    2004  Roland Garros  Albert Montanes     
68    2000  US Open        Harel Levy          
69    2007  US Open        Frank Dancevic      
69    2009  US Open        Thomaz Bellucci     
70    2015  Roland Garros  Hyeon Chung         
75    2005  Roland Garros  Andreas Seppi       
75    2008  Roland Garros  Eduardo Schwank     
75    2022  US Open        Constant Lestienne  
77    2007  Wimbledon      Nicolas Mahut

I extended the list to 13 for a reason: to include Wimbledon. The top 12 spots are monopolized by the French and US Opens, because there are so many ranking points available in the weeks leading up to those events. We have to go much further down the list to find someone at the Australian Open: Taylor Fritz was ranked 91st when he played 2018 Aussie qualifying.

While Karatsev has progressed smoothly this week, a high rank is no guarantee of success. Federico Delbonis was ranked 57th when he began qualifying rounds at the 2013 US Open. He was fresh off a run to the Hamburg final the month before. He lasted just 55 minutes against Mikhail Kukushkin, then headed home a first-round loser.

Vijay!

I’ve only gone back to 2000 because I don’t have full qualifying results for tournaments before that. But we can find some qualifiers from earlier years, because we know which main draw players came through the preliminary rounds.

Peter Wetz ran this query for me and found a surprise. In 1982, 35th-ranked Vijay Amritraj reached the Wimbledon main draw as a qualifier. 35! Arguably, he was even better than that. He had finished the 1981 season ranked 20th, in large part on the strength of a quarter-final showing at Wimbledon, where he couldn’t convert a two-sets-to-love lead on Jimmy Connors. Amritraj was considered one of the best grass-court players in the world.

The 28-year-old Indian star was stuck in qualifying because he was at odds with the tennis establishment. The men’s Grand Prix–roughly speaking, the equivalent of today’s ATP tour–established a new rule, that players must commit to at least ten Grand Prix events in order to be eligible for the slams. Another protester was Björn Borg, who wanted to keep playing only if he could pick his spots more carefully.

Amritraj had a lot of things going on, and he didn’t like being “press-ganged” into playing all those events. He was pursuing an acting career and would appear in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. Still, this was Wimbledon. He claimed he had received hundreds of letters from fans begging him to play. In India, he said, the only two events that mattered were Wimbledon and Davis Cup.

So Vijay went to qualifying. He was the biggest story of the event, which typically didn’t make headlines at all. He opened his campaign with a win, something he had waited 11 years for. He hadn’t entered qualifying since 1971, when he was 17 years old and failed to clear the first round.

He won his second match with ease as well, straight-setting Christo van Rensburg. He learned that day that he had already earned a main draw place thanks to a withdrawal. In those days, there was no lucky loser lottery. When a main draw position opened up, the highest-ranked loser from the final round got in. So Amritraj would make the 128-man field either way.

As it turned out, he earned his ticket–but just barely. Vijay overcame an unheralded American, Glen Holroyd, 6-7, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2. “I will need to be better than this,” he said, “if I am to do anything at Wimbledon.”

He did something, but not as much as he would’ve liked. The 35th-ranked qualifier came back from a two-set disadvantage in the first round to beat Jeff Borowiak, then he straight-setted Pascal Portes to reach the round of 32. There, he capitulated to Roscoe Tanner in what must have been a fine display of grass court tennis. Tanner, the 14th seed and 1979 finalist, beat him, 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3. For the fifth year in a row, Vijay exited the Championships after a five-set loss.

Amritraj never did give up on his favorite event. He returned to the main draw for the next five years, reaching the fourth round in 1985 when he upset Yannick Noah. In 1988, his streak came to end when he lost in the final qualifying round to Heiner Moraing, 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-7(3), 7-5, 8-6. Players didn’t call qualifying “heartbreak valley” for nothing.

In 1990, he came back one more time. 19 years after his first attempt to crack the main draw, Vijay got through. Ranked outside the top 300, the 36-year-old was lucky to have a place in the field at all. But he beat Éric Winogradsky, Stéphane Grenier, and Stephen Botfield to qualify. He lost in the first round, but as usual, it took five sets to stop him.