{"id":6398,"date":"2023-06-13T07:09:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T07:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/?p=6398"},"modified":"2023-06-13T07:09:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T07:09:15","slug":"june-13-1973-a-heldman-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/13\/june-13-1973-a-heldman-special\/","title":{"rendered":"June 13, 1973: A Heldman Special"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Julie Heldman in 1973<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By 1973, Julie Heldman had put together a fine career. The 27-year-old had never challenged for a place at the very top of the women’s tennis hierarchy, but she had amassed a couple dozen tournament victories, semi-final showings at Roland Garros and Forest Hills, and victories over most of the leading players in the game. Hampered by knee problems that year, she was reduced to a bit part on the Virginia Slims tour. She still recorded upsets of Kerry Melville and Nancy Richey<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heldman was already laying the groundwork for a second career. After an early exit at Hilton Head, she shared the commentary booth with Bud Collins and called the Richey-Rosie Casals<\/a> final<\/a> for NBC. She had been immersed in tennis since birth. Her father, Julius, was a strong player with several match wins at Forest Hills. Her mother, Gladys, took up the game late and with a passion. She ran the magazine World Tennis<\/em>–teenage Julie and her sister Carrie were frequent bylines–and put together the groundbreaking Virginia Slims women’s tour in 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of that helped Julie on June 13th, 1973. She was in the third round of the Green Shield Kent Championships in Beckenham, a traditional grass-court warmup for Wimbledon. Her opponent, South African Linky Boshoff, was only 16 years old. Heldman was having a tough time putting away the first set. As if a sore knee wasn’t enough, now she had the yips, barely able to toss the ball to serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On set point, Julie snuck in what the Daily Telegraph<\/em> called a “Heldman ‘special’,” an underarm serve with heavy spin. Boshoff, flustered, couldn’t get it back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The umpire, Pat Smyth, asked Boshoff, “Are you happy with that service?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heldman piped up, “It’s too bad if she’s not. Am I supposed to warn her when I’m about to hit a drop shot?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smyth acknowledged that the serve was within the rules. Afterward, he explained, “I just wanted to add a little courtesy to the match.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julie hit two more underarm serves that day, and she trotted out the tactic occasionally throughout a successful grass-court season. She even deployed it once on match point. Life could be hard as a career woman on a tour full of teenagers. Occasionally, Heldman was able to get her revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* *<\/em> *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of cagey veterans: Everyone was still talking about Bobby Riggs<\/a>–even Chris Evert<\/a> was asked about a possible match after her French Open final. Of course Bobby was going to try to cash in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 13th, a businessman and avid amateur player named Alvin Bunis announced the 1973 “Grand Masters” tour, to begin in July. Riggs would be joined by several other former greats–including Jaroslav Drobn\u00fd<\/a>, Frank Parker<\/a>, Pancho Segura<\/a>, and Vic Seixas<\/a>–in a series of weekend tournaments worth $250,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

59-year-old Gardnar Mulloy, a 1948 Wimbledon semi-finalist who had been winning age-group titles for decades, would be the oldest of the group. One pressman asked Mulloy why he signed up for the tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* *<\/em> *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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By 1973, Julie Heldman had put together a fine career. The 27-year-old had never challenged for a place at the very top of the women’s tennis hierarchy, but she had amassed a couple dozen tournament victories, semi-final showings at Roland Garros and Forest Hills, and victories over most of the leading players in the game. … Continue reading June 13, 1973: A Heldman Special<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1973-redux","category-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}