Tennis never had an official offseason. The global nature of the sport ensured there was always some place to play: Australia in December and January, the French Riviera or the Caribbean (or indoors!) in February and March, then Europe and North America straight through to September or October. Individual athletes could take time off, and many did. But there was never a true break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The schedule became even more crowded in the early 1970s as promoters seized the opportunities of the Open era and the ensuing tennis boom. Circuits in the United States hit the gas in January and didn’t ease up until May. New destinations such as Japan<\/a> to Iran<\/a> plugged gaps in the fall. If a marquee name somehow ended up with a free date, an exhibition could be arranged anywhere from Hawaii<\/a> to Whitefish Bay<\/a>, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On November 25th, 1973, Arthur Ashe<\/a> had a day off in Johannesburg ahead of his final against Jimmy Connors<\/a>. He gave a clinic in the township of Soweto, earning legions of new fans and expanding his horizons still further on his historic trip<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ashe and Connors, it seemed, were the only stars not<\/em> in action on this day, eleven months after they kicked off their 1973 campaigns. Elsewhere on the 25th:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stars who weren’t in Johannesburg (or Adelaide, or Baltimore, or Buenos Aires, or Mexico City) were practicing hard. The Davis Cup final was only a few days away, with the Grand Prix Masters to follow. After that, maybe a week or two at home, and the whole cycle would begin again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n * * *<\/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 \n\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis never had an official offseason. The global nature of the sport ensured there was always some place to play: Australia in December and January, the French Riviera or the Caribbean (or indoors!) in February and March, then Europe and North America straight through to September or October. Individual athletes could take time off, and … Continue reading November 25, 1973: Play On<\/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":[3,53,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1973-redux","category-history","category-scheduling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6874","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=6874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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