ATP Tour

Arthur Ashe

Remembering Arthur Ashe & 1975 Wimbledon: 50 Years On...

Editor's Note: This story was originally published on 5 July 2015.

On the walls of Le Negresco hangs a portrait of Louis XIV, by Hyacinthe Rigaud; there’s a chandelier designed by Gustave Eiffel; glass work by Baccarat, one of two commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II, in the Grand Salon that features a glass ceiling. Here, in the palatial art-encrusted surrounds of one of Europe’s finest hotels, owned by Jean-Baptiste Mesnage, on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, Arthur Ashe checks in to a hotel, exclusive to the rich, famous, and their pets. He’s just shared a 311-mile drive from Bologna, via Genoa and Ventimiglia, with Fred McNair and Dickie Dell, during a week off from the busy WCT (World Championship Tennis) circuit.

It’s February 1975 and Ashe, days earlier, has just lost to Bjorn Borg 7-6, 4-6, 7-6 in the final of the WCT Bologna tournament. Their stay, in rooms overlooking the Mediterranean, is temporary. The next stop beckons: Barcelona. That night Ashe, McNair and Dell arrange to head to the Nice Lawn Tennis Club in the morning, for a hit. Afterwards, showered, changed and packed up, they head to the Nice train station, where they pick up an International Herald Tribune newspaper to read up on politics and sport. “We spotted one report,” recalls McNair. “It said that actor Richard Burton, who would re-marry Elizabeth Taylor later in the year, had been seen with Suzy Hunt, the model, newly married to Formula One racing driver James Hunt, on the French Riviera.”  

Returning to Le Negresco, they pass through the marble-floored 50-metre entrance hall, en route to the lifts wide enough to carry beds, for their suitcases ready for check out. Ashe, McNair and Dell pass by a glamourous couple, who have entered. Taking up the story, in 2015, McNair recalls, “The lady was wearing a red fox fur coat, with a white poodle dog under her right arm. The man was walking with another white poodle.” Seconds pass.

‘Mr Ashe...’

“We all turned around, and took an appropriate pause. It was Burton and Hunt…

“After introductions, Burton asks, ‘What brings you here?’

‘We’re heading on to an event in Spain,’ explains Ashe.

‘Have you played that impish young American?’

‘You mean, [Jimmy] Connors? Yes, yes, recently. It wasn’t a very good result.’”

On 25 November 1974, Connors had retained the South African Open title with a 7-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory over Ashe in Johannesburg’s Ellis Park stadium. It was his 17th crown of an extraordinary season. He’d lost just two of 11 sets to Ashe in their three matches to date.

“‘I tell you what,’ says Burton. ‘Next time you play, you will beat him. If you do, I’ll wager you £100.

‘It will be the best £100 that I have lost.’”

Burton’s words stick.

Over the course of the next three months, Ashe re-dedicates himself to practice. Getting super fit, he picks up five WCT titles, beating 18-year-old Borg on three occasions, including at the Dallas WCT Finals, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-0.

With one of his goals for 1975 out the way, Ashe sets his sights on another.

Ashe checks into room 234 at the Westbury Hotel, in the first week of June, more than two weeks before the start of The Championships at Wimbledon. McNair, who has travelled with Ashe for the past five months, is staying directly below in room 134, a walk up a staircase from the understated hotel lobby. A 50-room enterprise, the five-star American hotel in Bond Street is used by clients of Donald Dell, Frank Craighill, Lee Fentress and Ray Benton, a sports management firm, later called ProServ. It’s not the official player hotel, but an occasional meeting point for the two-year-old Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).

Twelve months ago, on the night of Sunday, 23 June 1974, Ashe had been elected president of the ATP, after Cliff Drysdale stepped down. But, at a time of enormous political struggle, it was also the day that World TeamTennis, together with the reigning Australian Open champions Jimmy Connors and Evonne Goolagong, announced their decision to sue the French and Italian championships for $10 million for banning WTT players. They were also suing Jack Kramer, the executive director of the ATP; Dell, its General Counsel, and the Grand Prix circuit sponsor, Commercial Union Assurance Company, for conspiring with the national associations to bar WTT players from tournaments. Thirty-one of the now 145-strong ATP are involved in WTT. Effectively, every player is being sued. Connors was not an ATP member. It’s quite the baptism by fire for Ashe, who would soon be responsible for writing the code of conduct.

During the first week of their stay in 1975, Ashe, McNair and Sherwood Stewart travel by train to Beckenham, for their first tournament matches on grass in England. At night, they return together in order to dine at the Playboy Club in Mayfair, a 15-minute walk from their hotel and “seemingly the only restaurant open in London after 9:30 p.m.” admits McNair. Ashe goes on to capture the Kent Championships title, beating Roscoe Tanner 7-5, 6-4 in the final. Some of the WCT members head to Nottingham, a two-and-a-hour drive north of London, the following week. Despite losing to Tony Roche 6-3, 6-4 in the quarter-finals, Ashe’s confidence remains high on his return to the Westbury Hotel.

But his mood will quickly change.

Two days before the start of Connors’ title defence at 1975 Wimbledon, the back pages of London’s Saturday editions headline: CONNORS SUES ASHE. 

Connors’ manager, Bill Riordan, has filed two lawsuits in Indianapolis, claiming damages of $5 million for libellous comments against them in letters written by Ashe, and an article by Bob Briner, the ATP secretary. The crux is that Ashe has criticised Connors as “seemingly unpatriotic” for playing lucrative ‘challenge’ matches, rather than joining the United States Davis Cup team. Briner had called Riordan, a “nihilist”. The news breaks as Connors begins a practice at The Queen’s Club.  Richard Evans, the European Director of the ATP, is quoted by the Associated Press, saying, “Personally, I’m getting very tired of these shabby tactics of throwing out law suits just before Wimbledon.”

Incredibly, Ashe and Connors will meet in 14 days’ time, for the sport’s greatest prize.

Connors is considered invincible in the locker room. In 1974, he has compiled a 99-4 record and won three major championships. “Using his Wilson T2000 like a rapier, he had cut the 39-year-old Ken Rosewall to pieces in the Wimbledon final and had then beaten him even more severely in the US Open final, which was being played on grass for the last time,” remembers John Barrett, the former player and broadcaster. “Connors seemed to be invincible on fast grass.”

The top seed has not dropped a set en route to the 1975 Wimbledon final. “He had simply annihilated Roscoe Tanner in the semi-finals,” recalls Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford, of the 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 victory.

By contrast, sixth seed Ashe — using a Head Arthur Ashe Comp 2 racquet — has come through a four-set quarter-final against Borg, who picked up a groin injury, and a 5-7, 6-4, 7-5, 8-9, 6-4 last-four epic over left-hander Tony Roche, when tie-breaks were played at eight games all. On Saturday, he’ll contest his seventh major championship final — his first since the 1972 US Open, when he lost to Ilie Nastase in five sets.

Connors is an 11/2 favourite at the London bookmakers going into his second Wimbledon final; an overwhelming favourite. Ashe is expected to be swallowed up. “On the eve of the final, I remember discussing Arthur’s prospects with Donald Dell as we stood on the steps of the competitors’ restaurant,” recalls Barrett. “We agreed that he could not expect to outhit Jimmy, who thrived on pace.”

Few know that Connors is nursing an injury, the result of slipping and hyper-extending a knee during his first-round win over John Lloyd. It has required secret daily visits to a Chelsea Football Club physiotherapist. Doctors are suggesting he rest. No chance!

Arthur Ashe during the 1975 Wimbledon final. Photo by Tony Duffy/Getty Images.

Back at the Westbury Hotel, a brain trust is formed. Ashe has already done his homework, but wants reassurance with strategy. “We’d talk about how to play Connors, a long time before that,” recalls Charlie Pasarell. Ashe has watched video tapes of wins for John Newcombe and Raul Ramirez; but he's also secretly spoken Bernie Mitton, who slow-balled Connors in a 7-6, 6-1 semi-final victory on Chichester's grass, a few weeks earlier, on 7 June.

Dennis Ralston, the U.S. Davis Cup captain since 1972, has already left London to attend a coaching clinic in Maui, Hawaii. But he calls Ashe to talk about a game plan. Ashe takes down four pages of notes on Connors’ six previous matches. “Arthur was a very dangerous kind of player,” says Ralston. “We called him ‘Slasher’ as he would go for winners. He was not necessarily the type of player who would change his game easily.” Marty Riessen is consulted, prior to heading out with other players to Alexander’s on the King’s Road. “We were discussing what Arthur might do to derail Jimmy from his normal dominant game.”

For McNair, it is his final night in London. Following his first practice at Aorangi Park, he’d booked a non-stop flight from London to Dallas. There had been no way in knowing then, that Ashe would reach the final.

“On the night before the final, we went to a Hawaiian-themed restaurant, Trader Vic’s, part of the Hilton chain, where there were drinks with straws, umbrellas and pineapples,” says McNair. “There, we met for dinner.

“Arthur, Charlie Pasarell, Donald Dell and myself.”

Dell remembers asking Arthur, “What do you want to do? He needed to play Connors differently. All of us were talking quietly, each giving three or four thoughts on how to play Connors.”

Arthur, listening intently, ate lean meat and pasta. Nothing heavy.

“I said nothing,” says McNair, who was 24 years old, in his first WCT season. “I recall saying he’d need to chip the ball soft and low on Connors’ forehand, as the grass was soft,” says Dell.

“Arthur listened to us, but he pretty much had a plan,” recalls Pasarell. “I told him, ‘Bully him off the court with the slice first. You've got to pull Jimmy off the court, then drop the ball short to his forehand. That should be your standard play. Jimmy likes pace; what you got to do is give him as little pace as possible. Then wait and when you have the opening, hit it.’ Arthur had a terrific backhand. Jimmy had trouble with his T-2000 racquets hitting a short forehand. He could not hit enough topspin to keep the ball in court.”

Ashe was in good company for the scouting of Connors. Pasarell had been his roommate at UCLA, while Dell was Davis Cup captain in 1968-69, before agreeing to work with Ashe, on the strength of a handshake in 1970. McNair and Ashe had been inseparable since February, when McNair had replaced Tanner in the WCT Green Group.

McNair remembers, “I was quite surprised when Arthur said, ‘Hey Fred, what do you think?’ I nearly choked on my food. I was a rookie.

“I said I only disagreed with one part. I felt, in the deuce court, Arthur had the best out wide serve to a righty in the history of the game. It opened up the court, at a time when the ball stayed low and the courts were faster. I was a believer in Arthur opening up the court, as Connors could only block or slice his backhand. Donald and Dennis [via his earlier telephone call] had said that Arthur ought to hit it up the middle and come in. You see, when you had Connors on the run, he was in trouble. When he had his feet in the court, he could hit the ball anywhere.

“I said, ‘Arthur, you know what’s best. You have to trust your own game and the advice you have been given. Arthur, in my opinion, you have to use your strength. Your wide serve to the backhand on the deuce court is the best in the world.’

“Then I shut up.”

Dell adds, “The battle plan was decided.

“Arthur would lob high to the backhand side. He would come in to attack on the forehand side. He would hit the ball deep and go down the line on his forehand, slice in the deuce court wide to Connors’ backhand and Arthur would come in to serve well.”

Together, they had polished up Ashe’s game. The conversation continues as they set off for the Playboy Club, where Ashe would take a chip and place it on red on the blackjack table or roulette wheel. “He’d like to do seven bets in a row, but he only ever needed three to win,” says McNair. “It always paid for his nights in a hotel. He had no interest in gambling, more it was his routine in London.”

Ashe and McNair would later leave the others, to walk back to the hotel around 10:30 p.m.

As they arrived in the lobby, McNair recalls, “I said I would phone him Tuesday night, when he landed back in New York. I knew that I had to pack and leave, so I would not see the final. I then remember giving a tip to the old night concierge, James.

“’Good night.’ And I hugged Arthur.

“’You’re going to do this. I’ll call you on Tuesday, when you’re back in New York.’

“I walked up the stairs to the first floor. Arthur took the elevator.”

Ashe and McNair have been practically inseparable for five months. Pasarell will also take a flight home.

Years later, in his autobiography, Days of Grace (published in 1993), Ashe would write, “I went to bed and slept soundly. That match was the biggest of my life. It was also one that just about everybody was sure I would lose, because Connors was then the finest tennis player in the world, virtually invincible. In fact, the match was supposed to be a slaughter, and I was to be the sacrificial lamb. When it was time to go to sleep, I shrugged off the nervousness and the worrying, as I usually do, and slept peacefully — as peacefully as that proverbial lamb.”

 

The next morning, Saturday, 5 July, Dell is expecting to have breakfast with Ashe. “But he wasn’t in the lobby,” recalls Dell. “As I needed to head out, I picked up one of the hotel’s envelopes. On the back, I wrote down the three or four things we had discussed the night before. I put it in his mail box, so he’d pick it up before driving out to the club.”

Dell and his wife, Carole, then accompanied Riessen out to Wimbledon. “They wanted to stop at the church, which we did, so they could ask for a little more help for Arthur,” says Riessen, having checked his 1975 diary.

George Armstrong, who has worked the lines at Wimbledon since 1952, has been selected as the chair umpire for the Connors-Ashe final. He is already playing a round of golf with his son, Gerry, at the nearby Wimbledon Park course. It’s become their 7 a.m. daily morning routine during The Championships, following breakfast. Gerry, now an ATP Supervisor, who recently retired after a 41-year career as a chair umpire, remembers, “He’d been disappointed he had not been selected to umpire the Connors and Rosewall final, the year before, because Rosewall was one of his favourites. But he was full of pride to have been selected.”

Bob Twynam, born less than a mile from Centre Court and in his final year as Wimbledon’s Groundsman, is pottering around his cottage, adjacent to Court No. 6. He’ll soon set out to cut the grass of the sport’s cathedral to 4.76 millimetres* in height. He’s tended the grass for 37 years, the boss since 1967. After The Championships, Jack Yardley, his assistant for the past 10 summers, will take on the head role. The grass has a straw-like quality now after a fortnight of good weather. Every area of the court is worn. [*Editor’s note: In 2015, the Wimbledon grass is cut to eight millimetres in height.]

Ashe will later hit with Australian lefty Ray Ruffels right up until the minutes before the biggest match of his life. At one point Ruffels collects balls at the net and asks Ashe, “I can’t understand this, Artie. You’re always lobbing today. But everybody knows you never use the lob.” Connors will head to a far flung court to train with Ilie Nastase, watched by dozens of spectators. There isn’t a breath of air.

As 2 p.m. draws closer, Ashe and Connors are relaxed in the locker room. Gloria Connors, Jimmy’s mother, his agent Riordan, and the actress Susan George sit patiently in the players’ box. Ashe’s best friend, physician Doug Stein, who learned of Ashe’s game plan a few hours earlier, sits beside Dell and his wife, Carole, and Riessen. Ashe has told Stein over an early breakfast, "I have this strange feeling that I just can't lose today." Arthur Ashe Sr., his father, had a heart attack the previous November, so is at home in Richmond, Virginia. Twynam, the groundsman, is to be found on a fold-up chair in the walkway below the Royal Box. There’ll be no need for him to curse the 'toe-draggers' today.

Bud Collins is courtside with Jim Simpson, ready to go on air in a live NBC television broadcast. “I remember being very nervous for Arthur before the match, worried that Connors would humiliate him,” Collins told ATPTour.com in 2015. “Being litigants in a $40 million lawsuit didn’t help. It would prove to be an emotionally charged match.”

“No one really thought that he could win that match because Connors was playing so well and had won the year before,” admits Stan Smith, the 1972 Wimbledon champion.

Connors and Ashe wait until attendant Peter Morgan gives them the nod to leave the small waiting room, beside Centre Court. Leo Turner, carrying their bags, walks closely behind them. They all pause to bow to the Duke and Duchess of Kent as photographers swarm around George Armstrong’s chair. “When I walked on court, I thought I was going to win,” said Ashe. “I felt it was my destiny.”

Five days shy of his 32nd birthday Ashe wears a navy blue Davis Cup jacket, with U.S.A. embroidered in red on his left breast. The significance is not lost on anyone. Connors, aged 22, wears a white Sergio Tacchini jacket. He has yet to represent the United States in the Davis Cup. Connors sits with his back to Ashe, who has pointed his chair on an angle facing the court. It is the first year that chairs had been provided for the players, beside the umpire’s chair.

The pair’s fourth meeting begins. It’s the first all-American Wimbledon final since 1947, when Kramer beat Tom Brown.

Connors, nursing an injured knee, wins the first game. At the end of the third game, Dell remembers watching Ashe sit down and reach for one of his racquet sleeves.

“After the third game, he pulled out the envelope from his racquet cover. I could not believe it. I was surprised. It’s the Wimbledon final, and he’s reading and studying it. The press thought he was meditating. There was a buzz around Centre Court, asking what was he doing? He was reading.” Barrett recalls, “Connors, too, was reading notes from his late grandmother [Bertha Thompson, ‘Two-Mom’] that were on pieces of paper tucked into his right sock.”

The first set is won in just 20 minutes. Having lost the first game, Ashe wins the next nine. His strategy is working to perfection.

At 0-3 in the second set, a voice yells out. “Come on, Connors!”

"I'm trying, for crissake!" the defending champion replies.

The second set passes by in a flash. Ashe leads 6-1, 6-1. He looks up at the clock, it’s 2:41 p.m. He sits motionless, sometimes with a green towel over his head, serious and poised. Afterwards, Ashe explains, “I let every muscle go limp for 45 seconds each changeover.”

Connors withstands four break points, clinching the third set 7-5 with a forehand winner, as Ashe momentarily reverts to his natural game. It’s a gritty comeback attempt. The top seed then races out to a 3-0 lead in the fourth, courtesy of backhand winners down the lines. But Ashe regroups, breaking back in the fifth game — sticking to the game plan.

Collins says, “He played a match of technical magnificence, changing speed, feeding junk to Connors’ forehand, slicing his serves wide to Connors’ backhand, cleverly mixing up his game the entire match.”

Having broken Connors for a 5-4 lead, Ashe was serving for The Championships.

Three of Ashe’s first four serves are returned into the net.

“On match point at 5-4, 40/15, Arthur sliced a ball out wide to Connors’ backhand,” says Dell. “The response was feeble.” The last shot, a smash, was struck into the open void. It ended the two-hour, five-minute encounter.

“Arthur whirled around and clenched his fist. Many thought it was a ‘Black Power’ salute, but it was a personal gesture. It wasn’t Arthur’s style.”

Photographers flood the court, shortly after Armstrong announces the final score, 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4. Connors and Ashe shake hands. It is fleeting. No words are exchanged.

“The tactics may have looked suicidal,” said Ashe post-match, “When I took match point, all the years, all the effort, all the support I had received over the years came together.”

During the historic final, a 12-year-old Zina Garrison is darting in and out of the pro shop and onto Court One at MacGregor Park in Houston, Texas. Garrison recalls, “We would hit a little then run into the pro shop watch a little, and then go back and try to hit one of the shots we just saw him hit. When he won, we were all Arthur for a day, and lots of pride from that day on. If he could play at Wimbledon, so could we.” Garrison went on to reach the 1990 Wimbledon final, which saw Martina Navratilova clinch her ninth title.

Billie Jean King sat directly opposite the Royal Box. She’d routed Evonne Goolagong 6-0, 6-1, a day earlier. It was her sixth Wimbledon title and afterwards she announced her intention to retire from singles competition. “Without a doubt it was the match of Arthur’s life,” says King. “The match was one of the few men’s finals I ever saw at Wimbledon live… He had made history as the first man of colour to win Wimbledon and I think that meant a great deal to him. Of course, the great Althea Gibson had broken that barrier for all of tennis almost 20 years earlier.”

“Ashe's win stripped away the aura of invincibility that Connors carried into that final,” recalls veteran tennis writer Evans, the ATP European Director in 1975. “He was never going to be considered the best player of all time — there were weaknesses in his game, [such as his] low and short forehand that Ashe exploited so brilliantly. Ashe's achievement was, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable in sport. To go into the most important match of your life and adopt tactics that were completely contrary to your nature and style was an extraordinary feat, not least because he stuck to the plan and didn't panic when Connors won the third set.”

At an ATA (American Tennis Association) Championships in New Haven, Connecticut, officials stop play as African-American players celebrate. Thousands of miles away, in the swell of emotion, Lew Hoad was waiting on the telephone, wanting to offer his congratulations from his villa in the south of Spain, as Ashe left Centre Court. Don Budge, the 1938 Grand Slam champion, expressed the belief that, “Ashe was the first one to play Connors the right way, to put the ball where his reach was limited." In fact, many had succeeded to beat Connors with the tactic since juniors. When Collins interviews Ashe afterwards, the journalist remembers, “We had smiles as big at the Mississippi River.”

That evening, Connors takes a helicopter to Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, to attend a Neil Diamond concert. Ashe dances with King at the Wimbledon Champions’ Ball. King remembers, “Afro hairstyles were very popular that year and Arthur and I both had afros in 1975. We had a chuckle during the traditional champions’ dance when I told him, ‘At least your afro is natural.’ That night was a big deal for him — his first Wimbledon championship — and I remember him soaking everything in and being more expressive than he was normally.”

Ashe’s tennis legacy was complete. “It really was a second resurgence,” recalls Smith. “He played one of the best strategic matches of all time,” says Pasarell. “It was unlike Arthur's game, but the fact that he implemented something that was foreign to him, the fact that he could execute it, was amazing.”

The victory exemplified his maturity in tactics. He’d earned £10,000 in prize money, but was infinitely richer. With the Wimbledon trophy in his hands, it defined him as a tennis player. Connors’ lawsuit against Ashe is soon dropped.

McNair, having missed the final, lands in Dallas and gets picked up by his mother.

“I was so excited to find out he had won,” says McNair, who then waits until Arthur returns to New York.

“So I call Arthur…

“Arthur, it’s Fred. It’s unbelievable. Oh my God. I’ve got to come up there. What in the hell? I read Barry Lorge in the [Washington] Post.”

“Fred, will you shut up?

“Fred, I got back from the Wimbledon Ball and James [the concierge] is at the front desk. He gives me an envelope and I open it.

“It read, ’Meet me for breakfast, 9 a.m. sharp. Barclays Square. Richard Burton.’”

“It captured the little boy in Ashe,” says McNair.

“Can you believe it, Fred?” says Ashe. “Richard Burton wants to have breakfast with me.

“I’ve got 100 pounds to collect!”