the magazine's arrival is perfectly timed, not just because the slam starts on monday, but because last night i decided i'm taking a furlough from team sports (to recover from whatever nameless thing just happened in los angeles). it's going to be tennis. only tennis for the next two weeks.
i have to confess that while i've been a fan for, you know, decades, my grasp of tennis history pre-1974 is pretty weak. i know a lot of names and have a general sense for who the dominant players were during the various eras, but the historical underpinnings, the larger dynamics surrounding the sport are pretty much unknown to me. but i got a good lesson last night from mfw, about the how the ground started to shift in the 1940s-- to paint it broadly, the game began its transition, from east to left coast, private to public, artistic to tactical, amateur to professional.
the article will help round out some of the names that might ring familiar--at least it did forme. for all i knew, jack kramer was a great enough player to have the racket; bobby riggs was the guy with the black spectacles who lost the battle of the sexes spectacle against billie jean king; pancho gonzales had the cool nickname--"lefty." i'd never heard of ellsworth vines. and i never knew that there was a tennis executive named "mr. jones" -- who sounds not unlike a certain mr. steinbrenner, at least in how how expects players to look.
it's a lot to try to wrap your head around, but really interesting (and worth picking up the july/august at the newsstand, since i don't know that that content will be shared online).
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pancho gonzalez, who dominated the men's game for about a decade, is an intriguing character. i think it's easy for a lot of people to look these pictures and consider his success, and make assumptions...perhaps that being a champion also equated with being happy, that being a tennis champion in particular conferred a gentlemanly dignity...
photo by allan grant, may 1949. via life magazine
but of course, his life and experiences are more complex. there are less than rosy stories about him--as he became more dominant, be came more surly, a loner. i wonder--and would have to read his memoir to see if its possible to discern-- how much of that was part of his natural personality, how much of it was formed by the experience of being a mexican-american player--and champion-- in a then-predominantly white sport? i'd honestly never thought about it before...
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i was looking for a "tennis" poem, less heady than a tennis court oath. i found this poem for pancho gonzales.
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there will be more tennis poetry on the way, as wimbledon has an official poet, matt harvey. i have no idea what that will be like, but i'm definitely going to read them...
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i will be spending the next two weeks, fully immersed in wimbledon: watching the matches, listening as much as i can to radio wimbledon, and reading a lot. though i'll personally be trying to take photos and post more about non-tennis things, expect links to all that really good stuff...
and: CHEERS.
