The Players (18 page)

Once the excitement of the opening round of play is past there is a lull at Wimbledon, at least from the point of view of the average newsman. This lasts until the first Saturday when the number of players still in contention has been cut down to a manageable sixteen.

The tournament continues to draw daily capacity crowds, of course, and there is plenty of drama in the second and third-round matches being played on the sixteen grass courts. However, these matches receive only superficial coverage outside the London area. The interest of the foreign press picks up only when there is an upset—a seeded player knocked out of the tournament by an underdog.

So far, upsets had been rare at this year’s Wimbledon. Aside from the defeat of Ron Hopper by young Jean-Pierre Leduc, the tournament was going strictly according to form. Mike Wilder and the other reporters filled their daily dispatches with features and human interest angles not directly related to the on-court action.

Mike adjusted his days to a comfortable pattern—work in the early morning at his hotel room, Wimbledon in the afternoon, and Paula in the evenings. Once they had broken through the initial barrier, an intimacy had grown between Paula and Mike that made it seem they had known each other for years. Mike found himself thinking in terms of “we” for the first time since his marriage started to go wrong. In the back of his mind he began to wonder how he would feel about leaving England and Paula when the tournament was over.

Very much in the front of Mike’s mind were thoughts about Paula’s ex-husband, Eric Teal. Since his visit to the Teal estate on Wednesday, Mike had been on guard. He watched continually to see if he was being followed, and he took special note of any occurrence that seemed out of the ordinary. However, in the next two days there were no followers and no suspicious happenings, and Mike began to think that Eric Teal was off his back. Maybe the parents, reluctant as they were to discuss it, had gotten the message and were keeping a closer watch on their son. Mike hoped so, but he would not relax so far as to be an easy target again.

For his working day Mike liked to get out to Wimbledon early and stand outside with the crowds to watch the players arrive. They rode up in automobiles provided by the All-England Tennis Club to pick them up wherever they were staying and transport them to the grounds in style. Rolls-Royces, Mercedes, Humbers bearing pennants in the mauve and green of Wimbledon drove down from London with the players riding in the back, royalty for a fortnight. It was one of the touches that made Wimbledon unique.

Not all the players chose to accept the club’s offer of luxurious transportation. One such was Alan Doughty. He preferred to make the daily drive from his flat in Lambeth in his four-year-old Rover. As the son of a coal miner he was uncomfortable, he told reporters, riding in the back seat of a Rolls. The drive through the streets and byways of Greater London calmed his mind, Alan said, putting him in a proper mood to play tennis. There was a certain amount of risk involved because, according to the tournament rules, if a player is ten minutes late his opponent wins in a walkover. So far, Alan had always made it.

The Englishman continued to play well, although he had to go five sets to get by his third-round opponent, with the fifth set going all the way to 14–12 before he won it on a series of sharp placements. At Wimbledon a tie-breaker is used if a set goes to 8–all, except for the deciding set, which must be won by two games, no matter how long it takes. Also, they continue to require best-of-five-set matches for all rounds in the men’s play, while many other tournaments have gone to two-of-three, at least in the early rounds. There was the usual grumbling by the players about these physically taxing rules, but Wimbledon was not ready for that big a break with tradition.

The sophisticated calm of Wimbledon was ruffled slightly by something that happened during Alan Doughty’s marathon fifth set. He was playing on Court Two, with the bleacher stands on either side, when he slipped while running to reach a cross-court placement and fell to the ground. To the spectators it appeared an ordinary sort of tumble, but Hazel Doughty, sitting in the first row of the stands, gave a little cry and ran out onto the court as though to assist her husband. This was an open breach of tennis etiquette, and brought a murmur of disapproval from the crowd. Alan had bounced to his feet and waved his wife off before she reached him, but Hazel, obviously upset, had left the court in tears. Alan looked after her for a moment, then continued with play, eventually winning the match. He hurried to the locker room afterward, passing up his usual relaxed interview with the reporters.

In his brief acquaintance with Alan and Hazel Doughty Mike had grown to like both of them. Seeing Hazel’s emotional reaction to her husband’s fall and Alan’s grim expression as he watched her flee made Mike wonder what the trouble was between these plain, likable people.

The British tennis fans, while they rooted sentimentally for “our Alan,” didn’t really believe he had a chance. His steady, error-free game was too lacking in drama to attract large crowds, and everyone assumed that when the seeded players started meeting each other Alan would be one of the first to drop out. They would be sorry to see him go, but they could all be proud that he’d done as well as he had.

One player nobody would be sorry to see lose was Yuri Zenger. The public’s dislike of the volatile Hungarian was unusually emotional for a Wimbledon crowd. As though he were inspired by the vocal animosity of the people, Yuri’s behavior grew steadily worse, stopping just this side of grounds for disqualification. He berated officials, screamed at ball boys, slammed balls into the seats, insulted reporters, and intimidated his opponents. Through it all he continued to play superlative tennis. By Friday it began to look as though Wimbledon might soon have its most unpopular champion ever.

Mike discussed the situation with Vic Goukas while the coach waited for Tim Barrett to come on court for his third-round match.

“What makes a guy like Zenger tick, anyway?” Mike asked. “He’s surely a good enough player to win without all the b.s.”

“That’s what passes for color today,” Vic said. “But it doesn’t work with Zenger. He’s not colorful, just nasty. In the old days we had players who were colorful—Tilden, Budge, Perry, Bobby Riggs. Pancho Segura is still making people laugh on the Grand Masters circuit. These people weren’t clowns, you understand, they were first-rate tennis players, but they didn’t mind having a little fun with the game. Or take Gonzales. He had a temper that could scorch the grass, but when he got mad he did it with style, not like some crybaby schoolboy.”

“Why do you think the color’s gone out of the game today?” Mike asked.

“That’s easy—money. In 1968 when the amateur tournaments opened up to professionals the really big money came in. That’s when the game turned dead serious. When you’re playing for the kind of prize money they put up today you play to win and to hell with entertaining the gallery.

“I’m not knocking it, you understand. When I was in the game a top player could put away ten, maybe twelve thousand dollars in a good year. A lot of us would wind up at the end of a year with nothing. We’d exist from day to day on handouts from the tournament people and rich fans. Now there’s players earning well into six figures, counting their outside deals. You got to expect them to be businessmen as well as athletes.”

“What about Tim Barrett?” Mike asked, shifting the subject back to the game. “What do you think his chances are of becoming a great one?”

Vic’s eyes ranged out over the court. “Tim can be as good as he wants to be. He’s got a few things to learn yet, but he’s young. He’s got the talent to stay in the top half dozen for a long time if he doesn’t …”

“If he doesn’t what?”

“If he doesn’t fuck it up.”

Tim came out on the court then to begin his warmup, and Vic’s attention was completely given over to the young player.

• • •

While Alan Doughty, Yuri Zenger, and Tim Barrett received varying coverage in the media, Milo Vasquez was in a position to become the hottest item at Wimbledon. All that held him back was his failure to cooperate with reporters, who love a comeback story almost as much as they do a Cinderella story.

Unlike Zenger, Milo did not insult the newsmen, he merely brushed them off, giving the briefest possible answers to their questions in the post-match interviews. He pleaded exhaustion, and from the strung-out look of the Mexican after one of his super-intense matches, reporters agreed that he did look to be on the verge of collapse.

Whatever Milo did away from the courts he kept to himself. After a match he dressed and left the grounds immediately, saying as little as possible to anyone. He was a no-show at all off-court functions attended by the other players. There was a look in his eye that made Mike uneasy watching from courtside, but he couldn’t have said exactly why.

• • •

To give some balance to his coverage Mike wandered over on Friday to watch some of the women’s singles matches which were now in full swing. After years of playing for peanuts, the girls were finally receiving prize money more in line with what the men were getting. This was all right with Mike, but he had to conclude that after watching the top men play, the women’s game looked like backyard pittypat.

He found there was a general hostility to sportswriters among the women players. Now that they were closer to financial equality, they felt their space on the sports page should increase proportionately. Mike did not agree, and he made the mistake of arguing the matter with one of the top American players. To strengthen her side of the debate she offered at one point to haul off and deck him. Mike prudently backed away from further discussion, not wanting to test his reflexes against the woman’s roundhouse right.

Moving away from the potential violence, Mike gave some thought to writing a column on what it feels like to stand on the hallowed grass courts of Wimbledon with a professional tennis player hitting balls across the net at you. To put his idea into action he had a talk with one of the club officials and the head groundskeeper. Then he went looking for Fred Olney.

The pixyish Australian had been eliminated, as expected, in the early rounds of the singles. He now pretended disgust with his doubles partner, Denny Urso, for winning his first three matches and staying in contention.

“It’s high timé,” Fred complained, “that Denny quit mucking about with the prima donnas and put his mind to what really matters at this tournament—the doubles.” It was evident, however, from his smile that the little Aussie was brimming with pride in his friend’s unexpected success.

Mike sympathized with him about his partner’s crass selfishness, then brought up his idea.

“So you want to have a hit, do you?” Fred said, his eyes twinkling with merriment.

“Just a few balls,” Mike said, “nothing strenuous. I’ve got an okay to use Court Fourteen for half an hour at six o’clock.”

“What do you say to a little wager to make it interestin’?”

“Not a chance. I haven’t had a tennis racket in my hand since I was in high school, and then it was only because the girl I was going around with played and she conned me into it. I spent about an hour chasing the ball, and that was the end of my tennis. Tell you what I will do, though, you name the pub, and tomorrow night your beer is on me.”

“All I can drink?”

“Sure, I’m a sport.”

“You’re on,” said Fred. “I’ll meet you on the court at six.”

Mike scrounged a pair of gym shorts and raggedy sneakers, and wore a plain white T-shirt. He arrived at the court a few minutes early and stood around feeling foolish as he waited for Fred.

The Aussie showed up at six on the dot wearing a set of crisp new whites. He looked Mike up and down critically. “As a sports writer you may be a winner, but you’re a sorry excuse for a tennis player.”

“Okay, okay,” Mike said, grinning, “let’s get on with it.”

Fred selected a racket from the three he had brought along and handed it to Mike. “This is a Ron Hopper autograph model. How does it feel?”

Mike took hold of the racket and hefted it. “What am I supposed to feel for?”

“Try the grip. This one is four and a half inches around. You may find it a bit small. Some of the larger blokes use a four and seven-eighths.”

Mike curled his fingers around the leather grip. “I doubt if I could tell the difference,” he said. “How much does it weigh?”

“That one’s thirteen ounces, just about average. It’s strung at sixty pounds tension, also average.”

“What, exactly, does sixty pounds tension mean?”

“It’s like each string is as tight as if it was tied to the ceiling with a sixty-pound weight at the other end. There was an Italian here a few years back who strung his racket at thirty pounds. The ball used to disappear into that thing like it was a butterfly net. His forehand floated at you like a soap bubble.”

Mike took a tentative swipe with the racket. “I guess I’m as ready as I’m going to be. You want to serve me a couple first? Then just bang a few ground strokes over. Enough to give me the feeling.”

“Is that the way you’re going to hold the racket?” Fred asked.

“Something wrong with it?”

“It’s a lovely grip if you intend to pound nails with the thing. On the other hand, if you want to hit a tennis ball with it, I’d suggest a small adjustment.” He gave the racket a quarter of a turn in Mike’s hand, and repositioned his thumb. “There we are, all ready to go. I’ll keep everything to your forehand so you won’t have to change the grip.”

“Thanks,” Mike said drily. He took up a position a couple of feet behind the baseline, roughly approximating the bent-knees stance he had seen the players in as they waited to receive service. The first thing he noticed was how much larger the court looked from down here. Watching from up in the stands, the neat green rectangles seemed scarcely bigger than the average suburban front lawn. At ground level, facing another man across the net, the court seemed to expand to football-field proportions.