Arthur Ashe Read online

  Arthur never discussed the Mississippi murders in public or in print, but it seems highly likely he was aware of the struggles of the Freedom Summer campaign, since a number of UCLA students participated, and there was growing pressure on black students to become involved in the struggle. Arthur firmly resisted this pressure, but years later, after be became active in civil rights matters, he expressed deep regret that he had not responded to the call earlier.

  Whatever his feelings about Freedom Summer and the broader freedom struggle in 1964, he was in no position to act upon his beliefs. As a relative newcomer to the exclusive world of the USLTA, he was too vulnerable and insecure to take any public stands that called attention to his status as a racial interloper, and he was not about to do anything that might hinder or derail his career.

  While the black sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer and other activists loyal to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) were meeting in Jackson to plan their challenge to the state’s all-white delegation to the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, Arthur was defeating Richey in the third round at Glen Cove on Long Island. And later in the month, when Hamer was captivating the nation with her plea for justice before the Democratic Credentials Committee, Arthur was busy dispatching the British star Graham Stilwell in the third round of the Meadow Club International tournament held at nearby Southampton. While Southampton and Atlantic City were separated by less than one hundred miles, the respective dramas taking place in late August were worlds apart. Hamer and Ashe, two black Southerners breaking down the barriers of Jim Crow in decidedly different ways, probably had more in common than either realized. But at the time, politics and sports did not seem to have much to do with each other. He later remembered that prior to 1968 he had “always resented peer pressure from other blacks” who urged him to get involved in politics and protest. “What do black athletes, most of whom are not politically inclined, have to offer?” he asked rhetorically. “Speak out if you’ve got something to say,” he reasoned, “otherwise say nothing.”

  So Arthur said nothing during the summer of 1964, as the nation witnessed Freedom Summer and the passage of the long-awaited Civil Rights Act. He preferred to “speak” with his racket—to advance the race through displays of talent, discipline, and sportsmanship, all of which confounded the white supremacist theories of racial inferiority that threatened blacks’ access to equal opportunity. He already had a lot to be proud of on this score, including racial firsts in Junior and Senior Davis Cup play, in intercollegiate competition, and at Wimbledon, Forest Hills, and other prestigious tournaments. But he was still waiting for the truly big win, the breakthrough that would establish his credentials as a nationally recognized star.32

  As he prepared for the 1964 U.S. Nationals, Arthur had hopes that his breakthrough year had arrived. With the grass court victory at South Orange under his belt, he felt he was finally ready to make a serious bid for the national singles title. This would be his sixth appearance at the U.S. National tournament—but his first as a seeded player. The tournament officials seeded him eighth behind Emerson, Ralston, the defending champion Osuna, McKinley, and three others. It was a formidable field, especially on grass, but Arthur’s recent victories over Ralston and McKinley proved he belonged. No American had won the tournament since Tony Trabert in 1955, so Arthur naturally dreamed of being the one to snap the host nation’s embarrassingly long losing streak.

  Despite high hopes, the American contingent did not perform well at Forest Hills in 1964. Only McKinley and Ralston made it as far as the quarterfinals, and overall the results represented the host nation’s worst showing in the tournament’s eighty-three-year history. Arthur bowed out in the fourth round to Tony Roche. After splitting the first four sets, he surged ahead 3–1 in the final set only to fade at the end.

  Arthur did not leave Forest Hills empty-handed, however. On the last day of the tournament, James B. Dickey, the president of the USLTA, announced that the UCLA star had been awarded the Johnston Trophy, an annual award given to the tennis player who best exemplifies the highest standards of “sportsmanship and excellence of play.” Once again, the press pointed out the obvious, that he was “the first Negro to receive the trophy.” But this seemingly obligatory racial categorization was only a minor distraction for the happy award winner. In his acceptance speech, he declared: “I hope I can be the exception to the rule that ‘good guys always come in last.’ ” After years of disciplined and exemplary behavior, he finally had formal recognition of his efforts to live up to the highest ideals of sportsmanship.33

  What a wonderful way to usher in his senior year at UCLA, yet Arthur was not quite ready to return to Los Angeles. An important Davis Cup tie against Australia was scheduled for late September in Cleveland, and he had just been chosen by Captain Vic Seixas to join McKinley, Ralston, and Riessen on the active four-man squad. The Americans were the defending Davis Cup champions, but after Forest Hills they were definite underdogs to the powerful Australians. Three of the four Americans—McKinley, Ralston, and Ashe—had just lost to Australians, and there was no reason to believe they would fare much better in Cleveland. Indeed, the Aussies—who had won the Davis Cup eighteen times, one fewer than the Americans—had the added incentive of matching the U.S. total. The Americans’ best hope was that the visitors would become unnerved by the Cleveland venue, a strange concrete and steel structure constructed as a temporary site to be used for the Davis Cup tie and then dismantled. The second largest outdoor tennis arena in the United States, the seven-thousand-seat Cleveland site featured tall steel towers designed to accommodate television and radio broadcast equipment that would reach the far corners of the world for the first time in the annals of Davis Cup competition. Whatever happened on the court, the Cleveland tie was destined to make television history.

  The battle on the court proved to be one of the most competitive Davis Cup finals in years. Sensing that there was no room for error, both captains used only two players, Ralston and McKinley for the Americans, and Emerson and Stolle for the Aussies. The other four players—Ashe, Riessen, Newcombe, and Roche—remained on the sidelines as cheerleaders. After splitting the opening singles matches, Ralston and McKinley teamed up to defeat Emerson and Stolle in the doubles match, giving the Americans a 2–1 lead. With one more singles victory the underdog Americans would repeat as champions, but on the final day of competition both Emerson and Stolle eked out narrow victories. The mighty Australians had won back the Cup, evening up the two nations’ victory totals at nineteen apiece.34

  Though disappointed by the loss—and by Seixas’s decision to keep him on the sidelines—Arthur returned to UCLA in late September 1964 with a sense of purpose. With only one year of college eligibility left, he still had a lot to prove. Could he lead UCLA to an NCAA championship? Could he become the first African American tennis player to win the coveted NCAA singles title? He faced eight months of preparation during which he would have to maintain a tight focus and discipline, both on the court and in the classroom. It wasn’t going to be easy to counter the many distractions of college life, especially in light of Pasarell’s decision, prompted by Coach Morgan, to postpone his last year of tennis eligibility. Burdened with a marginal grade point average, Pasarell had good reason to interrupt his intercollegiate tennis in an effort to shore up his academic standing. But this decision put added pressure on Arthur, who would have to lead the Bruins to the NCAA tennis title without any help from his most talented teammate.

  Perhaps even more disturbing was Arthur’s suspicion that Possum would be in full party mode during his hiatus. Girls, dates, carousing, self-indulgent road trips, and periodic parties in their Pacific Palisades apartment—these were temptations that Arthur could ill-afford. To be sure, Coach Morgan would be watching him carefully during practice sessions and other on-court appearances, but Arthur himself would be the arbiter of his off-campus life. Self-discipline had always been one of his strengths, but the depth of his commitment to t
ennis would be sorely tested on more than one occasion during his senior year.

  Arthur enjoyed his roommates’ sociability and easygoing ways; and to a limited extent he began to change, even when it came to something as simple as taking time to eat a proper meal. “He said we helped him get a more relaxed attitude,” Baker recalled. “Charlie and I have the Latin temperament—you know, take two hours to eat. When we first knew Arthur he’d eat in a hurry, take his last bite and want to get away and be doing something. And he’d eat anywhere—just eat and get it over with. But now he’s learned to go out with us, take time, try new dishes.”

  Arthur also began to take advantage of an improving financial situation. He indulged in occasional shopping sprees, adding record albums and books, and even a few stylish upgrades to his notoriously spartan wardrobe. His biggest purchase, one that probably gave him more joy than any previous material possession, came in 1965 when he became the proud owner of a red Ford Mustang. Introduced at the New York World’s Fair in April 1964, the sleek-lined Mustang soon became an enormously popular status symbol for Ashe’s generation of college students. Driving around town or pulling up in style to park near the Bruins Tennis Terrace solidified his image as an enviable celebrity. Somehow the shy boy from Richmond had become a big man on campus.

  By the time the 1965 intercollegiate season began in early February, he was ranked third in the nation and immersed in a rising tide of high expectations. During that winter and spring he experienced the most hectic and stressful tennis regimen of his life. With daily practices, weekly dual matches, and extended Davis Cup play, he had little time for anything else. Tennis, even more than in the past, dominated his life. After three years of playing in the shadow of USC and Ralston, UCLA was the preseason favorite to win the NCAA tennis championship, and Arthur was the odds-on favorite to capture the intercollegiate singles crown.

  The UCLA basketball team was the reigning NCAA champion, and now it was time for Coach Morgan and the tennis Bruins to add to the university’s newfound reputation as an athletic powerhouse. Midway through the spring semester, the pressure cooker of UCLA sports took on even more steam when the basketball team repeated as national champion in March, and the UCLA men’s volleyball team followed with its own national title a few weeks later.35

  The pressure to win was intense, but Ashe, who had grown in confidence and maturity during the past year, did not seem to mind. The spring 1965 term was his last semester of eligibility, and he was determined to make the most of it. The tennis could hardly been much better: UCLA won all eleven of its dual matches; Arthur lost only one dual singles match the entire season—to USC’s Tom Edlefsen—and only one doubles match when he was teamed with his normal partner, Ian Crookenden. The team won the AAWU championship with ease, capping the best overall conference season in the university’s history, and the only remaining challenge was winning the NCAA team title in June.36

  By his own admission, Arthur’s performance in the classroom was somewhat less impressive. But he made sure he did well enough to avoid embarrassment or academic probation. During his college career he had settled into the pattern of a B student, reconciling himself to slightly above average grades as the price for athletic stardom. Even so, he hated to miss class. While his core business administration courses did not always offer the most stimulating material (his favorite area of study was anthropology), he remained intellectually engaged and did his best to keep up with his assignments, never an easy task for a Division I athlete. At several points he had found it necessary to take a reduced number of credits in an effort to accommodate his busy tennis schedule, so there was no chance of graduating with his class in June. Even at the end of the spring semester—his eighth at UCLA—he would still need to earn nine more credits for graduation.

  Spending another semester, or even another year, at UCLA, where he had become increasingly comfortable and where the freedom of off-campus living suited his new lifestyle, was actually a welcome prospect. Where else could he find such challenging practice partners, girls as beautiful as the weather, a fairly relaxed racial atmosphere, and a convenient international airport to facilitate his travels to faraway tournaments? If not quite the Golden Land that he had envisioned four years earlier, Southern California was still an attractive option and something of a haven far removed from the intense racial turmoil of his native state and region, or so it seemed prior to the Watts uprising of August 1965. Los Angeles, he reasoned, was as good a place as any to prepare for life as an adult. An emerging cosmopolitan, he had embraced a lifestyle that would eventually transform his identity. The transition from parochial Virginian to international sophisticate would take years to complete, but the broadening was well on its way by the mid-1960s.37

  Citizenship, full and engaged, was an important concept for a young African American looking for respect. From junior high school on, Arthur’s drive to be taken seriously—especially by individuals in positions of authority—had been a hallmark of his personality, and this trait had only grown stronger during his college years. It affected all aspects of his life, from his dating patterns to his relationships with coaches and teachers to his behavior as a ROTC cadet, and it was never more apparent than during Davis Cup competition. Pitting Americans against foreign players, the Cup matches created a special opportunity for national recognition and service, and no one embraced this opportunity more than Arthur. For a proud young man who often felt rejected by his home state, playing for the United States was an affirmation of self-worth and a powerful symbol of inclusion in American life. As he later insisted, no other tennis experience, not even a victory at Wimbledon, could match the satisfaction of winning the Davis Cup: “Segregation and racism made me loathe aspects of the white South but had left me scarcely less of a patriot. In fact, to me and my family, winning a place on our national team would mark my ultimate triumph over all those people who had opposed my career in the South in the name of segregation.”

  Arthur was eager to make a more significant contribution in 1965, especially since he had not been asked to play for his country the previous year. Though he—along with Froehling, Riessen, and Pasarell—had warmed the bench while Ralston and McKinley played all of the matches, this strategy did not work out very well, as the United States finished second to Australia for the sixth time in ten years. Vic Seixas, falling one victory short in his inaugural year as Davis Cup captain, resigned in frustration in March 1965, giving way to Los Angeles insurance man George MacCall, a close friend of 1962–63 captain Bob Kelleher.

  The USLTA also authorized MacCall to hire a coach to supervise training and player development, and in March he chose Gonzales. With Pancho on board, and with Ashe, Scott, Richey, and the doubles specialist Riessen joining McKinley and Ralston on the 1965 squad, there was new enthusiasm and renewed hope that the United States could regain the Cup. Before the squad began to play, MacCall suspended both Richey, whose father had tried to interfere with the captain’s handling of his high-spirited son, and Ralston, who had refused to follow through with a commitment to play in a warm-up doubles match in Houston. But the final roster still packed a lot of punch.

  Named to the squad in mid-May, just as he was defeating Edlefsen for the Pacific Eight singles title and UCLA was edging USC for the conference team championship, Arthur was determined to justify MacCall’s faith in him. Over the next decade, he would develop a reputation for intense commitment to Davis Cup competition, and for achieving a focus sometimes lacking in his normal play. “Playing Davis Cup tennis isn’t like playing in any tournament,” he observed. “There aren’t the crowds of other players milling around and laughing it up with you in the locker room; there isn’t the steady stream of news from a dozen courts about who’s beating whom, nor the ebb and flow of people in the grandstand. . . . The whole horizon focuses down to a pinpoint on the one or two foreign opponents you’ll be playing. And sometimes reaches inside and squeezes your heart when you hear the umpire call ‘Advantage United States,’ instead o
f ‘Advantage Ashe.’ ” This intensity was already in evidence as Arthur prepared for the 1965 Americas Zone competition. During the last week in May, he was in Palo Alto for the California State Tennis Championships, where Ralston eliminated him in the semifinals. But he spent most of the week in nearby San Francisco “hitting with the pros”—including Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, and Rod Laver—in a frantic effort to get ready.38

  Arthur’s first test came in early June, when the American team faced off against Canada in the opening round. Held in the sweltering valley town of Bakersfield, a hundred miles north of the UCLA campus, the contest against the untried and lightly regarded Canadian team figured to be little more than a warm-up for the more challenging contests in the later rounds. MacCall warned his team about the peril of taking the Canadians lightly, but true to form the Americans won all five matches as Arthur completely dominated both of his singles opponents.39

  With final exams and the NCAA tennis championships scheduled to begin in a week’s time, he had no time to savor the victory. Rushing back to Los Angeles, he spent most of the next week in the library trying to catch up on his studies. But he also tried to get his mind and body ready for what he hoped would be the crowning achievements of his college tennis career: a national championship for the UCLA team and a national singles title for himself.

  USC had dominated the NCAA tournament throughout Arthur’s time at UCLA, winning three consecutive team championships. Along the way, Osuna had won the NCAA singles title in 1962 and Ralston had followed as singles champion in 1963 and 1964. Since his elevation to the varsity, Arthur had lost twice to Ralston in the national semifinals, and the UCLA team had finished a close second both years. Now, with Ralston gone and the NCAA tournament being played on the Bruins’ home courts, he figured it was finally UCLA’s year to shine. He was right.