Saluting Rafa, with thoughts of Mac, Jimbo
At the risk of offending all the Rafael Nadal lovers, I pulled against his making another Spanish inquisition in the world’s premier tennis tournament Wednesday.
Taylor Fritz, a 24-year-old Californian, gave Nadal all he wanted, twice leading by a set, with Rafa overcoming an injury for a 10-4 victory in the fifth-set tiebreaker. Next up for Nadal is Australian Nick Krygios in Friday’s semifinals with Novak Djokovic on the other side of the draw.
On the bright side, the 36-year-old southpaw is alive for the calendar year Grand Slam with the U.S. Open still to play. Sixty years after Aussie Rod Laver won the Slam as an amateur, repeating in 1969 as a professional, Nadal seeks his 23rd singles victory in a major tournament.
The mention of Laver’s name evokes a time when tennis, at least the big four tournaments, received near-saturation coverage in the national press. Tennis writers like Allison Danzig of the New York Times and Bud Collins of the Boston Globe did for the sport what, say, Grantland Rice and Dan Jenkins provided college football.
Collins, whose loud attire choices made one wonder if he dressed in the dark, doubled for NBC Sports as the Peacock Network brought tennis into the American spotlight. Many a July morning have I awakened to “breakfast at Wimbledon,” where strawberries and cream is an age-old food choice. I always took note of how much the grass court wore down along the baselines and service areas during the Wimbledon fortnight.
In 1980, my first year at this newspaper and watching at home, I greeted a friend between sets of the men’s singles final. A former local high-school teacher with whom I attended many Razorback football games, he stayed through the next set — all 34 games, John McEnroe beating Bjorn Borg 18-16 in a tiebreaker to force a fifth set.
Borg, perhaps the most charismatic of tennis champions, he of flowing blond hair, one whom Collins alternately called the “archangel” and the “angelic assassin,” won 8-6 in the fifth for his fifth consecutive Wimbledon title. The reaction shots of Borg dropping to his knees on Centre Court and his coach and fiance cheering above are priceless.
Borg, for whom the U.S. Open was the great white whale that the golf equivalent proved for Sam Snead (and has for Phil Mickelson), lost to McEnroe in the 1981 Wimbledon final and soon after left the sport with 11 Grand Slam titles in eight seasons.
Much as I then likely would not have said, “You cannot be serious,” McEnroe and his ilk — including main American rival Jimmy Connors — are missed. Two impudent left-handers — one from the Queens section of New York and with a mouth to match; the other, as Collins called him, the “brash basher from Belleville, Illinois” — came to dominate the sport. John Patrick McEnroe Jr. possessed a killer first serve; James Scott Connors may have been the best serve returner of all time.
Both are essential qualities at Wimbledon, where the serve and volley are one’s primary weapons. McEnroe won the English title three times and Connors twice, the first time in 1974 when he and women’s star Chris Evert became engaged and the other in 1982 after wed to Patti McGuire, the 1976 Playmate of the Year (her gatefold appearing in the same issue of Hugh Hefner’s magazine that presidential contender Jimmy Carter gave a near-disastrous Playboy interview).
McEnroe married the more famous Tatum O’Neal, daughter
of actor Ryan and Oscar winner herself as Supporting Actress in 1973’s “Paper Moon,” directed by the late Peter Bogdanovich and co-starring Ryan O’Neal (as Tatum’s con-man pop) and the late Madeline Kahn. The McEnroe union lasted from 1976-1984 while at last check the Connors are still married. (Evert, if you’re wondering, married tennis pro John Lloyd and, later, golf pro Greg Norman. That Chrissie, as she was called, won three Wimbledon titles with no stronger serve boggles the mind, such an accomplished baseline player was she.)
For my money, if I could not get Laver in his prime, I would take McEnroe against any opponent in any best-offive-match with the fate of the free world at stake. So combustible was Mac, though, that I might request strawberries and cream with the umpire, forming my goal-line defense before they tossed the first ball.