On missing the heartache and joy of Wimbledon
We ought to be enjoying Wimbledon, but the Coronavirus has succeeded where Spanish Flu failed in 1919 and so, we are deprived of a summer fortnight of heartache and joy.
Perhaps the last decade was a more careless time, seven months after the end of the Great War. And so, in 1919, still staged at the old Worple Road site, the Singles tournament went ahead. The great Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen and Australian Gerald Paterson emerged as champions; the first of Lenglen’s seven titles.
Wimbledon was not only amateur but amateurish. I’m not clear what were the qualifications for entry; not too rigorous, I would suppose. In 1926 the Duke of York, later George VI, played in the Gentlemen’s Doubles. He and his partner lost rather easily to a veteran pair of pre-war champions.
France dominated the game in the Twenties, the years of the famous Musketeers as well as the divine Lenglen. The US and Britain ruled the Thirties. Not all the top Americans competed every year, some being genuinely amateur and unable to take time off from their work for several weeks in the days when you still crossed the Atlantic by ship. Indeed, even after the next war, the 1949 Champion Ted Schroeder didn’t return to defend his title. Schroeder who, like General Macarthur, smoked a corn-cob pipe, was a businessman who said he took tennis far too emotionally to turn professional and make a career of it.
Fred Perry, who won Wimbledon three years in succession, 1934-5-6, took a different view. The son of a Labour MP and trade unionist, Perry was never popular with the All England Club. This was partly class-conscious snobbery, partly because of his flamboyance, gamesmanship and all too evident will to win. He might have been an amateur, but he wasn’t a gentleman. Actually, he was no more ruthless in his single-minded drive to win than the England cricket captain, Douglas Jardine. Perry turned professional and had his membership of the All-England Club withdrawn, but in one respect he was a traditionalist. Insistent on playing in long white trousers, he heavily criticized his Davis Cup team-mate Bunny Austin for being one of the first to wear shorts at Wimbledon.
Apart from France’s glorious Twenties, top-level tennis was still mostly a game for the English-speaking world. Though a German, Cilly Ausserm, won the Ladies Singles in 1931, and Baron Gottfried von Cramm was three times a finalist. He won the French title and was the greatest German male player until Boris Becker arrived as a wunderkind in 1985. The Baron was refused entry to one of the first post-war Wimbledon’s, not because he was German but because he was Gay. The Nazis had sentenced him to one-year in a Concentration Camp for sexual deviance and as punishment for Germany’s failure to win the Davis Cup. Not one of the All-England Club’s finest moments.
After the Second World War the men’s game was dominated by Australia and the US; the women’s game by the Americans. Hardly anyone else got a look-in, though there would be three British Lady Champions, Angela Mortimer (1961), Ann Jones (1969 and Virginia Wade (1977) and the elegant Brazilian Maria Bueno won three titles. As for the men, year after year we looked and hoped for the next Perry, but it was like waiting for Godot. He never turned up.
Wimbledon retained its charm and importance. Nevertheless, we could no longer pretend that the Men’s champion was the best player in the world. Instead winning Wimbledon became a stepping-stone to a lucrative professional career. This reality was eventually recognized, and the game went open. Pancho Gonzales, who had turned pro after winning the American title aged only nineteen or so and had for years reigned supreme on the pro circuit, was back at Wimbledon for the first time in two decades.
No career better illustrates what Wimbledon missed than Ken Rosewall’s. The little Australian, he stood at only 5.7, lost two finals as a young amateur. The first aged only nineteen, to Jaroslav Drobny, then two years later to his Davis Cup team-mate Lew Hoad (He went on to beat Drobny two months later to win the American title). As a professional, he then became the top-ranked player.
When Rod Laver turned pro after winning the Amateur Grand Slam in 1963, Rosewall beat him by 11 matches to 3. That shows how good he was. He went on to be in two Wimbledon Singles finals after the game went open, losing to John Newcombe in 1970 and to the young Jimmy Connors in 1974, his fortieth year. Given that he won eight Slam titles despite being ineligible throughout the peak years of his career, without that interruption he might have set a record which even Roger Federer couldn’t have matched.
Of course, the game has changed a lot between Rosewall’s day and Federer’s – different racquets, different training regimes, different support from what players now call their team. All comparisons of past and present are little better than a sort of daydreaming.
Nevertheless, Ken Rosewall comes near the top in my book, and, if he wasn’t the greatest of all time, he is undoubtedly the greatest who never won the Men’s Singles at Wimbledon. But he did win the Men’s doubles there twice, partnering Lew Hoad, back in their amateur days when the best played as both doubles and singles, something they seldom do now.
Not surprisingly in this barren year, newspapers are inviting readers to select their greatest players, not restricting the choice to Wimbledon winners. It is, of course, an engaging enterprise, even if a futile one. That said, a dream match for me would pit John McEnroe against Roger Federer, each man in his prime; a battle of character and temperament as well as skill. Perhaps some clever fellow can create a computer simulation, just as more than half a century ago there was such a simulation of a Heavyweight Championship bout between Rocky Marciano and Muhammed Ali. My memory is that Rocky won.
If one can’t sensibly nominate anyone as the Greatest of them all, one can recall the players who gave most pleasure, even if they might not be in the Top Ten of Champions. Fortunately, such a choice is something that nobody but oneself can argue with. So here goes: the graceful and adorable Evonne Goolagong (later Cawley) among the women and Stefan Edberg with the most gorgeous backhand volley among the men.
A final thought. Given the long years of American and Australian dominance, it is remarkable that there has been no American Men’s Singles champion at Wimbledon since Pete Sampras won his last title in 2000, and no Australian since Lleyton Hewitt lifted the Cup in 2002. A long time, if not in comparison to our decades of waiting for a successor to Fred Perry. Long enough, too, for us to start wondering for how many years, indeed decades, Andy Murray will have to be remembered as the last British man to win Wimbledon.