The Pros The Forgotten Era of Tennis by Peter Underwood with a Foreword by John Newcombe, New Chapters Press, 394 pages $19.95 ISBN 978-1-937559-91-5 – for sale and download here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1937559912/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_d1j3FbGBY35FJ?_x_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
by Daniel Picker
One new book on tennis stands tall as a fine choice for the tennis enthusiast this holiday season. With the Covid–9 pandemic disrupting lives worldwide, and the inability to share one’s enthusiasm for tennis and celebrate the wonderful game of tennis by crowding into stadiums, reading on past stars’ stellar accomplishments remains essential and positively worthwhile.
Peter Underwood, in The Pros The Forgotten Era of Tennis captures the enthralling story of professional tennis from the 1920’s through the late 1960’s, and into the early 1970’s, after the birth of Open tennis in 1968. Underwood, a medical doctor, author, and tennis enthusiast, has produced a fine book, which reveals his astute observations and abundant research.
The roughly 50–year period, which Underwood focuses on contains enthralling characters, the professional players themselves, and the adversity they faced, in departing the amateur ranks, and abandoning their opportunities to continue competing at the four major championships: the Australian Championships, the French Championships, the All England Championships, and the United States Championships, which comprise The Grand Slam. These four Majors, as they were formerly known, are now known as the Grand Slams or Grand Slam Tournaments.
The big events remain under the aegis of their national federations still today, and it was that hierarchy which banned the professionals from competing in their so – called amateur events, which these players had won, before joining professional tours, which often included a small band of players, with two stars often involved in prolonged head–to–head tours on makeshift courts in small, dimly–lit arenas across the United States.
Underwood, with a flair for the dramatic, demonstrates his ability as an able storyteller. He captures not only the captivating tales of competition and the important rivalries, but he also elucidates the entrenched power structure of amateur tennis, with its hypocrisy, which exiled the best players in the world from their storied grounds, the elite clubs of Kooyong in Australia, Roland Garros in France, Wimbledon in the United Kingdom, and Forest Hills in the United States.
Underwood organizes his opus around his Dramatis Personae, just as the fabled playwright, Shakespeare, first presents his cast of characters, so too does Underwood. Underwood’s book contains a forward by Aussie great John Newcombe, who won the major championships after The Open Era commenced, but who had also triumphed before Open tennis began.
In seven chapters, Underwood focuses on the eight great players who helped create and shape professional tennis: Big Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines and Don Budge, Bobby Riggs, Jack Kramer, Pancho Gonzales, Ken Rosewall, and Rod Laver.
“Tragedian – Tilden” begins this collection of athletic prowess, and in addressing the first major character of his troupe, Tilden, Underwood extols Big Bill’s virtues as a brilliant player and serious theoretician of the game and how he thought it should be played, while also including Tilden’s tragic fall from grace. For those readers and players, the enthusiasts who take up Underwood’s apt narrative, will find that in Tilden’s serious quest to improve his game, he reveals a strategy that even an ordinary player might benefit from. Underwood explains Tilden’s great rivalry with William O. Johnston, who lacked Tilden’s height, yet defeated William Tilden the 2nd, and inspired Big Bill to develop his game. On his fourth attempt in the U.S. Singles Championships, Tilden made it to a second straight final, only to lose to his first nemesis, “Little Bill” Johnston, who as a Californian, “possessed a huge western–grip topspin forehand” which enabled William O. Johnston to exploit William T. Tilden’s weaker backhand.
After losing that second U.S. Singles Championship, the tall, product of a well–to to–do East Coast family knew he must rebuild his backhand to usurp his West Coast rival. Underwood astutely notes: “After this defeat of 1919, Tilden decided . . . What he needed was a backhand that could fight fire with fire.” Underwood continues, “In one of the most famous moves in sport, Tilden stopped playing competitively for six months. He located an indoor court, found a couple of sparring partners, and rebuilt his stroke from scratch. When he emerged a half–year later his new stroke was fireproof.” While both Little Bill Johnston and Big Bill Tilden owned powerful, yet dramatically different forehands, Tilden lacked an aggressive backhand. Tilden’s tremendous success after this brief hiatus, demonstrates his stature as one of the greatest players of all time: winning seven United States Championships and three All England Championships at Wimbledon, and while dominating the men’s game for nearly a decade, also led the United States to many David Cup triumphs. But Tilden, who wrote books on tennis, taught lessons to those interested in improvement, and acted in theatrical productions, irked the power structure of amateur tennis, for Tilden wished to exert influence as a professional.
Ellsworth Vines, a Californian, with a powerful serve, and Don Budge, also an American with a strong serve, and a brilliant backhand, followed Tilden in dominating the game. Budge won the first Grand Slam, holding all four majors in the same year. An injury during World War II, in which he hurt his serving shoulder, hampered his game afterwards, but he, like Tilden, still challenged younger players even as his career advanced.
Bobby Riggs, who was short and lean, improved his game during and after the years of World War II, adding a fine lob and drop shot to disrupt Budge’s power, and with concerted effort, as a pro, Riggs claimed the title as best player in the world, years after he triumphed as an amateur at Wimbledon, and the US Championships at Forest Hills, and the French Championships at Roland Garros.
There were other rivals, not of Underwood’s main troupe, whom he includes with revealing anecdotes that reveal the snobbery of the old order of elite club tennis; antithetical to that snobbishness was most notably Fred Perry, the great British player of he 1930’s. Underwood relates that Perry’s father was a “Labour MP” not of the old monied aristocracy of the Conservative Party, and not “the better man” and that a Wimbledon official, after Perry had turned professional, insisted that he return his Wimbledon club tie.
Jack Kramer followed Riggs as the next to dominate the men’s tennis, and Kramer demonstrated what he called “The Big Game” which relied on a powerful serve, stellar volleys at the net, and a strong forehand. Kramer at first suffered defeat to Riggs, including a dramatic thrashing at Madison Square Garden on the night of a blizzard. Kramer had taken over as promoter after Riggs, but Riggs renegotiated his cut with Kramer after his victory. Over time, in their head–to–head tour Kramer improved his game also and got the better of the shorter Riggs.
Underwood seems at his absolute best in presenting one of the great lions of the pro tour, Richard Big Pancho Gonzales. The “Big” distinguishes this Pancho, from Little Pancho Segura, who competed ably on the pro tours of the mid – 20th century. Gonzales, born in Los Angeles, did win the United States Championships as an amateur, but soon he joined Kramer’s troupe on Kramer’s terms. Gonzales soon established himself as one of the best players, if not the best player in the world, before he was overcome by the Aussie great, the much shorter, Ken Rosewall.
After Open Tennis finally arrived, Gonzales returned to Centre Court Wimbledon, the most hallowed court, from which the professionals, the best players, had been exiled two decades before. In recreating the drama of Gonzales’ famous and record–setting match, which lasted 112 games, Underwood lends readers more than the value of a Centre Court seat.
Antithetical to the establishment, Richard “Pancho” Gonzales, a Mexican – American born in Los Angeles inspires Underwood’s poet’s gift for metaphor and language in “Natural Colossus – Gonzales”: “He was rabbit in that he played every game as if for his life; he was fox in that every opponent was potential dinner. His incentive appeared to switch back and forth between the fight for survival and a feast of power.” Underwood brilliantly captures Gonzales, at the dawn of the Open era, when Pancho, then 41, battled Charlie Pasarell, then 25, at Wimbledon on the lawn before the era of the tie break. Underwood writes, “From the beginning, this great contest on Centre Court seemed to hold a sharpened sense of theatre.” Underwood uses the word “hero” for Pancho, and for his other stars in his book.
With the arrival of Open tennis, and these late exemplars Underwood tells the story of the most dramatic “lion.” The contest between Pasarell and Gonzales reveals the dichotomy “youth versus age” and “beauty versus beast”; Underwood adds “when the players left the court at the end of the match, to the spectators they were heroes.” Underwood shares, spectators must have wondered where Gonzales had been, banned “for twenty years,” and just now “playing in only his third Wimbledon.” Underwood calls the Wimbledon of 1969, when Gonzales returned, “incomparable” and in this chapter he compares and contextualizes Pancho as a cultural figure akin to Marlon Brando, James Dean, and even Miles Davis, all alienated masters of their crafts. All as Underwood notes, “anti – heroes.”
Underwood recounts the drama of this match, held over two days due to rain and darkness the first night with enthusiasm.
Any reader may look up the score in any encyclopedia, but Underwood puts the reader in that cathedral of tennis, Centre Court Wimbledon, for the return of Pancho: “With his coal black hair touched with grey, by then he was leaner and more lupine than ever – and to any opponent, even more intimidating.” Underwood continues, “in only his third Wimbledon, even the unconvinced posh of the All England Club recognized the aura of the man. In one of the greatest matches ever seen there, at the age of 41, he faced 25–year–old Charlie Pasarell in a seesaw battle that lasted over 5 hours.” Underwood relates “Gonzales lost the first set. But in the era of no tie break, it was 22 games to 24.” Extraordinary! Underwood underscores this by noting, “And in that set, Gonzales had saved 11 set points! Then dark and drizzle descended.”
Both the umpire and the referee had refused to call of the match, and Underwood states Gonzales’s demeanor went from “petulance” to “anger” to “fury.” “Fuming Gonzales threw the next set 6–1.” Even the usually polite Wimbledon crowd became “incensed, at Gonzales’ unsporting behavior on their sacrosanct turf” and “they booed him from the court” after darkness had stopped play. The next afternoon the warriors returned. From a deficit of two sets down, Gonzales, “Gorgo” as his fellow pros called him, won the next two sets 16–14, 6–3; now with the match tied two sets a piece, a fifth set commenced. Underwood notes that Gonzales appeared “exhausted” against an opponent who was 4 years of age when Gonzales had won his first Wimbledon Doubles crown.
“Pasarell edged ahead and reached match point” in the fifth set; Underwood notes, and the crowd had begun to admire Pancho’s upstart challenger and “forgive the old one” his poor sportsmanship of a drizzly night before. Underwood states, that the crowd felt that Pancho “had proved his greatness.” Pasarell fought to “six match points, but Gonzales didn’t flinch. He won every one of them.” Pasarell moved ahead again as the match “reached 9 games to eight.” Then Gonzales summoned the greatness that bore him through his long professional career, for decades banned from the most royal of tournaments, and won “ten straight points” to bring the set “to 10–9, 40–15. And match point.” “And served. An unplayable ace. It was his set 11–9.” Underwood notes further, “his match” after then “a record 112 games.” (This was later broken by Isner and Mahut).
Underwood’s eloquence here and anecdotes elsewhere in this fine book should bring appreciation. He notes Rosewall’s comment that Gonzales exuded “an aura of violence” before moving on to the last two chapters on the last two touring pros of The Pros exemplary troupe: the “Magus” Ken Rosewall, and the “Magician” Rod Laver. These nouns illuminate Rosewall’s character and Laver’s career. Rosewall, due to the circumstances of time, first battled his contemporary, the more god–like Lew Hoad. Then on the pro tour he faced Gonzales and later Laver, four years his junior, and then in the Open era, Laver again, and others, like Newcombe, whom he vanquished, and younger, new pros, who never suffered exile from the Grand Slam tournaments. Indeed, these experiences would build character.
The son of a Sydney grocer, who built his own tennis courts, Muscles was first overshadowed by Hoad and slighted by Harry Hopman, the established Aussie Davis Cup coach. On the pro tour, at first, Gonzales overshadowed Rosewall, who later reached number one on the pro tour for five straight years, before Laver claimed that position three years before Open tennis.
Rosewall caught a second wind and won the first truly Open French Open of 1968 beating Laver on the slow red clay of Roland Garros. Then Rod “Rocket” Laver won his second Grand Slam in his superlative year of 1969 claiming all four major titles. But in this era, “By then approaching forty, [Rosewall] added a [his] second French Open . . . and again won the US and Australian titles, the last twice.” Underwood notes further, “he reached, but sadly lost, the finals of two more Wimbledons.”
Those major titles, all except for Wimbledon, he had claimed twenty years before as an amateur. This sort of record, Underwood muses, will never be broken. But for modern tennis fans, perhaps the best – remembered matches were not at Wimbledon or Forest Hills or Kooyong on grass, but on the indoor courts of Texas, when Rosewall battled Laver in two successive WCT Finals, winning both in four, and then five sets respectively, in 1971 and 1972. By then the tie–break was in use. The latter match before a packed house and millions of television viewers inspired the tennis boom of the 1970’s in the United States. Underwood notes, Rosewall proved that the little guy could win, and that he was somehow akin to all of us, as tennis enthusiasts and ordinary people.
In recounting those triumphs in the Grand Slams, as known today, Rosewall claimed his place in this storied pantheon. These sort of records, first claiming major or Grand Slam titles in 1953, 55, and 56, and then claiming those same majors or Grand Slam titles in 1968, 70, 71, and 72, will never be equaled, Underwood notes. Even the more flamboyant lefthanded “Magician” Rod Laver, with his modern topspin, did not claim major titles with such a wide breadth of years in between, though he won a few more major singles titles, but none after 1969. Thus Rosewall, with his two WCT crowns, a few years into the Open Era, and his additional titles in what are now known as the Grand Slams, proved himself the most enduring of “The Pros.”
