By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
One of the statements that has irked me with regard to the upcoming 2020 U.S. Open tennis championships is that it will have an asterisk.
As the U.S. Tennis Association announced that the event will take place as scheduled in this coronavirus pandemic but without fans (and perhaps a few top players), some people voiced their opinion that because of this, the event should have an asterisk next to it when documented in tennis history.
As a tennis historian, I say….hogwash!
If the USTA hosts the U.S. Open and says it is the U.S. Open, it’s the U.S. Open. Period.
I can say, as the editor of “The Bud Collins History of Tennis” book, which is about as close to you can get to an official “record book” for tennis, there are no asterisks in the champions rolls or any Grand Slam event.
You can’t say a Grand Slam tournament is not a Grand Slam tournament just because it has no fans, some of the top players decide not to play or even based on the number of competitors the event has. If the governing body for the tournament (the French, Australian and U.S. Tennis Association’s for Roland Garros, the Australian and U.S. Opens, respectively, and the All England Lawn Tennis Club for Wimbledon) say it is their official championship, it is.
If fan attendance deems whether your event has an asterisk or not, then should Rod Laver’s 1969 Australian Open win (that kick-started his historic second Grand Slam) have an asterisk? The largest daily crowd for the tournament was only 4,500 fans for Laver’s quarterfinal win over Roy Emerson. His final-round win over Andres Gimeno was played in front a very small crowd. Obviously in the late 1800s and early 1900s tennis galleries were more like tea parties. In the 1940s, as Sidney Wood documented in his book “The Wimbledon Final That Never Was,” tickets were given away to try to get some fans to watch the modern-day U.S. Open at Forest Hills.
So, if you say that because some of the top players aren’t playing at a major it should have an asterisk? How about the win at the 1977 French Open by Guillermo Vilas, who won the title when Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Vitas Gerulaitis and Manuel Orantes, all top 6 players, did not play? (This was partially due to a ban on players who competed that year in World TeamTennis.) How about the 1968 French Open (won by Ken Rosewall and Nancy Richey) when half the first round matches in both men and women’s singles were defaults due to riots in Paris. Chris Clarey of the New York Times documents this crazy Grand Slam tournament, the first ever “Open” major championship here: : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/sports/tennis/french-open-1968.html
Then there is the infamous 1973 Wimbledon when 82 men’s players boycotted in support of Nikki Pilic, the French Open singles runner-up who was banned from playing the event because he refused to play Davis Cup for his native Yugoslavia. Jan Kodes, the eventual champion at the event, documented his run to the title in a new ebook “Jan Kodes and the Boycotted Wimbledon: The Story of the Czech Champion’s 1973 Triumph” here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B3342PP/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_Cas7EbSQT43ZC
One of the best examples of events where critics could place asterisks comes at the Australian Open from 1976 to 1982, when, due to the length of trip and the proximity of the competition dates to Christmas player fields were embarrassingly weak, with an average of about one player in the top 20 in the field. Players who shined include No. 111 ranked Chris O’Neil (the 1978 Australian Open women’s champion), No. 188-ranked John Marks (the 1978 Australian Open men’s runner-up) as well as 1980 men’s champion Brian Teacher and 1979 women’s champion Barbara Jordan. Of course, all the majors played before 1968 were amateur-only events and the best players – the pros – were banned from playing.
Should Kevin Anderson have an asterisk next to his runner-up showing because No. 2 seed Andy Murray withdrew from his half of the draw after the draw was made? The highest and most accomplished player he beat to get to the final was No. 12 Pablo Carreno Busta in the semifinals! When Novak Djokovic won the French Open in 2016 should it be said that Rafael Nadal had to withdraw in the third round and thus his title have an asterisk?
Do you place an asterisk by all of Margaret Court’s majors because many only featured 32 to 64 players (many of her Aussie titles had virtually no competition from outside of Australia). I outlined the draw sizes of all of Court’s major wins here: http://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/18604
What about the men’s singles event at U.S. Open in 1975-1978 when for the first three rounds, men’s matches were only best-of-three sets matches while they were the traditional best-of-five starting in the fourth round? Should that have an asterisk? What about the early years of the U.S. Open (and Wimbledon) when the defending champion got a bye into the final?
As Jon Wertheim wrote on SportsIllustrated.com “I think we’re on an oleaginous slope if we start devaluing events because of draws. We say it again: you can beat only the players placed before you. Roger Federer won the 2017 Australian Open by beating Nadal in five sets. He won the following year by beating no player inside the top 20 until he got Marin Cilic in the final. So it goes…Want an asterisk? What about this? Here’s are the first two sentences of Petr Korda’s Wikipedia bio: “He reached a career-high Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) world No. 2 singles ranking on February 2, 1998 and won the 1998 Australian Open. He tested positive for doping in June 1998 at Wimbledon, was subsequently banned from September 1999 for 12 months, although he retired shortly before the ban.”
Each Grand Slam tournament is it’s own story. It’s a separate book with lots of different characters, with one major plot line – who will be the champion – and lots of different side plots. This is what makes them all so fascinating and why tennis fans follow them more closely than any other event in the sport. Who plays and who doesn’t play is part of each individual story.
