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By Ales Cvekl

The following is a review of the new book by Tennis Hall of Famer Jan Kodes called JAN KODES: A JOURNEY TO GLORY FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN (New Chapter Press: Order for $35.96 here on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Jan-Kodes-Journey-Behind-Curtain/dp/0942257685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278514663&sr=8-1 )

One of the hallmarks of the early “open” tennis era (1968-1973) was that two accomplished players born in 1946 in formerly communistic states, Jan Kodes (Czechoslovakia) and Ilie Nastase (Romania), entered the world tennis stage at around the same time as amateurs and soon become embedded into the emerging group of tennis professionals. During this time, they captured a total of five Grand Slam titles (Kodes, a two-times champion at French Open and once at Wimbledon; Nastase with wins at US Open and French Open), a respectable number considering that 12 of the titles were won by the “classic” Australians (Laver, Rosewall and Newcombe), four championships won by Americans (Smith and Ashe) and a single French crown won by the Spaniard Andres Gimeno. However, at home, both these athletes were instrumental in transforming the rigid system of centrally controlled sport administration where selective focus was placed on “Olympic” sports to accommodate new professional and highly individualistic sport, tennis, within the “state-amateur” sport system and social network. In turn, tennis established itself as an anomaly within the rigid, all-state-controlled system. Success in tennis encouraged many citizens of Czechoslovakia to believe that an individual could succeed in on his/her own accord gave rise to the hopes that the communistic system would ultimately fail.

In this book, Jan Kodes with the assistance of journalist Petr Kolar takes us through his journey from promising amateur tennis and soccer player, college student, to his ascendance in the tennis world, and, to his tenure as a tennis official following his active career. As he was often in the center of events that first opened the door, and, subsequently paved the road for a number of players from Czechoslovakia including Navratilova, Lendl, Mandlikova, Sukova, Novotna and Korda. At least two of them, Navratilova and Lendl, made a long lasting impact on the game of tennis, the way how pros prepare for the game today including their diet, off-court training and determination to succeed. The authors prepared this book as a meticulous testimony about Jan’s on and off court battles and challenges in the background of a rich tennis history in pre-WWII Czechoslovakia, in the beginning of Cold War, during the formation of the Open era in tennis and through the more recent developments in the game following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The only negligible weakness of the book is that it could include a small chapter focused on many benefits of tennis for both physical and mental health. In societies with skyrocketing health care costs, there is an excellent sport that can be played through the entire human lifespan. Thus, a broad support for this sport is one way how to address these pressing issues.

Jan’s contributions to the tennis are numerous, as acknowledged by his induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1990, and this book provides insights into many events on the background stage in his home country that provide unique testimony about fulfilled and missed opportunities and numerous challenges that open tennis caused to the political establishment of then communistic Czechoslovakia. It is widely acknowledged that Arthur Ashe’s brief visits to apartheid South Africa proved embarrassing to a regime that found legitimacy in the superiority of whites over mixed and African people; however, it is less appreciated that tennis players from Soviet block including Fibak, Kodes, Lendl, Metreveli, Morozova, Nastase, Navratilova, Taroczy and Tiriac were inflicting damage to the communistic ideology in their home countries on a daily basis, and, paradoxically, risking being penalized for their international success. Threatened by their player’s mass appeal, the communistic regime intimidated non compliant tennis professionals on numerous instances, but to little avail. The question for historians is how it could this have happened?

It could be argued that the turning point that irreversibly established tennis as a professional sport in Czechoslovakia happened during the June 1971 Davis-Cup match between Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union. Following the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the only place to express frustration and demonstrate resistance to the occupation were annual ice-hockey matches during the World Ice-Hockey Championships. The Czechs and Slovaks got their well-deserved dose of temporal happiness as their national team played well against the USSR at the earlier world championship in Switzerland in March, with marvelous and unexpected 5:2 and 3:3 results. The next stage of was the Tennis Centre Court on Stvanice Island in Prague, this time a three-day June tennis match between home team lead by Kodes, who just defended his French Open title, against Soviets, led by skilled Alex Metreveli. Apart of the political background, it was the media coverage that glued almost the entire Czechoslovakia to their black and white TV screens. Up to this June weekend, tennis has rarely been shown on a single state-controlled TV channel. Tennis was a traditional national sport but mostly in seclusion from the public stage as an individualistic sport performed by elites and suffering from the chronic shortage of tennis rackets, strings and balls. This time, TV coverage of this match (commercials-free) delivered an unprecedented service to every household with a TV set: a battle between two gladiators, lasting for over four hours, a novel way to show athletes on TV for the Czechoslovak audience. In contrast to popular football (soccer) and ice-hockey matches, the duration of an individual tennis match is not defined and the five setter played on the first day between Kodes and Metreveli offered a drama beyond the public expectation with Kodes loosing the match.

The pressure on Kodes to win in front of the sold out crowd was enormous and being tired from a series of earlier major clay court tournaments gave Metreveli the final edge. (For additional reading: More extensive coverage of this historical event, from the perspective of an American journalist, is given elsewhere in chapter “One Little Victory” in Bud Collins’s “My Life with the Pros”). The TV blowups showing the players body language, silent and ecstatic crowd supported by sounds of horns of large diesel-electric engines slowly moving over the adjacent Negrelli railways bridge, all seen and heard on TV captivated nearly the whole nation.

As the match moved to its second day, the double match was not completed with the Kodes/Kukal team leading 5:3 in the fifth set allowing the drama to be discussed in numerous Prague’s pubs. The doubles match was briskly completed on Sunday followed by a straight three set Kodes’s defeat of Korotkov, sending Russians home and advancing the home team to the next round. Jan’s account of this event is entirely focused on his lost to Metreveli and newspaper coverage raising doubts about his professional-like status. However, it was the historical TV coverage and emotions of many citizens in the occupied country that subconsciously influenced politicians and sport administrators and tilted their decisions towards gradually allowing tennis players to become full-fledged pros. From that moment, even high-ranking party and government officials found their ways into the boxes of the Center Court.

Tennis had been shown on TV in connection with winning against the occupying Soviets, ancient wooden tennis rackets of parents and grandparents hidden in closets went out, tennis clubs started flourishing, decaying clay courts were refurbished and new indoor facilities were constructed, imported tennis equipment and clothing became more accessible, the most popular weekly magazines started to cover tennis on a regular basis, and, most importantly, a new generation of tennis players born in the sixties began to pursue their dreams with most important roadblocks cleared.

Obviously, to support this idea that this Davis Cup match had a crucial role on how the Czechoslovak authorities handled the emerging tennis pros requires further explanations. There are three nice examples, from distinct social-economic structures, to illustrate how determined individuals prevailed over the communistic bureaucracy. The situation in tennis is mainly subject of this book. The other two examples are from science and technology, exemplified by Dr. Otto Wichterle, an inventor of soft contact lenses, and art, represented by an Academy Award movie director, Czech expatriate, Milos Forman. As there is a number of common denominators how the establishment responded to remarkable talents and accomplishments of these individuals. The regime caused them numerous adversities and obstructions in development of their talent and limiting their opportunities, but, ultimately, made them remarkably strong and resilient as they prevailed at key moments when things had to be settled.

In general, conditions for talented athletes, artists and scientists were gradually improving in mid sixties in the context of efforts to implement economical and political reforms that were unfortunately terminated by the Soviet occupation in 1968. For tennis players, the ongoing dilemma was whether to follow Jaroslav Drobny’s example and leave the country. This issue of emigration is eloquently addressed by Jan’s recollections in this book and contrasting with Navratilova’s radical solution crystallized over a stretch of three summer months, and Lendl’s more evolutionary approach. Thus, these four players from three distinct generations of tennis players overcame the challenges they faced to achieve their ambitions. Drobny passed his experience to Kodes and he stayed home, Navratilova acted following Drobny’s example, and Lendl found his own way to reside in the USA without an official defection.

At least, tennis players had their valid passports most of the time; though a number of regulations controlled by the tennis federation were imposed, and sometimes the system, through an overactive and ambitious official, chased a single player to demonstrate “their” absolute power. Tennis players also faced a “financial problem” as the laws did not permit Czechoslovak citizens to hold US $ accounts or any other hard currency, or to open accounts abroad. Thus, several modifications of the bank laws were adopted to address these needs. Dr. Wichterle was the first to be allowed to have a personal account in 1968, though capped to a maximum of 2,000 USD. Czechoslovak tennis players, led by Jan Kodes, negotiated a system in which they played certain number of tournaments either as “professionals” or as “amateurs”. In simple terms, as amateurs they received travel support from the tennis federation with their earnings owned by the federation; as pros, their kept their earnings. This system was modified several times and economical pragmatism usually prevailed as the system needed to increase gross revenues, and did not want to lose another high earning player such as Ivan Lendl. In contrast to those tennis players, Dr. Wichterle, a tennis enthusiast himself, experienced multiple long-lasting travel bans.

However, when royalties form his high-earning patents in the USA were challenged, he was allowed to travel to USA as the struggling economy desperately needed to maintain this income. Director Milos Forman, did not return home following the occupation in 1968, and moved to the US. Following his success “One Flew of the Cuckoo’s Nest” he started visiting his home country and raised the opportunity to make his next blockbuster “Amadeus” in cooperation with Prague’s Film Studio Barrandov. This was another sensitive issue to the political establishment to acknowledge tacitly the success of a “defector”. To make all these things happen, Kodes, Wichterle and Forman had to find direct support for their cases from high ranking authorities, they had to use their personal charisma and dogged approach, to convince government officials that their ideas were in the best interest of the state. The book reports on a number of personal encounters between Kodes and various officials including copies of their communiqués. These are relatively rare historical data that explain construction of the new National Tennis Center in Prague, Lendl’s struggle to legally emigrate, organization of the Federation Cup in Prague in 1986 that allowed Martina to visit her home after 11 years since her defection, and other moments around tennis in Czechoslovakia.

Kodes’s book is also a valuable source of information about the structure and hierarchical organization of tennis activities within a model European country. If we consider Czechoslovakia’s example from the beginning of “open” era in 1968 towards the country’s dissolution at the end of 1992, a total of 194 Grand Slam titles were awarded to both men and women tennis players from only 14 countries. Czechoslovak tennis players (population of 15 million) ranked fifth among countries with 17 titles excluding 16 additional titles won by Navratilova as US citizen. The top five ranked countries during this period were: USA (72 titles, population of ~260,000 million), Australia (34 titles, ~20 million), Sweden (23 titles, ~8 million) and Germany (17 titles, ~80 million). The next 6^th and 7^th country, Yugoslavia (~23 millions) and Argentina (~40 millions) won 8 and 5 titles, respectively. What is common between these “minor” tennis superpowers?

The first common denominator is that football/soccer is the most popular sport overall and that many tennis stars played both sports at a high level. Jan describes his dilemma on whether to focus on tennis or football when describing his junior years.

The second factor is that these countries developed a tradition of tennis with many top clubs dating their history to 100^th anniversaries. Through the microfabric of social interactions within the clubs, with many families having multigenerational memberships, knowledge on how to nurture tennis talent reached critical mass in the 70s and 80s. In Kodes family, tennis was a way to spend free time and his parents were involved in the club activities. His sister Vlasta Vopickova played at the international level and her best results were clay court wins against Margaret Court and Virginia Wade. His son Jan, made it to the top world juniors, won a major satellite tournament but could not progress further, and runs a Tennis Academy in Prague’s suburbs.

Third, an emergence of an impact player precipitates two important effects. It generates rivalry and competitions and this book provides nice examples how Davis Cup camaraderie elevated performance of each player resulting in crucial unexpected wins of the “supporting” player (Jiri Hrebec as the most accomplished Jan’s teammate) over the other team “star” player (John Newcombe, Tony Roche and Francois Jauffret lost to Hrebec in 1973-1975 Davis Cup matches). In this respect, the book strongly argues that Davis Cup is as significant as the Grand Slam tournaments as it helps to develop skills and bondage of all players on the team. The second effect is an increased interest of children to learn tennis. For those already captivated by the game, a motivational factor to get better is increased. It can be argued over and over that many children helping with balls and watching the game from the closest distance to the players, is really something special in the forming character of next generations of players. This is very special to tennis and it is not surprising that other sports try to emulate this “intimate” contact between the player(s) and young boys and girls during the “big” matches. Finally, the factor of “hardship” helps to form the character that compensates for the lower base of available talent in smaller populations.

Lastly but not least, the open tennis era produced a number of diverse champions. Some of them re-entered the tennis system to serve at various capacities. Some players faded away with their earnings and minimum of community service to tennis and society though tennis gave them all. In the book, Jan acknowledges what tennis gave him and he is among those fortuned who gave back more than they ever got. His modesty as a truly champion is best described when he talks about his dad, a lawyer, who was removed from his job by communistic authorities and had to earn his wage through a different job. Jan made his transfer from one to another Prague’s club contingent on his dad getting back his original job. He confronted the system, got it right, and this early experience empowered him to persuasively attack the oppressive system from inside with very high efficiency of success.

In conclusion, this is a well-written book with strong appeal to a broad audience of tennis enthusiasts and experts, anyone who is interested in the history of tennis, relationship between sport and politics, and memoirs of accomplished professionals. The book has an extraordinary quality of design, typography and photographic documentation. As the topic of professional tennis history and development in Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic has not been presented in as much depth elsewhere, this publication has the potential to find many diverse readers and become a “classic” in the field.