Reflections on Ashe
By Simon Barnes
But with Arthur Ashe it’s different. I hear his name and I see him perfectly still. He’s sitting in a chair. His eyes are closed. His hair stands round his head like a halo. He’s meditating: rising above the petty trials of the sporting life. And he’s just about to be become Wimbledon men’s singles champion.
The year is 1975. The first year chairs are put out for players to sit on during the change of ends. Ashe’s opponent is Jimmy Connors, nine years younger and with the belief that good manners are for wimps. He is also a superb tennis player: better than Ashe would ever be.
Ashe is a straightforward serve-and-volley man: athletic, great to watch, seldom doing anything unexpected. He had won two grand-slam singles titles by this time, and is now 31. He had done well to make the final, everybody said so, but obviously he is going to lose. Straight sets, probably. If you want to bet on Connors, you need to stake ten dollars to win one. Ashe is surely doomed: a decent man left over from a passing age of sport, about to be overwhelmed by the ugliness of modern youth.
Ashe works out his strategy over dinner the night before the final. He writes out half a dozen points on a piece of paper, which he takes with him to the court. His normal forthright game would have been meat and drink to Connors, who feeds on pace like a starving man-eater. So Ashe decides to feed him a steady diet of junk.
Change of pace. Spin. Drop-shots. Lobs. He keeps offering a sliced serve wide to Connors's renowned double-fisted backhand. Connors has to generate all his own pace and that’s not his game. Ashe took the first two sets 6-1 6-1.
The thing that made you like Connors over the years was the way he never gave up. I remember watching him at the US Open against Patrick McEnroe in 1991, when Connors was 39. By eleven at night he was down two sets and love-three. By one in the morning he had won the match. Inevitably he stages a comeback against Ashe and won the third set 7-5. Well, nice try, Arthur, but now the match has turned. It can surely only go one way from here.
So there is Connors fist-pumping and muttering and glowering and working himself up into a frenzy — and Ashe simply withdrew. He goes into a brief meditative trance in which everything in life and tennis seems to fall into its proper place. He considers changing his tactics: going back to his normal wham-bam style. But he sticks to the plan — and within a few minutes he is three-love down.
What now? Ashe carries on doing precisely the same thing — and won six of the next seven games. And with them the match.
Connors went on to win eight grand-slam singles titles, including the US Open, which he won five times. And yet they named the main stadium court at Flushing Meadow after Ashe, who won the title there just once. Ashe had a great sense of responsibility. He lived an almost sanctified life: admired for a great deal more than his tennis. He was unquestionably a good man.
The word “dignity” is as irrevocably associated with Ashe as the word “brash” is with Connors. These days it’s a little frayed at the edges and sounds more than a touch patronizing. Ashe had dignity all right, but he also had something more. Nobility.
Simon Barnes is the former chief sports writer of The Times. He’s written more than 20 books and lives in Norfolk, UK.