Education of a Tennis Player (eBook)

The nig ht Mary hung up on me the year nearly wentsour.I was almost through the biggest year of any tennis player-maybeany athlete-ever had when the pressure that suddenly grabbed me wasone that almost every man has felt: domestic. I had an unhappy, angrywife who wanted me home when I had to be somewhere else 3,000miles away, and who ended the argument strongly-she stopped talkingto me. Although numerous husbands would consider that a lucky break,I did not. There's no way I can play or feel well if there's somethingwrong between me and Mary.For a while I worried that it would stay wrong, just when I was withinreach of everything. If it had, I couldn't have joined those exceptionalathletes who made 1969 such an extraordinary year in sports.So many wonderfully improbable things happened in 1969: The NewYork Jets ruled football. Those magnificent antiques, the Boston Celtics,came to life one more time to conquer basketball. The New York Metsclimbed out of the trashcan to glitter atop baseball. Arnold Palmer, whohad begun to be regarded as a monument to past glories, began to wingolf tournaments again. And in tennis, where I had labored practicallyunderground since becoming a professional in 1963, I won the firstopen Grand Slam and became something of a household name.This was my year, 1969, and people were becoming aware of me andmy sport. I realized this when Americans began asking me for my autograph-on the street and in other public places away from tournaments.This had been going on for a number of years in England andAustralia, where there is a substantial tennis public. In Time magazine,an article referred to British talk-show host David Frost as 'the RodLaver of television . . . [who] would consider success in the U.S. theculmination of his own grand slam.' A couple of years before, my namewould never have been used for that sort of comparison in Time. Sportingreferences are common but tennis is never the sport cited. Not inthe United States. In his World War II memoirs Field Marshal Montgomerycould talk about breaking Nazi General Rommel's serve, butthat was for British consumption.It meant more to me than just seeing my face and name more frequently,in wider pictures and taller type. It meant that the game I'vedevoted my life to was beginning to catch on big and that more andmore people were becoming aware of it and recognizing that it was thebest game for them.Life had been very different seven years before, in 1962, the first timeI made the Grand Slam. Then the Slam was an affair for amateursonly. Open tennis-the integration of amateurs and professionals incompetition-was a long way off, and seemed unlikely to arrive duringmy career. I was an amateur making a comfortable living from playing.Twenty-four years old without a worry. Single. Free. Hitting a tennisball. Seeing every bit of the world I could. Having a few beers. Partyinga bit. That was all that was on my mind. Most people felt that wasabout all my mind could hold: another bland, efficient Australian tennischampion. A countrywoman of mine, Lemeau Watt, once remarked at atennis party: 'Rod does his job extremely competently and thoroughly.No show, no emotion. Like a good plumber. A plumber doesn't put on ashow down there alone in the basement, does he? On the court Rod istotally oblivious to his surroundings.'