Hi Kamakshi,
Seems you’ve picked up a few more fans with your last post, which was well and snarkily done, for sure. It’s kind of a tough act to follow, in part because there’s not much left from the book to quote! The story of Newk indignantly begging an Italian crowd to show him some love during his Davis Cup match against Adriano Panatta has to be one of the all-time great tennis tales, and another reason to cherish the DC. It’s also yet another, “Can you imagine that today?” kind of story that we hear from the pre-corporate glory days. I love how Newk gets to a point, while he’s listening to the Italians chant and sing and stomp for Panatta, where he gets a little scared and thinks, “They really are crazy.” Overall, the book reads like a slightly less outrageous (but still very funny) update of Handful of Summers, Gordon Forbes’ innocent 1950s having turned into Newk’s dawn-of-the-big-money 1970s.
Speaking of the old (translation: better) days, you asked whether today’s players could lighten up a bit. That’s probably the right question when you talk about Newcombe, because he was the transition figure, the last of the old amateur guard—he was clean-shaven and wore all-whites when he dominated the amateur circuit in 1967—and also the first of the new generation of pros. Newcombe tells the story in this book about how he and Tony Roche are offered professional contracts in ’67 and stupidly pledge themselves, without talking to a lawyer, to Lamar Hunt’s WCT for a total of $1000. Back in Australia, they finally see an attorney to find out what they had just done.
“Did you sign anything?” the lawyer asked
“Well . . . not really.”
“Let’s put it another way, did you sign something?”
“Yeah, there was something. But, you know, it was only an option . . . “
(Lawyer starts to bang head on desk)
But a few years later, Newk has a clothing contract (the company forces him to wear a pink shirt, which he hides from the other players in the locker room until he’s just about to walk onto the court) and even gets his own logo, his trademark moustache. The problem is, once that’s his logo, he can’t shave it off. Of course, he does anyway, “after a wild night in Tehran.” (Leave it to an old tennis pro to be able to say the words, “after a wild night in Tehran.”)
[Incidentally, it was probably his moustache that initially turned me off to Newk. I think I still had the words to an old punk song by the Vandals in my head, “Power Moustache”: “It’s the facial marking of the man who holds you down/The source of all your problems, every city, every town.”]
Anyway, I came around to Newk over the years. He always eats, and drinks, in the press dining room at the U.S. Open; another case of how much has changed between players and reporters over the years. If Andre Agassi ever comes back to Flushing, I guarantee you he won’t be in the daily 6:00 line for free beer with Tom Tebbutt and I. Reading Joel Drucker’s Jimmy Connors Saved My Life convinced me Newcombe was pretty cool, and also offered a nice story contrasting the looseness of the old days with the seriousness of the pro era.
Newcombe,” according to Joel, “understood that no matter much he defined himself by tennis, that wasn’t entirely who he was.” Newk plays Jimmy Connors, a guy who defined himself by tennis alone, in a winner-take-all Challenge match in Vegas. Connors beats him, but:
With trademark perspective, Newcombe threw himself a defeat party. More than 40 of his pals crammed into his suite at Caesars. One of Newcombe’s friends suggested he congratulate Connors, man-to-man. An inebriated Newcombe sauntered up to the Connors suite. Gloria creaked open the door. All I want to do is congratulate Jimmy for a job well done, said Newcombe. The room was completely silent. Newcombe was struck by the sight of mother and son, alone.
Now Connors was a special case, but there’s no question that the game became more serious, and perhaps more American, during the pro era. In Bedside Tennis, Newcombe talks about a match that he and Fred Stolle played against John McEnroe and Peter Fleming at the U.S. Open in doubles in, I believe, 1982. The old Aussies had made a great run to the semis, but were stopped in five sets. Afterward, the Aussies talked about how deadly serious the Americans took the match, while McEnroe defended himself by saying that was how he was brought up to play—no smiling or joking out there.
Still, as Chloe said in a comment below, the pros have their antics today, like Andy Roddick’s serial pantsing. So why do those things seem juvenile, while Newcombe’s boozing and banana-eating contests seem like good old manly fun? Why does Newcombe come across as so much more of an adult—smart, funny, down to earth—than any pro today? (Even a classy guy like Roger Federer lacks Newcombe’s wry edge.) It can’t just be because he’s Australian; Lleyton Hewitt alone is proof that not all Aussies are good old boys. My first reaction would be to say that Newcombe and the pros of that day had to create the tour; it wasn’t there for them already. It was both an adventure (Forbes-style) and serious business, and they weren't in the driver’s seat yet. Today’s top players don’t have to worry about that. It’s all there for them. That may leave them less fully formed, and with less perspective than someone like Newcombe had.
Steve
PS: Thanks for introducing me to this book. I may have to order it from Amazon, though I'm not sure I can fork over the 1 cent (!) they're asking right now.
