tennis

The open era

The first open tournament was the British Hard Courts at Bournemouth in April 1968, where the champions were Ken Rosewall and Virginia Wade. The first open Wimbledon was a joyous occasion, as many past champions who had been stripped of membership in the All England Club when they turned professional were welcomed back. The total prize money was £26,150 ($62,760), of which £2,000 went to men’s singles champion Rod Laver and £750 went to women’s singles winner Billie Jean King. The singles titles at the first U.S. Open, with a total purse of $100,000, were won by Arthur Ashe, the sport’s first black male champion, and Wade. Within two decades the major championships had multimillion-dollar purses, and top players could expect to earn in excess of $1,000,000 a year on the court alone. Laver became the first player to sweep the major titles a second time and the first to do so as a professional.

The transition years from quasi-amateurism to full-fledged professional tennis were rife with political disputes and lawsuits for control of what had become a big-money sport. Both male and female players formed guilds—the men’s Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), which in 1986 became the Women’s International Tennis Association (WITA). Previous player unions had been ineffective, but the ATP showed itself a potent political force when the majority of its members boycotted Wimbledon in 1973 in a dispute over the eligibility of the Yugoslav pro Nikki Pilic. The women’s union proved similarly unified. The women have had a separate pro tour, except at the major championships, since 1971.

The first few seasons of open tennis were ruled by players who were products of the old system and reflected its behavioral standards and norms. These included the compact, classical Rosewall, the Australian John Newcombe, and the Americans Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith.

As television, in America and later worldwide, became an increasingly significant force in tennis, a new breed of flamboyant and often flippant, cocky, and quick-tempered player developed. Among them was Ilie Nastase—a dark, handsome, mercurial Romanian noted for his rapid mood swings. While winning the 1972 U.S. Open, the 1973 French Open, and four Masters titles, he created chaos and controversy on the court with colourful, and occasionally off-colour, tantrums and tirades. He was perhaps an influence on Jimmy Connors, a brash American whose aggressive, blood-and-guts, all-court style and feisty temperament captivated audiences whether they loved or loathed him. In 1974 Connors won Wimbledon, the Australian Open, and the U.S. Open. In an intensely competitive era that produced short careers, Connors enjoyed extraordinary longevity at the top. He won Wimbledon again in 1982, the U.S. Open four more times, and the WCT Championship in 1977 and 1980.

Following the fiery Connors as the dominant player was the relatively cool Björn Borg, who led Sweden to its first triumph in the Davis Cup in 1975. Practically unbeatable on slow clay, he won the French Open six times between 1974 and 1981 and remarkably adapted his game to fast grass, adding a sledgehammer serve and underspin approach shot, to win Wimbledon five years running, 1976–80. No player had done that since the champion had to play through the draw, starting in 1922. The American John McEnroe ended Borg’s Wimbledon reign in 1981 and beat him in the 1980–81 U.S. Open finals. Between 1979 and 1984 McEnroe, a torrid-tempered left-hander of exquisite athleticism and racket control, won Wimbledon three times, the U.S. Open four times, the Masters three times, and the WCT Championship four times.

The balance of power in men’s tennis shifted back to Europe in the 1980s. Borg inspired a new wave of players in Sweden. A sophisticated junior-development system created a group of Swedish players—led by 1982, 1985, and 1988 French Open champion Mats Wilander. Another European country with a long tennis tradition that reached new heights in the 1980s was Czechoslovakia. One of the foremost players and coaches in Europe in the 1920s and ’30s was the Czech Karel Kozeluh. Czechoslovakia produced men’s Wimbledon champions Jaroslav Drobny in 1954 and Jan Kodeš in 1973. Among the players to come out of Czechoslovakia’s player-development system and become dominant in the 1970s and ’80s were Martina Navratilova, who became a U.S. citizen; Hana Mandlikova, who became an Australian citizen in 1987; and Ivan Lendl, who took up residence in the United States. The European tennis boom of the 1980s also swept through West Germany, which produced Boris Becker, who won the Wimbledon singles in 1985 at age 17 (the youngest man and first unseeded player to do so), and Steffi Graf, who in 1987 ended Navratilova’s five-year reign as the top-ranked woman in tennis and in 1988 won the Grand Slam, becoming the first woman to do so since Margaret Court in 1970.

Graf’s emergence also ended an extraordinary streak by the American Chris Evert, who had won at least one of the Grand Slam singles titles for 13 consecutive years, 1974–86, an unprecedented feat. A paragon of backcourt consistency and controlled temperament, Evert was the perfect contrast in both style and personality to several net-rushing rivals: the Australian Evonne Goolagong, who won her first Wimbledon in 1971 at age 19, Billie Jean King, and Navratilova, whom Evert played in 13 Grand Slam finals in one of the game’s greatest rivalries. Evert, probably more than anyone, popularized the two-handed backhand, and she made a steady baseline game the prevalent style of a whole generation of women players.

During the 1990s Steffi Graf collected 14 of her 21 career Grand Slam singles titles. Tall and athletic, Graf used powerful ground strokes and excellent court coverage to dispatch opponents. Her primary rival during this period was Yugoslavia’s Monica Seles, who collected seven Grand Slam titles between 1990 and 1992. Though Graf retired in 1999, the women’s tour still boasted exceptional competition and talented players, such as Martina Hingis of Switzerland (winner of five major titles before the age of 20) and American Lindsay Davenport, who won titles at the U.S. Open (1998), Wimbledon (1999), and the Australian Open (2000). At the turn of the century, sisters Venus and Serena Williams of the United States emerged as a new force on the women’s tour. Serena won the U.S. Open in 1999, 2002, and 2008; the French Open in 2002; Wimbledon in 2002, 2003, 2009, 2010, and 2012; and the Australian Open in 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010. Venus won Wimbledon five times (2000–01, 2005, 2007–08), the U.S. Open twice (2000–01), and an Olympic gold medal in tennis (2000). The sisters were credited with popularizing the sport among African Americans.

The men’s game increasingly emphasized athleticism and power in the 1990s. Pete Sampras of the United States best epitomized this style of play, using devastating serves and ground strokes, along with exceptional agility, to claim a record-setting 14 Grand Slam titles; the record was later surpassed by Roger Federer of Switzerland. Players such as Patrick Rafter of Australia, Sweden’s Stefan Edberg, and Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov also claimed their share of major titles during the decade, but Andre Agassi surfaced as Sampras’s primary rival. Agassi won singles titles at the Australian Open (1995, 2000–01, 2003), the French Open (1999), Wimbledon (1992), and the U.S. Open (1994, 1999) and finished the 1999 season as the top-ranked player on the tour. In the early 21st century, Federer emerged as one of the game’s dominant players. He won an unprecedented 17 men’s singles Grand Slam championships—seven Wimbledon titles (2003–07, 2009, and 2012), five U.S. Opens (2004–08), four Australian Opens (2004, 2006–07, and 2010), and one French Open (2009). One of Federer’s main rivals was Rafael Nadal of Spain. Although initially thought of as a clay-court specialist—he captured a record seven French Open titles (2005–08 and 2010–12)—Nadal also won at Wimbledon (2008 and 2010), the Australian Open (2009), and the U.S. Open (2010).