Fifty years ago this July 5, Arthur Ashe defeated Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon finals. With the tournament underway, it’s a good time to commemorate what many feel was the greatest upset in the history of tennis.
I watched the match on TV and couldn’t believe my eyes. Ashe, the prohibitive underdog, was dinking and lobbing and outsmarting Connors, the reigning Wimbledon champ and No. 1 ranked men’s player in the world who had gone 99-4 in 1974.
While Ashe had a huge serve and was a hard hitter who took no prisoners, Connors was a master counterpuncher who was predicted to decimate Ashe. Connors had just destroyed hard-serving Roscoe Tanner in the semis, 6-4, 6-1, 6-4, and seemed unstoppable.
The two had an unpleasant history. Two years earlier, Ashe was one of the leaders of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Wimbledon boycott to put the players mostly in control for the first time. Connors, then 20, who would benefit from the strike, ignored the boycott and made it to the quarterfinals.
Connors had refused to play in the 1974 Davis Cup, which irked Ashe. Connors and his manager, Bill Riordan, filed a lawsuit against Ashe, who, according to them, had damaged Connors’ image by claiming that his Davis Cup absence was unpatriotic.
Photo courtesy Love Tennis
To get into Connors’ head, Ashe walked onto Centre Court wearing red, white, and blue sweatbands and his Davis Cup team jacket, with USA across the back.
Let’s put it kindly: Connors was not the most popular player, especially among his peers. As Tony Kornheiser described him in a New York Times article, “His outcries during the early stages of a match are usually self‐directed and funny. But if he starts losing, he turns malicious. First with a leer, then with obscene gestures and, finally, with a descent into runaway vulgarity.”
Richard Evans, writing in Open Tennis: The political background had added spice to the occasion, but even without that the match would have attracted an unusual amount of interest, because Ashe had already established himself as one of the most articulate and popular athletes in the world, while Connors was the perfect anti-hero—brash, vulgar, and threatening.
Many were rooting for the humble Ashe, age 32, to upend the brash, cocky Connors. But how?
Tennis commentator Bud Collins said he was “scared to death that Arthur was going to be embarrassed.” But Ashe walked onto the court brimming with confidence. “I had the strangest feeling that I couldn’t lose,” he said later on.
Between the semis and final, Ashe had a meeting of the minds with his agent (and U.S. Davis Cup captain) Donald Dell and his friend and fellow player Dennis Ralston. They devised a plan based on the strategy Muhammad Ali had used to reclaim the heavyweight championship from George Foreman in October 1974. Ali labeled the tactic “rope-a-dope” (a none-too-subtle dig at Foreman’s intelligence), a defensive shell used to tire an opponent out.
Frequently on the ropes from round two onward, Ali allowed Foreman to pound away with enormous blows intended for head and body, most of which Ali blocked. He also picked his moments to counterpunch, and then, in the eighth round, came away from the ropes full force and knocked out Foreman to reclaim the title.
Now Ashe, like Ali, facing a younger and stronger opponent, gave up his signature style of hard-hitting, hard-charging tennis. Like a pitcher who knew a good fastball hitter would send his pitch out faster than it came in, Ashe knew that Connors’ returns would come back harder than Ashe’s serves.
Instead of smacking the flat serve he favored, and which Connors loved to smack back with his two-handed backhand, Ashe would bend his serve out wide. Rather than try to slug it out, Ashe would slice and dice, dink and dunk, and lob. That strategy worked to perfection. He kept the ball low, softly rolling it or chipping it. He moved Connors from side to side, and his forehand volley, unreliable in the past, was precise. He gave Connors nothing to work with. Ashe won the first two sets by a margin of 6-1.
Connors eked out the third set 7-5 and went up a break in the fourth. But Ashe, closing his eyes to meditate during each changeover, did not change his plan. At the end, much like Ali against Foreman, Ashe uncorked two vicious backhands to break serve. Minutes later, he completed the incredible upset with a perfectly-placed serve that Connors could only weakly backhand to the net, where Ashe plunked it for the 6-4 winner, set, and match.
Ashe would never again play the style he did that day. As Evans wrote, “It was all biff and bang and glorious technicolor winners for the rest of his career.”
Ashe became the first and, to date, only African American man to win a Wimbledon title. Ashe said, “Among Blacks, I’ve had quite a few say [the win] was up there with Joe Louis in his prime and Jackie Robinson breaking in with the Dodgers in 1947.”
Steve Tignor, writing for tennis.com, noted, “… to win a Wimbledon title on Centre Court was to show, like his fellow pioneer Althea Gibson had shown, nearly 20 years earlier, that there was no place in tennis where African-American players couldn’t succeed. He was the rare athlete who transcended all boundaries, and he inspired whites and blacks alike. . . Ashe showed that thought and courage do matter in tennis, and with enough of both, anyone can be beaten.”
Ashe helped create inner-city tennis programs for youth and spoke out against apartheid in South Africa, successfully lobbying for a visa so he could visit and play tennis there.
Ashe died at age 49 in 1993 from AIDS-related pneumonia. Ashe and his doctors believed he contracted the virus from blood transfusions he received during his second heart surgery.
Let’s take a moment during Wimbledon this year to remember the great Arthur Ashe.
I recall that match well. That day Ashe was a brilliant tactician at work and was able to execute his plan.