A Handful of Summers Read online

  Of course, Trabert and Seixas were reasonably sane, and so were Harry Hopman’s squad of young Australians, Hoad, Rosewall, Hartwig et al. But as for the rest, virtually the whole lot were, to a greater or lesser extent, off their heads. Looking back at those tennis years, I find a whole list of names marching through my head. Art Larsen, Warren Woodcock, Herbie Flam, Torben Ulrich, Hugh Stewart, Gardner Mulloy, Mervyn Rose, Andre Hammersley, Fausto Gardini, Beppe Merlo, Pietrangeli and Sirola, George Worthington, Gil Shea, Don Candy, Freddie Huber. Abie Segal, of course. Even Drobny and Patty had their moments. As a newcomer I used to look on, amazed. Don Candy, for example. Now he had the charm of a truly funny man. His matches would always develop into critical situations and invariably, at such times, bad calls would occur, usually involving Continental umpires who spoke just enough English to intensify the confusion. In any case, umpiring in Italy, Spain and almost all Latin countries was notoriously partisan, and chaos prevailed almost at the drop of a hat. Candy soon became keenly aware of the absurdity of such situations, and adopted a policy of countering chaos with chaos. Often we would watch his matches, eagerly awaiting incidents. Some of his better inventions bordered on lunacy.

  During one particular match, for instance, linesmen’s chairs were in position, but no linesmen. Drama was in the offing. Inevitably, at a critical deuce point, the bad call turned up and Candy pounced.

  He began gesticulating and arguing in furious Spanish gibberish with the empty chair on the offending line which he felt should contain a linesman. Then he suddenly stopped, walked to the umpire (who had made the call in the first place), pointed to the chair and said:

  ‘I want that man removed!’

  ‘There is-a no one there,’ said the umpire.

  ‘Well, I want you to get someone,’ said Candy, ‘so that I can have him removed.’

  ‘But-a if-a you get-a someone, and then you remove-a him, then-a you would have-a no linesman,’ said the umpire, mopping his forehead.

  ‘But we already have no linesman,’ said Candy.

  ‘Then-a why-a you want-a to remove him if-a he comes?’ asked the umpire.

  ‘Because he made a bad call,’ said Candy.

  ‘But-a he wasn’t there,’ said the umpire.

  ‘But if he had been, he would have,’ said Candy.

  ‘Ah, then, if-a he had,’ said the umpire, ‘then-a you could remove him.’

  ‘But I couldn’t,’ said, Candy, ‘because there’s no one there!’

  ‘That’s-a what I say!’ shouted the umpire. ‘There’s no-a one there!’

  ‘Instead,’ said Candy, ‘we play a let. If you play a let, I will not insist on removing that man,’ and he pointed again to the empty chair.

  ‘All-a right!’ said the umpire wearily. ‘We play a let. Mamma Mia, a let, a let-a.’

  On another occasion, faced with an appalling decision by an Italian umpire who could speak no English at all, Candy approached the man, pulling faces, moving his lips, shaking his racket, tearing at his hair and generally going through all the motions of a furious diatribe, but silently, without uttering a sound. The umpire watched him with growing alarm. He put his finger in his ear and shook it, then clapped both hands to his ears and released them. Suddenly he descended from the chair and with a worried look on his face, he hurried off the court. Candy watched him go, then climbed into his chair and in a loud voice reversed the decision, immediately causing his Italian opponent, who had been watching the proceedings in a smug sort of way, to go into apoplexy.

  Candy’s methods were never vicious. Sometimes he would approach errant linesmen and whisper something to them in a very confidential way. This caused volatile opponents to rave about it being unfair to influence linesmen, to which Candy would reply:

  ‘Relax. I was agreeing with him. There is no rule which says you can’t agree with a linesman!’

  He was what could be called an industrious player. No fabulous flights for him. He gave workmanlike performances, running round backhands and hitting conservative topspin forehands from close to his ribs. His service was utilitarian, his backhand safely steered and his volleys sound. But he had a huge heart and a great deal of Australian cunning and resource and although he didn’t win many big tournaments, he badly scared nearly all the top players a number of times.

  Then there was always the possibility of overhearing snippets of conversations between Candy and Torben Ulrich, who at the time was busy inventing his remarkable world of meditation, profundity and dreams. Whenever Candy came upon Torben Ulrich in one of his profound moods, it seemed to trigger off within him an opposite reaction and he used to put on an air of excessive heartiness and good fellowship.

  ‘Good morning, Torben!’ he might say lustily, to which Torben would reply, slowly and deliberately:

  ‘Explain to me, Donald. What exactly is a “good morning”?’

  ‘Sunny!’ Candy would say. ‘No rain!’

  ‘Aha, then,’ Torben would reply, ‘perhaps it would be more accurate to say, “Sunny morning, Torben,” because you see, for me, a sunny morning need not necessarily be a good morning.’

  ‘All right, then. Sunny morning, Torben!’

  ‘Yes, Donald. You are right. The sun is certainly shining.’

  Such exchanges took place in dozens of variations, always with a bland display of off-handedness, each treating the other with suitable indulgence of the kind with which fathers treat small children. Once in the midday heat of July in Athens, Candy came upon Torben sitting reflectively on a bench at the tennis club, with a wet towel on his head. Don sank down beside him.

  ‘Hot,’ he said in a precise, firm voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Torben. ‘You could say that it is hot.’

  ‘Too hot to practise tennis,’ pursued Candy.

  ‘I am not going to practise tennis,’ said Torben.

  ‘I thought you were about to say to me, “Let’s practise tennis”,’ said Candy.

  ‘Even if it were cool,’ said Torben, ‘I would practically never say that to you. It would be much more likely that I would say to you: Donald, I think that it would be better for both of us if we did not practise tennis!’

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ said Candy firmly. ‘We are not going to practise tennis today.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Torben. ‘That’s settled.’ Then he added: ‘In a way, you know, it was never really not settled.’

  On still another occasion (one of the rare ones when Candy and Ulrich did get to practise), they had been playing for some time when some eager club members approached the court. As usual during tournaments, practice courts were at a premium, and the members waited impatiently. At last one of them spoke to Ulrich.

  ‘Have you been playing long?’ he said.

  ‘As long as I can remember,’ said Torben.

  ‘How much longer will you play?’ asked the member.

  ‘We may go on for many years,’ said Torben.

  The member looked disgruntled. Candy, who had been listening, now approached.

  ‘He’s mad,’ he said to the now puzzled member. He tapped his temple. ‘He believes that he is born blessed, but in actual fact, he’s mad!’

  ‘That,’ said Torben, ‘is a matter for discussion. Because, you see, it is hard to define who is mad and who is not.’ He fixed the club member with a penetrating stare and said: ‘What exactly is madness? Perhaps you can tell me!’

  Torben was, and is, a remarkable human being. With him in view one would automatically consider such phenomena as intellectualism, the power of the mind, mysticism, things deep, Gurudom even. He had, for a start, long hair and a beard, which in those days were unheard of (we were busy imitating the crew-cuts of Trabert and Seixas) and which lent him the somewhat scary appearance of some grave god. He moved in an aura of private contemplation which I, for one, was reluctant to interrupt. He explored thoroughly th
e fields of nearly all sensitivities, always distant and thoughtful behind his youthful, hirsute disguise. Pleasantries generally escaped him. All remarks addressed to him would make their way into his head for consideration. I once said to him as he left a court after a match:

  ‘Torben, did you win?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Then what happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I simply played in the usual way. It was my opponent who lost,’ he said.

  His delivery was slow and deliberate, each word weighted with consideration. He played the clarinet and tenor sax (very well, when the time was right), immersed himself in the angular harmonies and oblique progressions of jazz and carried, at all times, a record player and recordings by Miles Davis, Art Fanner, Mulligan, Terry, Bill Evans, Parker, Powell, John Coltrane. Complicated cadences always drifted out of Torben’s quarters, sounds which greatly puzzled Don Candy. His music was more straightforward – a simple set of guitar chords, and songs about John Henry being a ‘Steel Driving’ man; Muscles and Blood, Whisky Bill and Home on the Range, which he did with a Stetson and a Roy Rogers delivery, sometimes startling everyone with a yodel or two. After putting up with Torben’s music for some time, he decided to remedy his taste and bought a recording of marches. Armed with this, he broke in on Torben’s contemplation of Thelonius Monk’s Round Midnight, turned off the player and presented Torben with the record.

  ‘What,’ he asked, ‘do you think about this?’

  Torben examined the record carefully, then handed it back.

  ‘I would avoid thinking about it,’ he said.

  ‘Try it,’ said Candy, unabashed. ‘Put it on.’

  ‘My machine,’ said Torben, ‘would not be able to reproduce it.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Candy in a challenging voice.

  ‘Because,’ said Torben, ‘this is a machine which plays music. It cannot perform other functions.’

  ‘And this,’ said Candy haughtily, ‘is a musical recording. It cannot, for instance, be played through a washing machine.’

  ‘It would not surprise me,’ said Torben, ‘if it was not perhaps better to play that record through a washing machine.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Candy, ‘I did not come here with the intention of discussing the possibility of having laundry done. I came here to introduce to you a new kind of musical experience.’

  ‘I think, Donald,’ said Torben, ‘that I would find it more valuable if you told me how to get my laundry done.’

  A long wrangle ensued, involving the unlikely combination of laundry and music. At last, Candy’s persistence won the day. Monk was removed; the marches installed. Suddenly the player began to emit stirring martial sounds. Candy marched up and down the room several times, delighted, saluting and giving Torben an exaggerated ‘eyes right’! Torben regarded the player with a puzzled expression, as though it had betrayed him. Abruptly the march ended and Candy came to a halt, gave a final salute and stood easy. Then he picked up his record and strode from the room, like someone who had done a trick. Torben was silent for some time, before he raised his eyes to me and said:

  ‘It would be much better if people had never discovered the way to make war!’

  Torben’s tennis game, too, was heady and profound. He would sometimes become so engrossed in the science of the game that the winning of it became incidental. At such time he might embark on a series of acutely-angled volleys, each more fine than the last; or lob volleys or topspin lobs; or a round-arm sliced service which bit into the breeze, drifting across the net in a curve, light as thistledown, not bouncing but seeming to settle on to the grass with a soft sizzling sound. It was one of these services which had ended up in the water jug under the umpire’s chair and left Teddy Tinling waiting with a forehand grip.

  Somewhere in my notes I found a little description of a match which Torben had played against Manuel Santana.

  What more unconventional, almost occult, tennis match could one want? For several games they try things out – their strokes, the flight of the ball, the quality of the court, the air movement, various slices and spins, like musicians tuning their instruments. Torben ponders immensely between points, strikes prodigious poses, thinks, listens, reflects. Manuel selects his strokes like a surgeon selecting his instruments – but it is Torben who leads 8-7 and forty-love. He loses the game and seven more set points before losing the set at 17-15. These situations bring to light a splendid bit of whimsical Ulrich logic. ‘You know, Gordon,’ he says to me in the change-room, swathed to the eyes in towels: ‘Manuel is so good under pressure that it is a disadvantage to lead forty-love. You have a better chance leading thirty-love, or 30-15. But forty-love is very dangerous!’

  Diary Notes: Paris, Summer 1955

  Tonight at the restaurant with Abe and Heather Segal, Herbie Flam, Art Larsen and Hugh Stewart, Herbie got hopelessly entangled with the cheese on top of his onion soup. We were all hungry by the time the food arrived, having had only the frugal ‘sandwich jambon’ at Roland Garros for lunch. Herbie set about his onion soup with far too much enthusiasm and not enough finesse. In his defence it must be said that it was the stickiest cheese ever created. Unbelievably resilient. The first spoonful created a thick thong of cheese from his plate to his mouth and left another minor thong attached to his spoon which, when he returned it to his soup, immediately attached itself to the edge of his plate. The thick thong, meanwhile, stretched into a triangle when he tried to cut it with the back of his knife, and then, when he brought his spoon back into play, the thick thong stuck to the thin thong, still attached to his spoon and the plate, and they both sagged down together and bonded themselves to the edge of the table.

  We all watched, absorbed. Larsen began uttering cries of encouragement.

  ‘Come on, Herbie baby, you can lick that plate of soup. Atta boy, Herbie! Now come back in with the spoon. Try a finger, Herbie! You’re all out of knives and spoons. That’s the boy! Watch it, Herbie, it’s stuck to your sleeve!’

  Herbie, concentrating grimly, fought the soup for several minutes. At last, caught in a web of melted cheese, he leaned back and said:

  ‘God damn, Abie, get me out of here!’

  At which point our waiter arrived with a huge pair of scissors, and literally cut him loose. Then Larsen began to discuss the possibility of having his rackets strung with cheese: ‘You get hungry out there, big Abie, and you can eat your gut,’ he finished.

  At times like these, Heather weeps with laughter, copious tears which make her mascara run, and leave her looking like a dishevelled child.

  Abie, who had ordered crab, was appalled when it had to be wheeled in on a trolley. The waiter lifted a huge round lid and there it was. A monster, pink and beady-eyed. Then another waiter began arranging in front of Abie the instruments which he was to use.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he exclaimed. ‘A tool kit. God damn, Herbie, you think you had problems with the soup. Can you imagine if this bastard starts with me!’

  Larsen was delighted at the prospect of another to-the-death struggle.

  ‘You want me to kill that thing for you, big Abie?’ he offered.

  Heather backed away when it was finally served. I don’t think the French waiters are very impressed with our approach to their cuisine.

  I can’t think of tennis in Paris without remembering Art Larsen. Abe Segal first told me about him. Abe had toured Europe for a season before I arrived on the scene, and gave graphic descriptions of things or people who impressed him.

  ‘This Larsen,’ he said to me one day, with the inevitable forefinger prodding my chest, ‘has got to be unreal. A genius at tennis, for a start. Play him and you think you’ve got yourself mixed up with that Spanish stuff they had.’

  ‘Inquisition?’ I suggested tentatively.

  ‘That’s it, Inquisition,’ said Abie. ‘He stretches you about so much you think you’ve invented r
ubber! You move one way an’ he goes the other. Your shoes wear out an’ your knees cave in! An’ that’s only for starters. Go around with Larsen for a while and you’ve got to see a psychiatrist – and if you go to the psychiatrist too often, he has to go to his psychiatrist. I went around with Larsen for a month and after a while I stops and says to myself: “Hold it, buddy. Hold it a shake. One of us is crazy. Only I can’t figure out which one!” So I phoned Herbie (Flam) and says to him: “Hey Herbie, do I sound OK to you, or do I sound like I’ve gone a little soft?” So Herbie says, “Keep talkin’ a while, Abie. How can I tell how you sound if you only say a few words?” So I talk a bit longer, and suddenly Herbie says, “OK, that’s enough. You sound the same to me. That doesn’t mean you’re not crazy. Just that you haven’t changed. So if you figure you weren’t crazy before, then you’re OK now!” That’s Herbie! He’s also mad, mind you! Talk about the deaf leadin’ the deaf.’

  Abe went on at some length about the vagaries of Larsen’s behaviour, throwing in phrases about ‘eagles on his shoulder’, ‘gettin’ stuck in doors’, or ‘goin’ about tappin’ people’.

  ‘That’s why he’s called Tappy,’ he said, ‘because on certain days at certain times he has to tap certain things, and only he knows when!’

  Although I knew that Abie was given to exaggeration, I looked forward to meeting Larsen.

  For once, there was something in what Abie had told me. I met Tappy Larsen at last, in Naples, and he was, it turned out, almost everything everyone had said of him. A natural left-handed player of almost uncanny ability, he had that rare gift enjoyed by only a few tennis players – a perfect touch, a feel for the ball, an inner knowledge of exactly what was going on between the strings of his racket and the Melton cloth attached to the rubber inside of the ball.

  But Larsen’s tennis was not the most extraordinary part of him. Stories about him were legion: that he had survived a desperate situation in the war when all his comrades had been killed or wounded; that he’d been in a plane accident or a burning tank. Others similar. His superstitions were said to have been caused by these events. Whatever the cause, the superstitions were real enough. He did tap all kinds of people and things. He did, constantly, glance upward and backwards over his shoulder, sometimes even during rallies, watching for eagles.