A Handful of Summers Page 23

  There was a deafening silence while my mind raced about in all directions. The small amount of technical knowledge which I had gleaned by then seemed hopelessly inadequate in the face of the engineering brains that surrounded me. The silence grew longer and even more deafening. I was painfully aware of the fact that intelligent words were imminently expected of me, and that it appeared that I had none at hand. Suddenly, out of the blue, I thought of Roy Emerson. I took a deep breath, looked at the faces around the table and said:

  ‘Gentlemen, have you taken into account the fact that each one of our light fittings will be delivered to your stores with feeling?’

  Suddenly everyone in the room began to laugh. The tension vanished, and the no-longer sombre spokesman said something about my reason being possibly ‘valid, but of a non-technical nature’.

  The next day a telegram arrived to say that my tender had been accepted. The lighting gods had smiled on me, and my career was irrevocably launched.

  While I concentrated on becoming a seller of lights, tennis slyly changed. Not the game, so much as the circumstances under which it was run. It is not possible to pinpoint the exact moment in time when the vast and solid old amateur tennis machine began to shake itself to pieces. It had been vibrating badly for years; that much one could say with certainty. And as the sums of money paid to the ‘amateur’ players, labelled ‘expenses’, became larger and more farcical, the vibrations increased. By the mid-sixties, it was quite clear to anyone who cared that the venerable old system was falling apart. But so steeped were the players, officials and spectators in the tradition of amateurism that it died hard. Wimbledon was still open only to amateurs, and until it changed, the other major tournaments would hold their ground.

  It was a losing battle.

  Tennis was entertainment, and the players were entertainers, and entertainers in this modern world were accustomed to being paid for their skills.

  There was more, besides. It was a great spectator sport; ideal for television; healthy; not too time-consuming; relatively inexpensive; sociable; played by both sexes; and it provided an excuse for anyone at all to dress up in glamorous gear, show their legs and run about in the sun. So the money gods took a long look at it, voted in favour and began moving in; and with the money came an entirely new status quo.

  Although I was preoccupied with my lights, I was kept fairly well informed, due to the fact that Owen Williams decided to involve himself with the new world of tennis promotion. Apart from being one of my close friends, Owen is a born stager of events. He is also, amongst other things, one of the world’s greatest spreaders of news. He is what can be termed a professional leaker of secrets. Any news which he wants distributed, he turns into confidential information and then allows it to leak out. More or less confidential items can be circulated in a week. Highly confidential stuff takes less than a day! At a comparatively early age he had stopped playing competitive tennis, wed the divine Jennifer Nicolson and begun building a business career, having declared himself in favour of becoming a tycoon. The large and ponderous sporting goods company in which he had enlisted, however, was neither conducive to mercurial careers nor famous for making millionaires out of its junior clerks, and thus had a poor record in tycoon production.

  Owen duly resigned, hired an office with a door, nailed onto it a plaque which said: ‘Owen Williams (Proprietary) Limited’, and acquired a large, if slightly used, desk. He then sat down behind the desk and pronounced his company to be in business and trading. As in many new businesses, the cash flow at first was poor and trading was fairly frugal, combining an unlikely inventory of tennis wear, racket strings and Scotch whisky with large volumes of telephone calls and a surprising number of meetings.

  Even at an early stage, Owen displayed a penchant for meetings. Like many sportsmen, I think he had a secret yen for cigars, financial discussions, confidential reports, private secretaries and big deals – in short, the boardroom. And, unable to immediately indulge in all the activities of the established tycoon, he nevertheless added the random trappings of tycoonery the instant they became accessible. He soon possessed a private secretary and hand made shirts, and even smoked the odd cigar to establish within his office the correct odours, although at that stage in his life, he disliked cigars.

  Confidential things began to happen behind closed doors, almost from the first day. Meetings took place. Lunches were enjoyed and an air of general expansion and prosperity prevailed. He became possessed of a copious melting-pot which never seemed to contain less than two or three big deals, presumably in liquid form. Often when I visited him, he would lead me into his inner office, close the door, stop all calls and in a confidential voice tell me something vital, ‘between these four walls’.

  Such snippets could range from anywhere between informing me of a new kind of tennis sock with a built-in cure for athlete’s foot to a portable tennis court. It was between Owen’s four walls that I learned, step by step, of the profound changes which were taking place in the world of tennis and of the part which he himself was to play in this changing world. Gradually but inexorably, control of the game was being wrested from the amateur officials.

  This ‘wresting’ process was not as easy then as it now sounds. Almost to a man, amateur tennis officials soundly believed that they were born blessed; men with power; benevolent men, who selflessly devoted their time to the running of tennis tournaments for the sole benefit of unruly tennis players.

  The fact of the matter was that although many of them were reasonably devoted, they enjoyed their powers far too much. They developed grandiose notions and became carried away by their own importance. Or, as the Australian players succinctly put it, they got everything ‘arse-end up’.

  The process of change then involved a redistribution of control, a division of power in fairly equal proportions between the players themselves and the promoters who raised the money needed to stage attractive tournaments.

  Owen Williams virtually pioneered the promotion of super-tournaments. In 1965 he persuaded the giant South African Breweries organisation to offer sponsorship to the tune of some $30,000, and used the money to lure the world’s best players to Johannesburg. Overnight, the South African tournament became a superb international event and although it was still strictly an ‘amateur’ tournament, it carried all the trappings of the great open tournament of the future.

  The previous tournament committee was thrown into immediate and intense confusion. It held an extraordinary meeting at which nearly everyone passed a motion, and at which no one could doze off. Officials would now have to cope with such things as spectators in queues, Coca-Cola machines on court, hot water in the men’s locker room, and traffic jams. The secretary would have to count large sums of money without fainting. There were to be bars and hot lunches, and boxes in the North Stand. It was all too much for people who hitherto had believed that the ultimate in on-court refreshment was gin bottles filled with tepid water and served in paper cups!

  In spite of Owen’s early breakthrough, tennis remained, until the late sixties, divided into two distinct sections – the amateurs and the professionals.

  Traditionally, the playing professionals had been a select group of players who travelled the world playing tennis matches for money. Nearly all of them were former Wimbledon champions or, if not, famous for other major tournament victories. My memories of the great ‘pros’ began with Donald Budge and Bobby Riggs and progressed to such players as Kovacs, Kramer, Segura, Gonzales, Sedgman, MacGregor, Trabert and Hoad. All of them were greats, and all of them were barred, once they turned professional, from ever again playing the amateur tournaments which had made them famous.

  In the early sixties, Jack Kramer expanded the four-man professional tours to eight, or even twelve, selecting from the amateur ranks players whom he thought could play attractive tennis, and who would add variety to his pro tournaments.

  They were brave times,
those first pro tours. Each year one or two new stars would be added to the group, and one by one the Wimbledon champions appeared as ‘rookies’ amongst the seasoned pros. Ashley Cooper, Malcolm Anderson, Butch Buchholz, Barry Mackay, Ken Rosewall, Andrés Gimeno and, inevitably, Rod Laver.

  Those were the names that pioneered professional tennis. They toured and played in big cities and small; on makeshift courts and city streets; before large crowds at places like Madison Square Gardens or the Albert Hall, or small crowds at other places like Stellenbosch in South Africa, or Alice Springs in Australia. The standard of tennis which they played was never bad and usually superb, and their earnings were minute compared to the mighty prizes of today.

  But they were necessary, those pros. Valiant, excellent, necessary and, above all, successful.

  In 1967, American millionaire Dave Dixon created a new professional group called the ‘Handsome Eight’, taking from the crumbling amateur ranks such stars as Newcombe, Roche, Roger Taylor, Cliff Drysdale, Niki Pilic, Dennis Ralston, Pierre Barthés of France, and Buchholz. And in late 1967 the LTA of Great Britain announced that the 1968 Wimbledon Championships were to be open to competition by both amateurs and professionals.

  Amateur tennis had lived and died, and a new era was at hand.

  In 1966, two important things happened in my world. Julia Ashley, my daughter, was born, and my dearly beloved sister and mixed doubles partner, Jean, married Cliff Drysdale, who by then had established himself as one of the most interesting and talented players of the time.

  In 1967, in partnership with two close friends, I founded my own industrial lighting company. Although I had been employed for several years, working as a salesman for someone else contradicted every instinct instilled in me by my tennis career. Tennis is not a team sport. There is no post-match back-slapping over beer, nor any gloomy sorrow-drowning in groups. The triumphs in tennis are personal, the defeats lonely and, above all, the decisions are all one’s own. From the moment I began selling lights, I yearned for identity.

  And so it was that when finally we found ourselves alone in our modest premises, surrounded by the dusty bits of furniture that we had accumulated, I felt, above all the anxieties and apprehensions which such occasions breed, an infinite sense of relief. I was on the move again. And this time, given any luck at all, I had a good idea where I was going.

  Our business prospered from the very first day. The gods who control commercial enterprises didn’t seem to me to be nearly as tricky as those in charge of the tennis circuits. They seemed eager, in fact, to dangle in front of our noses endless opportunities for progress. Essentially though, when one analyses it, building a business is very similar to building a tennis career. Both require thought, care and devotion, and in both one improves immeasurably with practice.

  We practised and improved, and even in our first year of trading made more money than I had ever dreamed of in all my years of tennis. Enough, even, to get to England in time for the first open Wimbledon.

  4 The name given to the large South African mining corporations of which Anglo-American, Anglo-Transvaal and Union Corporation were typical examples.

  Eleven

  The two tickets which would enable us to board the London-bound airliner arrived on my desk in a plain white envelope. I stared at it for some time, filled with the most extraordinary mixture of feelings. The first open Wimbledon! And not only was I to return there for the occasion, but I discovered to my surprise that my entry had been accepted for all the events! It was a very special thing.

  Wimbledon has about it one particular quality which the sensitive mind should consider as being positively treacherous. The warmth of the place compels you to regard it as your own – to adopt proprietary attitudes to certain sections of it. Thus locker thirty-one in dressing-room ‘A’ becomes private property, as does your favourite seat in the players’ enclosure, or the stanchion in the railings of the players’ balcony, where you always lean when you watch the matches on courts three, four and five. The girls in the front office, the man who arranges the cars, the dressing-room attendant and the gatekeepers are personal friends. And the shower under which you have exulted or wept is your own special shower, and so forth. Or so it seems – until one day you return, unknown, and suddenly all your very special places are not only no longer your own, but completely out of bounds.

  The ceremonial return that summer of 1968 then, as a competitor, had parcelled up in it for me about a dozen separate ecstasies, not the least of which was actually to participate. To walk onto those unbelievable grass courts on the afternoon of an English summer and play in the gentlemen’s singles. Or doubles. And with Abe Segal, to boot. It was too much to cope with. I was in a happy, light-hearted daze.

  London bubbled. She’d changed her mood completely, Abe Segal told me when he met us at the airport. He was driving an old Rolls-Royce and wearing a pair of pink velvet trousers and the kind of wide eternal grin which suggests champagne for lunch and the prospect of a thousand hearty laughs.

  ‘Place’s gone mad, Forbsey,’ he said taking my suitcase. ‘You’ll not believe what’s happening. To handle a month in London, a man’s got to double his insurance an’ walk about with a doctor feelin’ his pulse with one hand and carryin’ a hypodermic in the other!’

  The cases were stowed, the Rolls put into motion, and all the time snippets poured forth:

  ‘They got these shops on the King’s Road, with the music and all, goin’ like crazy and everybody’s permanently high. You can blow your mind just breathin’ the air!’

  He’d found a lot of new friends, too.

  ‘Moore’s mad.’ This with total emphasis. ‘I mean you think I’m mad, and I think a lot of people are mad. But, Forbsey, you can think of all the maddest people you ever knew and shake ’em up together, and they’d be sane compared to Moore. I mean, you know that hair of his? Well, he’s grown it. I mean, can you imagine? Stands straight up. He’s the only guy I know who has his own personal barbed-wire defence system. He doesn’t comb his hair. He uses pliers and side cutters. Then he concretes it into place.’

  Abie, in certain frames of mind, could pick a random subject such as this and continue for some time. Moore, it seemed, had gathered together a clan of admirers, virtually as mad as himself, who intrigued Abie.

  ‘Harry Fowler,’ said Abie, ‘is not exactly what you’d call completely in command of his senses. And Kenny Lynch, black as the ace of spades, an’ born in Birmingham. This is his car, in case you’re wonderin’.’ (Which I was.)

  Fowler and Lynch were actors – Lynch, more accurately, a singer – who were very funny men.

  ‘Together,’ Abie was saying, ‘Fowler and Lynch are worse than Moore. Should be locked up. The other day I met Fowler on the King’s Road.

  “Hello, Harry,” I say.

  “Hallo, Abe,” he says.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “I’m lookin’ for a strait-jacket for Lynchie,” he says, “but they don’t make them in crushed velvet.”

  “That’s funny,” I says to him, “because I just met Lynchie and he was out tryin’ to find one to fit you!”’

  Ever since I first met him, Abie had always had a certain leaning towards the production of strait-jackets.

  ‘The world,’ he used to mutter sometimes, ‘is goin’ out of its mind. A man could make a fortune wholesalin’ strait-jackets’, or some such remark. And once, when a full-grown litter of boxer puppies had got completely out of hand at his Bryanston house and eaten the best gut out of two of his Dunlop Maxplys, he raved for a while about manufacturing ‘strait-jackets for dogs’, and reckoned that there might be money to be made in those.

  London that year gave him his best-ever feasibility study for the mass production of strait-jackets.

  ‘Well cut, of course, Forbsey,’ he said. ‘These idiots would never buy ’em if they fitted badly.’
>
  The Rolls drove sedately along the motorway while the rows of houses and corner pubs dozed in the afternoon sun.

  ‘Everyone’s here,’ Abie was saying. ‘Even Segura is here.’ He gave a snort of laughter. ‘Segoo!’ he cried. ‘Jesus. Movin’ around on those legs of his, hittin’ the two-hander up the line and takin’ pills.

  “Hey, Segoo,” I says to him, “this is London, you know. The UK. This isn’t Hollywood. This is where the Queen lives.”

  And he says to me, “You theenk, beeg Abie, she’s gonna want tennis lessons from old Segoo?” he asks.

  “Sure she’ll want lessons,” I say. “How you feelin’?” an’ he says: “I steel got enough strength to get me to the Club, Abie,” an’ he takes another handful of pills. Vitamin B1 to 12. They’ll have to lock him up before he completely changes the habits of the English!’

  I really liked listening to Abie when he was happy.

  ‘You should see this Newc,’5 said Abie. ‘I mean, Jesus! He just hits the shit out of everything. I mean, it’s like he’s got that stuff you get things against things –’

  Allergy,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right, allergy. It’s like he’s got an allergy against tennis balls. Hits the shit out of them. Wake Newc up in the middle of the night and give him a tennis ball an’ he’ll just get up and hit him an unbelievable forehand crosscourt. Meanwhile, he looks like he should be out punchin’ cows. Like he’s just got off his horse.’

  He steered the Rolls past Barons Court Underground and into the gates of Queen’s Club.

  ‘I’ve got a court booked for five,’ Abie said, ‘to get your blood movin’!’

  Queen’s Club! Time rolled backwards. On the front steps, Frank Sedgman, ready for a match, rubbing some embrocation into his elbow. He shakes my hand and says:

  ‘At twenty you don’t need these lotions, and at forty they don’t help you!’