Can tennis ever again recreate a Pistol Pete whose services fairly smoked and whose diagonal volleys had the deadly crossfire of Vietcong snipers? Can we see the likes of Agassi again, bundling himself into Wimbledon or the US Open like a paratrooper who had just landed, then sprinting ferociously into forward fire? And can we see both again in their many tennis duels, each doing the impossible like walking on air or spearing their bodies astride the net to domesticate a ball in savage flight?
We can go back and still back.
But the memory blurs as we set out to discern Donald Budge, Lew Hoad, Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzales, Frank Sedgman, Ken McGregor, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, Don Newcombe. In their time, each was worth a drumroll, one for the ages. The tennis crowds then as now were as fanatical and excited, even more I suppose. The greats, the so-called immortals then as now, were celebrities everywhere they went. Then, not so now, tennis was only for the elite, the white race. It had the brand of conquering Vikings. Wimbledon took a long time before it opened its arched and aristrocratic gates to such gifted blacks as Arthur Ashley, Althea Gibson and now the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus.
Now, men’s tennis is a mad scramble for greatness among mostly unknowns. Or "near greats" who couldn’t make it at all because Sampras and Agassi hogged center court like nobody ever did before.
Alas, Andy Roddick, widely presumed successor to Sampras, just 21, succumbed to such a previous unknown as Roger Federer in the current Wimbledon semi-finals. In the other semi, Marc ‘Scud’ Philippoussis of Australia overwhelmed France’s Sebastian Grosjean. So it is a Federer-Philippoussis Wimbledon head-to-head. And somehow the head spins giddily. For neither Federer nor Philippoussis really belonged. Neither could be cast in Wimbledon’s golden coin. Neither ever bristled and danced like a blue, crackling flame in mid-court. Before Agassi was, Leyton Hewitt, the numero uno, was swept away.
Philippoussis I have known for sometime. Tall, strikingly handsome, a Michelangelo statue coming to life on a tennis court, he was on occasion great, on occasion middling, on occasion a ball of fire. But unlike Sampras or Agassi, he never had the consistency, without which a champion is no champion at all. He reminds me of Marat Safin, the huge, towering Russian who upended Sampras three or four years ago at Wimbly. Marat has the goods. He had power, agility and versatility. He would certainly reign over tennis for a long time, give Russia a real champion, not a sex goddess like Ana Kournikova who could hold an entire crowded street in London spellbound with her curves while crossing but not a tennis audience.
But Marat never matured. He remained the dude that he was, romanced the women, probably imbibed too much vodka, and was the lost country boy of Gogol’s novels.
But this Federer? Who is he? How could he beat Andy Roddick 7-6, 6-3, 6-3? Okay, he is the first Swiss to reach a Grand Slam final. A breathless Associated Press correspondent described him: "Federer showed he could play on grass two years ago as precocious 19-year-old, when he ended Sampras’ 31-match Wimbledon winning streak. This year he has won grass, hardcourt and claycourt titles, a testament to his versatility". One-time tennis king, the stubbly-chinned Boris Becker said: "He’s playing tennis like they used to play – go back to Ilie Nastase."
Nastase? Wasn’t he the nasty Romanian bad boy who preferred high jinx to high tennis and was often penalized for bad manners in a game where breeding is stuck on your breast like a lord of the manor’s pedigree?
Philippoussis is not likely to reign for a long time. He blows hot and cold too often. Federer is only 21. He might indeed have soaked his tennis racket in the fires of Prometheus. But staying there, remaining at the top is another thing. Michael Jordan was the greatest ever in basketball because he was the "Comeback Kid" twice retired, twice back, reinventing himself each time. The later Ground Jordan was just as lethal as the early Air Jordan. What mattered was that the ball and Jordan locked into each other like a blacksmith and his anvil and sent out sparks into the night sky as nobody ever did before. And so was Pele, the black Pearl of the Antilles who booted footballs into the goal till his hair turned grey and no goalkeeper was able to stop him.
And so I will miss Sampras and Agassi in the sense their time at the center of the stage is gone.
As I also miss Steffi Graf, for me as great as Martina Navratilova if not greater, Martina Hingis of course, Monica Seles, Chris Evert, Margaret Court, Billy Jean King, Yvonne Goolagong. In women’s tennis, there too has been a change of the guard. Not only that. The women get more publicity than the men today, attract bigger and richer audiences, pull down headlines with the greatest of ease. Why? Because of two sisters, that’s why. They came about four or five years ago, like curious clunks from the circus. The fact they were gleaming black made all the difference.
Blacks? Wimbledon would have willed itself to hellangone half a century ago, would have sent yelping hunting dogs and mastiffs to the gate before admitting the likes of Serena and Venus. The Williamses would have befouled the air, polluted everything they stepped on. Maledictions would have rained on the sisters, every court would have been exorcised, every proper Englishman would have prayed to the gods for deliverance. These were descendants of slaves and their place was in the scullery.
But times had changed.
Negroes had become the entertainers and athletes of America. Even Adolf Hitler bowed to the prowess of Jesse Owens. Joe Louis had smashed the Aryan chin of Max Schmeling. Martin Luther King had become a national hero. Oprah Winfrey delighted mainstream audiences in America. Muhammad Ali had all of America in cheers and in tears when with hands quivering with Parkinson’s disease, he raised the flag at the Atlanta Olympiads. So who could now deny Venus and Serena entry into the tennis playgrounds of America and elsewhere?
They were big. They were huge. They were strong. They exemplified the progressive African-American. The breath of their ancient homeland, the African brush, bustled in them, as did the powerful winds of prairie America, as did the Yankee culture of bigness, brashness and success. They had no complexes.
But more than anything else, they were the best women tennis players the world had ever seen. They had grit, they had brains, they had muscle. They were into a tennis family born. Father Frank and mother Oracene enjoyed the middle-class means to educate them well. The parents built a dam inside each of them to truckle the sport of tennis into every nerve. It was tennis, tennis, tennis since Venus and Serena were younglings. They grew up gawky, but when muscle came into them, they had the bulges of fleet mountain leopards that could chase balls well into the sunset.
They met for a sixth time. Serena, as expected won again, her fifth over her elder sister, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.
But the victory gave her pain. Venus could not be at her best because she had severe abdominal trouble. Her midsection and upper left leg taped. It was not a battle between sisters. Blood didn’t matter. For the siblings, tennis was a deadly duel in the jungle. And Serena never let up, winning uppermost in her mind. And winning Wimbledon was the trophy that mattered, the grandslam that mattered, and every other grandslam was just an appetizer. Venus’ only consolation was that a Williams won. "One day," she said, someone is going to see ‘Williams’ and think it was me."
"It tugged at my heartstrings watching Venus out there," said mother Oracene Price.
But after the championship match, they were sisters again, perhaps the most famous sisters in the world today. They’ve come a long way, the Williamses, great champions in a sport made for the whites.