Can you imagine a time when the Wimbledon champion had his number listed in the phone book? And that when this international celebrity and ambassador of dignity won a tournament, he told the crowd to go ahead and look it up and give him a call if they felt like it?
I can’t really imagine that either—think about, say, Andre Agassi, doing the same after winning the U.S. Open. But that’s the way it was with Arthur Ashe. One kid from the Bronx, Doug Henderson, took him up on the offer and started a friendship with the great man.
But then this was also a time when the same kid from the Bronx, along with a high school buddy, could buy a cheap ticket to the U.S. Open at Forest Hills, walk into the clubhouse, sit in the locker room for a few minutes, and wind–up with a lifetime gig as Jimmy Connors’ bodyguard/aide-de-camp whenever Jimbo was in New York. That’s what happened to Henderson at the Open in 1974. He and a friend were looking out a back window of the clubhouse, watching Chris Evert practice. Behind them they heard a voice, “Mind if I squeeze in?” It was Evert’s then fiancé, Connors. His coach, Pancho Segura, began calling Henderson and his friend, who are both black, “brothers.” Then Segoo had an idea. “Jeembo,” he said to Connors, “you get these guys and nobody ----- with you! You have no problems with the crowds.” Connors agreed, and Henderson and his friend walked out with the Connors entourage onto the club’s veranda, where its well-heeled and all-white members sat eating lunch. “You could hear a pin drop,” Henderson says.
I can remember seeing Doug Henderson sitting next to Connors’ wife, Patti, at the Open in the late 70s and early 80s; his white cap was distinctive, and it's featured prominently in one of the better-known photos of the infamous 1979 Open match between John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase. Henderson, fearing for his friend Nasty’s safety in a near-riotous Armstrong Stadium, walked onto the court, along with multiple New York City policemen. He tells this story, along with the stories of his friendships with Ashe and Connors, in his new e-book, Endeavor to Persevere. (You can get it here.) If you like to watch the historical Best of 5 shows that the Tennis Channel routinely airs about the sport’s roughneck 70s and 80s, you’ll like these stories. As he says, it helps that Henderson, unlike half the talking heads commenting on the Tennis Channel, was actually there.
The core of the book is his co-assessment of the severely contrasting personalities of Ashe and Connors. Together they form a paradox, one that Henderson recognizes immediately. He says that his life had been changed a month before he met Connors, when he had turned on the TV and saw the Belleville Basher lighting up Centre Court and shredding the old Aussie gentleman Ken Rosewall in straight sets. For the first time, this team-sports fan realized that tennis was, as Connors always put it, “a war out there.” Henderson fell in love with the sport that day. He also felt like Jimbo, a white Midwesterner, was bringing “the street” to tennis, even as the sport’s best black player, Ashe, maintained a mask of studious cool. The club pastime couldn’t have accepted a Muhammad Ali back then. There needed to be a Jimmy Connors before there could be a Serena Williams.
Henderson, the Bronx kid who attended prestigious Horace Mann high school, tries to bridge the gap between Connors and Ashe, with intermittent success. When Ashe first saw Henderson, he didn’t know that he was the same kid who had called him up. As the new Jimbo posse (the “James Gang”) walked out onto the grounds at Forest Hills, Henderson saw Ashe watching them from nearby. Ashe looked incredulous—“What is this crazy Connors kid up to now, hiring black bodyguards?” At various times, Henderson serves as a go-between, giving Connors technical and tactical advice from Ashe. But Jimmy was a me-against-the-world guy when it came to competition, and he already knew that friendship and rivalry didn’t co-exist well—his best friend on the tour, Nastase, had owned him early in his career. Later, though, when Ashe’s career was over and Jimmy’s was on the down slope, Henderson was moved to catch a glimpse of the two men and their wives talking and laughing together at a cocktail party. He says he'd never seen Ashe smile so much.
But this is really Henderson’s story of his friendship with Connors, and his observations of the Man Who Never Gave In during his many ups and downs at the Open over the years. Henderson believes that in 1975, Connors lost the final to Manuel Orantes in part because his racquets were strung too tightly. He says that the next year, when Jimbo regained his title by beating Bjorn Borg in the final, Henderson learned what it means “to come off the mat.” In 1977, he watched as his man lost the final to Guillermo Vilas, then became so enraged at a photographer that the veins on his neck started to bulge. Henderson finally had to pick Connors up and hold him back from slugging the guy. In 1980, Henderson climbed up on the hood of a car in Manhattan and shouted “You can do it!” as Jimmy and his wife, Patti, cracked up.
My favorite stories come from Connors’ last Open run in 1983. Jimmy and Henderson are up late watching TV in Jimmy’s hotel room before the tournament starts. Connors asks him to hang around and come into the living room of the suite. Jimbo pretends to look at a piece of paper for dramatic effect, then flicks his eyes up and asks Henderson, “I can win this, right?” When Henderson enthusiastically answers yes, Connors, with some relief, says, “That’s what I wanted to hear.” It's a touching desire for support, as well as another show of relentless positivity, from a guy who always had the reputation of a go it alone tough guy.
The night before Connors’ first-round match that year, the crew goes out to see a Bette Midler concert (another funny image—Jimbo watching Bette Midler). The show goes past midnight and Henderson starts to worry. He imagines Connors losing and having to tell his mother, Gloria, that he'd been out late the night before. “I’d rather be locked in a room with Charles Manson than have that conversation,” Henderson thinks. Wow, I knew Glo was tough, but . . . (Henderson also confirms Donald Dell's revelation that Connors received an illegal shot in his ailing foot in the middle of this match, and lied about it afterward.)
There are good stories for the tennis junkie here, about Ashe, Borg, McEnroe, Vitas, Lendl, and Agassi. Naturally, my favorite stars Ilie Nastase. At the '76 Open, he played a wild and epic five-setter with Germany’s Hans Pohman. The German cramped, but did it so often and with such over-the-top drama that Nastase finally flipped out (he was obviously stealing some of Nasty’s thunder, too). The crowd booed, Pohman refused to shake Nastase’s hand, Nastase spat at Pohman, the umpire refused to shake Nastase’s hand, and Nastase banged his racquet against the ump's chair. Henderson walked back to the locker room with Nasty and said that he had never heard such a stream of abuse from the fans.
They get back to the locker room and, against all odds, Nastase tries to make up with Pohman. He puts out his hand, but Pohman says, “I will never shake your hand.” Nastase pulls back and says the only words you would expect him to say: “---- you, Hitler.”
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Have a good weekend.