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by Pete Bodo
Well, Stockholm got underway with a bang, almost (and for you wags I'm going to specify that I'm talking about Juan Monaco's 7-5-in-the-third win over Jan Hernych, of course). It's already been a busy news week for the Swedish Open, even though the tournament is barely underway. The other noteworthy news item today is that Mats Wilander has resigned as Sweden's Davis Cup coach. I'm trying to find out if there's a story there, or if it's just a case of the familar captain or federation fatigue.
Today, though, in keeping with my promise to re-visit year-end-championships of the past, I want to focus on Stockholm, in the year 1975 - a tournament that produced an unprecedented and never duplicated event of the kind that can only happen in a round-robin, and I'm not sure it can every happen again because the rules are different now.
Back in '75, Ilie Nastase was at his peak as - depending on who you asked - a vile, foul-mouthed cheater, the clown prince of tennis, the embodiment of all the was "wrong" with the new, greed-fueled Open era, or a remarkably neurotic, charismatic, mercurial personality compared to whom second-and-third generation bad boys (Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe and even the likes of Marat Safin) were unimaginative or grim boors and louts lacking the grimy halo that seemed to hover over Nasty's head.
Nastase, at various times, was each of the above, and when he turned on his personal charm, the only thing more riveting was his game. He was as fluid and graceful as a great cat, and he had more imagination, shot-selection wise, than anyone until Roger Federer came down the pike. No player has ever gotten closer to the art of making his racket seem a natural extension of his arm and hand, and none used his wrist so superbly - whether it was to hit a surprise backhand topspin lob while sprintingto make a get at a far corner of the court, or a gorgeous drop shot - off a good first serve.
Anyway, Arthur Ashe was near the tail end of his career year in '75; he had beaten Jimmy Connors in a strategic masterpiece at Wimbledon, and he was on the brink of completing a remarkable double as the YEC approached (back then, it was the Commercial Union Grand Prix Masters). He had already won the prestigious World Championship Tennis finals in Dallas, Tx., back in the Spring. WCT, in its heyday, was a kind of rival circuit within the aborning Grand Prix circuit (which has since evolved into the ATP Tour). In many ways, it was a superior and better organized tour, and thus the players enjoyed a cornucopia of playing - and earning - opportunities.
If you think the complaints about the length of the tennis season and the rash of dubious withdrawals has been bad these past few years on the ATP Tour, you should know what went on back in those wild days. Players would flagrantly tank matches where they were peeved (Kim Warwick once played an entire game, left-handed, in the course of tanking), or walk off the court if they didn't like how things were going. Umpires feared to default big stars, no matter how egregious their offenses. The body of rules was loose, often conflicting, and embraced and enforced selectively. The clamor for policing the game was growing to a din.
Meanwhile, nobody could take his or her eyes off the game and the over-sized personalities it had churned up, for better or worse.
Stockholm had been awarded the tournament partly because the promoters wanted to capitalize on the star power of Sweden's emerging talent, Bjorn Borg. But Ashe was the odds-on favorite, partly because the surface was fast and Ashe's best weapon was his serve. Much like now, the round-robin portion featured two groups of four men each, and Ashe and Nastase were in the same group. Their early encounter was a train wreck from the start, with Nastase reaching deep into his sordid bag of tricks. He stalled, cursed, and bickered with fans and officials between points. He did all he could to throw off and irritate Ashe. I shudder to imagine the outcry if a contemporary player chose to refer to, say, Gale Monfils, as "Negroni" - which was Nastase's pet nickname for Ashe.
Ashe grew so fed up with the antics of Nastase - whom he considered a real but exasperating friend - that he finally decided, Who needs this? In an uncharacteristic display of anger, he stormed off the court - while leading 1-6,7-5,4-1. He disqualified himself in protest. This came at an inconvenient moment for tournament referee Horst Klosterkemper, who, with the tolerance and forebearance characteristic of the time, was just thinking that maybe he ought to default Nastase.
This produced something unheard of but, in retrospect, almost poetically just for the era: a match with two losers. Now we're talking about unexplored territory. The pooh-bahs did what they always do in this kind of situation; they called a meeting for the next day, and ultimately emerged from behind closed doors with a decision: Ashe was declared the winner of the match - a result that satisfied everyone but Nastase, because Ashe had done nothing but grow tired of seeing the rules and concept of sportsmanship abused at his expense.
But as this was a round-robin and nobody had really thought too far ahead in terms of rules and protocols, Nastase was allowed to play on, with an "L" on his record. It didn't matter to Nastase, a man who was always inspired by second chances (hence his outstanding record in round-robin events). Like his descendant, John McEnroe, Nastase was more capable of playing his best tennis after he survived one of his signature meltdowns. Ashe and Nastase both made the semifinals based on the round-robin results, but Ashe's hopes for a crowning touch to his year were dispatched by Borg in the semifinals.
Nastase sliced his way through Guillermo Vilas (who had finished no. 1 in the Grand Prix standings) with no trouble in his own semi, and in the final he toyed with Borg - using all the guile and spin at his disposal to flummox the godfather of power baseline tennis, 6-2,6-2,6-1. It was a painful loss, but coupled with Borg's runner-up finish in Dallas (where he beat Rod Laver, in one of the aging Aussie icon's last memorable performances), it foreshadowed a new era.
The win was Nastase's biggest of the year, and his fourth triumph in the YEC in five years. But the most striking statistics he posted for '75 had to do with his behavior, rather than his results. That year, Nastase was defaulted at three tournaments, he quit cold in the midst of his semifinal at the Italian Open, and he tanked in the Canadian Open final, giving Manuel Orantes the title, after he blew a gasket over a questionable line call in the first-set tiebreaker (Nastase won just one game in the final two sets after losing the first).
Reacting to the chaos in the game, the newly formed Pro Council, which would evolve into the ATP Tour Board, fined Nastase $8,000. Nasty had the temerity to appeal, and have the fine reduced, but the action marked the beginning of the end for the wild west show that was tennis. Henceforth, it became more and more difficult to ride into Stockholm, or any other town, to shoot out the lights and send patrons at the saloon scurrying to hide under the tables. Yeee-oww!
At the risk of sounding like a degenerate, I must confess that sometimes I sort of miss those days. . .