Writers are always talking about great words—"'Satanic,' such a great word!" we might say. There’s little agreement on what this means, or what raises one word above the masses. But each of us has our pet favorites. They either roll off our tongues in just the right way or shock our brains with their pungency—malevolence fits both of these bills for me. Other words just make us happy when we hear them—like, say, knucklehead. A favorite word from tennis is junkballer. It’s dismissive in a respectful kind of way.
Friday sounds bland by comparison, but it occupies a special place in the brains of English speakers. It’s the anticipation in those two syllables that raises it above its fellow days of the week; even “Saturday” doesn’t have the same sense of relief to it. It might be all right for fighting, but I've still got Friday on my mind. It's the day when you can be half at work and half somewhere else in your head. I was a copywriter at an ad agency for a year or so in the 1990s, and my only good memory of that time was sitting in the boss’s office on Friday afternoons with the other guys in our department while he cranked a Lou Reed CD and did a crazy spinning dance in his suit in the middle of the room. Still, there’s a downside to this half-freedom: In winter, when it gets dark before I leave the office, I can start to get a mysterious case of the blues—“loose ends” is the right phrase. My mind isn’t quite ready for the transition.
Anyway, for some reason Friday seems like a good day to revive the You Tube tennis tradition we started last winter—it’s easy, it’s fun, it apolitical. Plus, there are always a few new things up there that you haven’t seen before.
I’ll start with a clip that I’d always wanted to see: 16-year-old Chris Evert making her U.S. Open debut at Forest Hills in 1971. This was when the legend of the Ice Maiden and Chris America was born, and the moment that women’s pro tennis became a viable mainstream product in this country. It was once said of Bruce Springsteen that if he hadn’t existed, rock critics would have had to make him up. You could say the same for Chris Evert: If she hadn’t come along at just about this time, the women’s tour, and in particular Billie Jean King, would have had to make her up. As it was, King had to beat Evert in the semifinals, a match that King said was the most nerve-wracking she had ever played.
This 10-minute clip covers the most famous part of Evert’s run, the six match points she saved en route to beating fellow American Mary-Anne Eisel in the third round. (Warning, a bow-tied and woolly Bud Collins also makes a brief appearance at the 7-minute mark.). After reading about this tournament for many years, here are some thoughts on seeing it.
—The first U.S. Open match I remember watching was the 1976 final between Connors and Borg. At that point, Forest Hills had torn up its grass and put down clay—clearly another case of New York’s mid-70s socialism and anti-Americanism! So it’s nice to see the green grass as it was. Is it lusher than Wimbledon’s? It’s a different shade, certainly.
—Everyone in those days was annoyed by Bud Collins as an announcer, but he seems pretty good here. Yes, he’s overbearing and maybe even too full of information—is it helpful or just pedantic that he tells us the name of the center linesman? But nobody expressed more enthusiasm for tennis. At this point, he hasn’t quite found the right nickname for Evert. He calls her the “Little Ice Woman” during this match. I guess it was better than one of his later ones for her: “Hatchet Woman.”
—Evert’s poise is remarkable, though she does show little moments of frustration, slapping her thigh after one miss. She seems determined, but not too determined. Her desire to win never upsets her calmness. Up 3-0 in the tiebreaker, she looks across the net and puts her finger on her chin, the picture of cool assessment. Or maybe her chin just itched.
—Love her returns. She has great anticipation and quick reaction steps, and she lays her racquet back smoothly on both sides. I doubt she would have time to do that now.
—I’ve never seen Eisel before, but I like her serve and athleticism. She’s a broken woman by the end of the tiebreaker and goes on to lose the third set 6-1.
—Evert said in her autobiography—yes, I’ve read it, what about it?—that she always played the same way until the match was over and tried her best to approach match points against her as if they were any other point. But I sense here that she went for broke on her returns on the first two match points. And she was lucky when Eisel stoned a makeable volley wide on another one. Still, Evert made her play that volley.
—Evert wins the second set and shows . . . nothing. Maybe even less than when she was behind.
—The strokes are so simple and clean. It’s hard to believe they hadn’t been hit quite like that before. Chrissie Evert: The world’s quietest revolutionary.
Have a good weekend.