August 1: Pancho Still Hears Cheers of Wimbledon The score was 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9.It was 41-year-old Pancho Gonzales coming back to defeat 25-year-old Charley Pasarell in an early-round match at Wimbledon last month. The match already has taken its place in the folklore of the sport; perhaps those numbers should be carved into marble with him when the man is interred. Those numbers--22-24-are awesome. Here is a 41-year-old man hanging in there for 46 games of a tennis set,and then losing. You would think there is no way he can then summon up the heart, the stamina, the greatness, or whatever, to go on too well after that. And then, when he loses the next set, 6-1, he's got to be a million-to-one shot even if he is Gonzales. Even if he's Gonzales, Bill Tilden and Don Budge rolled into one, for that matter.
Somehow, and the mind boggles a bit if you have ever played any kind of tennis, Gonzales came back to win the third set in darkness. They stopped after that and then he won the final two sets the following day. A month later, a shower of accolades is still falling on Gonzales for that performance. It was evident the other afternoon at a luncheon of the Sales Executive Club at the Waldorf-Astoria. The tennis people are hyping the upcoming United States Open at Forest Hills starting Aug. 27, and their pitch for tickets to the executives included Gonzales. He was given a big hand. The seasoned head of the group said, "Not that I'm anywhere close to your age, but you're doing a wonderful thing for all of us." Later, a man came up to shake hands with Gonzales and, with awe in his voice, said, "I was at Wimbledon; that was the greatest tennis match I've ever seen." Gonzales said, "When the first set continued for so long, I realized it would be tougher for me later on, but not to the extent that I worried about losing. If you worry about things like that, you don't belong in pressure tennis. The fact that the first set went so long and Pasarell won might have made him a little overconfident. I do remember that we were both serving well and playing consistently." The thing that strikes Gonzales a month later is the emotional response of the British to his comeback. "With the tension and the anger and the darkness, it made for dramatics that excited the English. That's unusual, I think. Their emotion carried into the women's final, and they seemed to go wild when their English girl, Ann Haydon Jones, beat Billie Jean King." Anger means his own histrionics. During the third set, when Gonzales felt play should have been called, he stormed at the officials for allowing play to continue. His swarthy Aztec features were set in a perpetual scowl. He threw his racket at the umpire's chair and shouted, "How do you expect me to play when I can't see the ball?" Menacing the officials is not unusual for Gonzales. He is, when agitated, the world's poorest sport. He can storm at officials, at ball boys, at spectators, even to the angry gods who look down in wonder at a 41-year-old madman trying to achieve the impossible. When you've been at it as long as Gonzales has, you can get away with anything. And if a Gonzales (or a Mantle or Williams or Mays or Ray Robinson) wins or comes up with a noble effort, that is its own kind of triumph; the multitude will go gaga and forgive anything. Some of the British spectators booed Gonzales when he railed at the umpire, but they were all reduced to marmalade by the time the old geezer was in the midst of his comback. In the interim overnight Gonzales told his wife, " I did it in 1949, maybe I can pull one out again." In 1949, when Gonzales was the up-and-coming dark destroyer, hungry for glory, he was favored at Forest Hills. He stumbled in the final, losing his first two sets against Ted Schroeder, a cluch competitor, but he never lost his poise and wore Schroeder down. That still stands as the highlight match in his mind. But doesn't it say something for the outrageous champions's ego of the man that, on the brink of defeat at 41, he could think of doing whe he did when he was 21? Before resumption of play, he actually went out and practiced an hour-and-a-half "to get loose. I hadn't felt limbered up." His 112 games with Pasarell set a Wimbledon record. More astounding: he came back from seven match points; twice he came back from triple match point on Pasarell's serve. That's merely a thousand times harder than a pitcher coming back from a 3-0 count with the bases loaded. He snorts at the thought his stamina cannot carry him all the way any more. He said, "People already are forgetting I didn't fold after I came through against Pasarell. The next day I lost the first set and beat Ole Bengston and then I beat Tom Edlefson in a tough match. I led in the first set against Arthur Ashe and it was only because Ashe came up with some great tennis that he was able to beat me. If I didn't think I could win any of these tournaments, I wouldn't be here." The old dark destroyer may never cease his pursuit of 1949.
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I think there's something that supersedes glory. It's the ability to create. The most satisfied people are those who put themselves into a postion where they can create |
Cousy Still Impressive 
