Days of Grace (40 page)

In addition to prize money, the prominent position of men in the lives of these women may also be a factor in making professional women’s tennis an especially difficult world. Remarkably, it is almost impossible to find a top woman player with a woman coach. The women stars fade fast when they retire. In a recent essay in
Tennis
magazine, Lynne Rolley of the USTA pointed out that only Billie Jean King, Betty Stove, and Hana Mandlikova among the top retired players have gone on to make their mark as a coach. What do the young women players learn from their male coaches about competition, and can they integrate these lessons into their complete lives as women? Herself a coach, Rolley identified some of the key questions that face a young woman player, and suggests that a woman coach is more likely to have good answers: “Is it acceptable to compete? Is it O.K. to build muscles? Is there a contradiction between the assertive, aggressive athlete and the accepted social role for women?”

(In Graf’s frank and intelligent interview, she indeed worried about her muscles and about a photographer who was “enthralled by my muscles.”
Interviewer:
“Do you think you look too masculine?”
Graf:
“No, I simply don’t like my muscles.”)

Add to such pressures the rootlessness and disruptions of tour life, and it becomes quite understandable to me why many players are unhappy on the tour. The existence of
these pressures makes me admire even more those women who have made it to the top of professional tennis, individuals such as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin, Pam Shriver, Steffi Graf, and Zina Garrison—to name a few. Almost all of them have had to struggle as women against many more subtle and complex obstacles than have faced their male counterparts. Some critics of women’s tennis like to contend that its stars lack individuality and flair. I think this suggests a personal ignorance of the lives of these gifted women. It is also argued that women should not receive pay equal to men in tennis, because their play is inferior to that of the top men. While I once shared this view, I now believe that women should receive all the prize money they can command. As for individuality, someone could write a book about, for instance, the rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, which was not only glorious and protracted—both were superb players—but also fraught with so many rich overtones deriving from their very different personalities and histories. One was heterosexual, the other lesbian. One was America’s sweetheart, the other an immigrant who dearly wanted to be accepted like everyone else. Evert seems to have had a relatively stable social life (even her divorce from John Lloyd was smoothly conducted), while Navratilova has gone through some hellishly difficult times, to which she has responded with courage and tenacity, even as her extraordinary playing flourished. I was pleased to see Steffi Graf in her
Tennis
magazine interview cite both Martina and Chris as shining examples of friendship, courtesy, and respect extended to her in the otherwise rather bleak social world of women’s tennis, as Graf experienced it.

As far as I am concerned, Billie Jean King is the most important tennis player, male or female, of the last fifty years. Although she was probably not the best woman player ever, she was the most significant of all the players since World War II, easily more important than Jimmy Connors, the most significant male player. King transcends her sport. We were born only two or three months apart,
and I have known about her almost as long as I have played tennis. We won our first national singles titles at Forest Hills only a year apart, in 1967 and 1968, and we both won at Wimbledon in 1975. I am truly saddened by the extent to which her career, both on and off the tennis court, has been overshadowed by one major controversy, involving a woman with whom she once lived.

She and I have had our differences. One was about the future path of tennis as the open era evolved. Although both Billie Jean and I resented the stodginess and snobbery of the international tennis establishment, we had different ideas about how best to proceed. Billie Jean favored the team approach, and she and her husband, Larry King (not the broadcaster), started World Team Tennis (WTT), an innovative league made up of various teams playing according to an ingenious format of shortened matches unlike anything ever seen in tennis. However, I thought their timing was wrong; I didn’t think the public was ready to support such a concept. In any event, WTT certainly fractured and segmented those of us who wanted to oppose the old order. I also think team tennis diverted prize money away from the regular tournaments for a long time and kept the prizes from growing more than they did. Nevertheless, Billie Jean and Larry did a fine job in trying to make their concept work, even as she became identified with quite progressive attitudes and positions away from WTT. Using—sometimes sacrificing—her tennis fame, Billie Jean advanced the cause of women and of gay people on a number of fronts, including many where the connection to tennis was not at all apparent. Her victory over the aging male chauvinist Bobby Riggs in September 1973 in their celebrated battle-of-the-sexes challenge match was an enormous boost for feminism
and
for tennis in general.

Energized as much by the feminist movement as anything else, Billie Jean brings energy and imagination to just about everything she touches. She is rare in combining unquestionable brilliance and success as a tennis player with the passion of a crusader for justice. Quick to anger, she
once stung me with a remark that many people took a curious pleasure in repeating to my face. “I’m blacker than Arthur,” Billie Jean had quipped. I suppose she meant that I was not impulsive or explosive enough; the stronger and longer that one protests, it seems, the blacker one becomes. Her remark startled but did not offend me. And whenever it was repeated to me, I usually responded, “That’s just Billie Jean,” perhaps proving her point. Maybe I should have called her a name, or slapped her around a little, and thus demonstrated my “blackness.” Unfortunately, I don’t call people names, and I have never slapped anybody in my life. Besides, she might slap me back.

I understood that Billie Jean’s anger comes from an honorable place, and I truly respect her for what she has accomplished as a feminist. To me, she has earned her place in the pantheon of international modern feminists along with intellectuals such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer, and political activists such as the late Petra Kelly of the Green Movement in Germany. So few professional athletes accomplish anything beyond their sport that King’s work is quite extraordinary. Billie Jean’s criticism of me came out of the fervor of the feminist movement. Because of that fact, I have never felt the need even to discuss it with her, and she has never brought it up. It has had no effect on our friendship, which blossomed after we both retired. We spent some time together, especially when we worked for HBO at Wimbledon, and I saw her sweetly affectionate side as well as the sharp mind that has made her such a force among us.

Billie Jean’s feminism and her sexual preference must have cost her a fortune in endorsements, which is often the major way to wealth for the famous ex-athlete. I know that corporate America was slow to exploit women’s tennis for the purposes of advertising because, in part, of the fear that details about the private lives of some of the players, if made public, might harm the sponsors. Later, as our moral climate became more permissive, and the popularity of women’s tennis grew, the same companies became more
comfortable with this aspect of tennis, and with women’s tennis in general. But individuals still suffer. Navratilova, like King, certainly has not had endorsements commensurate with her superstar success on the court. The same is true of John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors (until recently, when Connors became, in his relative old age, the darling of American tennis). As Davis Cup captain, I had more than one company president and chairman look at McEnroe and tell me, in effect: “That guy’s a player, Arthur. But my company wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”

The difference, needless to say, is that McEnroe and Connors behaved outrageously in public, while King and Navratilova were almost always polite as players. In a sense, the women were penalized for what they did in private. In reality, however, they were penalized because what they did in private got into the newspapers, although neither woman wanted it there. It makes little sense to take issue with advertisers on this score; they have no obligation to hand out endorsements equitably, without regard to reputation. However, the public may be more forgiving than some corporations. I certainly think that this is the case with both Billie Jean and Martina, who are justly admired by millions of people, and by me.

Then we have the example of Zina Garrison, which has nothing to do with sexual preference. Garrison was once the only player in the top ten in the world who could not find a corporate sponsor. In her case, she was penalized not for bad behavior or bad publicity but, almost certainly, for “bad” skin. She is black.

IN GENERAL, THE
sex life of an individual should be nobody’s business but his or her own. Nevertheless, the sexual behavior of a famous athlete, when widely publicized, may have a powerful and deleterious impact on young people in particular. Add the factors of AIDS and rampant unwanted teenage pregnancy into the equation, and the sex life of individual star athletes may become a matter of public concern.

Sexual promiscuity has often been a feature of the behavior of athletes, or at least of male athletes. In recent times, in keeping with our collapse of standards, or our increasing commitment to candor, we have had a better understanding of what constitutes promiscuity for some athletes. The former basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, in his autobiography, has numbered his sexual “conquests” at about 20,000 women. (I don’t believe him about the number.) By comparison, Earvin “Magic” Johnson has been almost monkish, with a mere 2,500 partners, according to one estimate. Many women wanted him, he once explained with his beautiful smile, and he tried to “accommodate” as many of them as he could. However, Johnson may have made up for his lack of numbers, compared to Chamberlain, with revelations of kinkiness. According to him, he has responded to the desire of various women by having sex in an elevator, sex on a desk in a business office (while a board meeting was going on next door), sex with six women in one night.

As much as I like Wilt and Magic, I must say I did not enjoy reading these accounts. I must also admit candidly that part of my reaction to Wilt’s and Magic’s revelations was a certain amount of racial embarrassment, an affliction to which I hope never to become immune. African Americans have spent decades denying that we are sexual primitives by nature, as racists have argued since the days of slavery. Then two college-trained black men of international fame and immense personal wealth do their best to reinforce the stereotype. And Chamberlain and Johnson merely bolstered the substance of an article in
Esquire
magazine about promiscuity among players in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which is predominantly black. Magic even repeated “an old joke in the NBA” in his book. “Question: What’s the hardest thing about going on the road? Answer: Trying not to smile when you kiss your wife goodbye.”

Of course, I also know from experience that men’s professional tennis, for all its white, upper-class associations, is
also a haven of promiscuity and easy sex, as perhaps all male professional sports are. Even in my day as a player, we had our camp followers. Top players traditionally stayed not in hotels but in the homes of local patrons of the sport, and our hostesses now and then gave us bed and board and insisted on sharing the bed with us. We had our Lotharios and Casanovas among the players, and group sex was not hard to come by, if that was your taste. It was never mine.

And, as I said, I did not enjoy reading about Wilt’s and Magic’s escapades. I felt more pity than sorrow for Wilt as his macho accounting backfired on him, in the form of a wave of public criticism. This admission (or exaggeration?) will probably haunt him for the rest of his life. He did not seem to understand that many people would find his behavior dehumanizing, or that it might lessen his attractiveness to women. After all, how many would want to be No. 20,001 in Wilt’s ledger? I was also uncomfortable watching Magic talk on television about his own sexual adventures, just after the publication of his book. With his insouciant smile, he seemed to be boasting about them, as at least one television reporter suggested to him; and yet Magic had also preached restraint as part of his laudable efforts at AIDS education. Making what he hoped was a careful distinction, he anticipated this criticism in his book. “I’m not writing about the women in my life in order to brag,” he declared. “I’m no Wilt Chamberlain.”

Along with just about everyone else, I too am fond of Magic as a person, beyond his commanding skills as a basketball player. I was happy for all his successes, from his victories as a college player to his Olympic Games triumph in Barcelona. I was in favor of his return to professional basketball after his retirement following his announcement that he was HIV-positive. I was disappointed by the reaction of those other players, notably Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz, who apparently helped to drive him back into retirement by expressing fears about possible contamination by him. What puzzled me especially, on this score, was a question I did not see raised anywhere. If Malone and others
were so fearful of being contaminated by Magic, why were they not insisting on mandatory testing of all athletes? After all, Johnson wrote candidly of sharing the bodies of certain women with other players. Who else is infected in the NBA?

However, Magic may have missed one opportunity in his commendable campaign to fight AIDS. Although he doubtless was caught up in the business of promoting his book (an obligation he certainly owes to his publisher), he probably went too far as a salesman. Unconsciously, no doubt, promotion of the book took momentary precedence over his sense of the dangers of promiscuity. In addition, while Magic is certainly a good, honest man, his discussion of promiscuity seldom had anything to do with morality or religion. As far as I can tell, nowhere in his book does Magic ever address the question of religion and morality in relationship to sex. When he discusses problems concerning promiscuity, they have to do with lawsuits alleging his paternity of children or spreading the AIDS virus, or with embarrassing Cookie Johnson, whom he married in 1991. In his book, he is discreet in not revealing the names of his partners, but he also offers “no apologies.” He declares only: “In the age of AIDS, unprotected sex is reckless. I know that now, of course. But the truth is, I knew it then, too. I just didn’t pay attention.”