'Greatest Matches' offers a Lot More than just the
Scores
Reviewed by Joel Drucker
Greatest Matches of the Twentieth Century
Steve Flink
Rutledge Books
Price - $24.95
Pages - 296
 To understand
the pleasure and impact of Steve Flink’s new book, The Greatest Matches
of the Twentieth Century, you must also know the history of tennis
literature. It is a twisted and tragic tale. Few sports are as woefully under documented
as tennis. For all the dozens of media credentials issued at tournaments,
for all the ink and bytes and footage generated, it is extremely difficult
to find engaging accounts of tennis matches - that is, stories that give
you the blood, guts, and glory of the actual on court struggle, and then
place it in a relevant context.
Alas, tennis’
current fate has been to find personality overwhelming performance. While
dozens of basketball reporters will wonk out on Shaq’s free throw woes,
nary a tennis story explains quite why Pete Sampras consistently beats
Andre Agassi. But they will tell you about Anna Kournikova’s website.
Perhaps for the tennis dilettante, the game itself isn’t good enough.
Fashion has replaced history, artifice beats art, myth whups reality; and
so on. But us aficionados who know the court - whether as ardent
recreational players or savvy spectators - demand something beefier.
Say hello to a
Texas-sized steak. Flink’s accomplishment is mighty, hearty and a
delicious reading experience. Though the premise of the book is simple,
executing it with Flink’s characteristic elan and brio is as arduous a
challenge as playing Bjorn Borg on clay. In other words, to bring home the
bacon on this one, Flink has harnessed every conceivable weapon -
videotapes, newspaper stories, magazine profiles, books, and exclusive
one-on-one interviews - to deliver accounts that are dramatic, stylish,
exacting, and insightful.
The creative
twist on this book is that Flink not only tells the story of each match in
detail, but that each chapter includes sections titled
“prologue” and “epilogue” explaining each player’s path to that
day - and their subsequent journey in the wake of the match. As a result,
each portrait ends up as fully-rounded as possible.
We learn for
example, that rivals Helen Wills and Helen Jacobs not only learned to play
at the same club in Berkeley, California, but that the younger Jacobs was
so obsessed with Wills that she even lived in a dwelling Wills had once
occupied. Rod Laver’s “pattern of play was appealingly different from
most left-handers . . . a habitual risk taker who had his share of off
days.” In the wake of his 1995 U.S. Open loss to Pete Sampras,
Andre Agassi “was deeply scarred by his loss to Sampras . . . almost
permanently wounded.” Yet Flink is so up to the minute and
clear-sighted in his analysis that he is able to explain Agassi’s
resurgence in 1999 and explain how “Agassi wavered for a long while, but
recovered the competitive zeal in time to close out the century.”
Because Flink is
so adept at seeing the sport’s ebb and flow, this book not only provides
details of matches, it also fleshes out much tennis history that is often
overlooked and certainly underpublished. At 41, for example Pancho
Gonzales waged an epic first-round Wimbledon match against Charlie
Pasarell that lasted five hours and 12 minutes. Gonzales won by the now
unrepeatable score of 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9.
Yet what adds
even more poignancy to this tale is Flink’s earlier description of
Gonzales’ life in exile. Pros such as Gonzales were barred from Grand
Slam events until 1968. No one was hurt by this more than the tempestuous
Pancho, who went from the age of 21 to 40 without playing a Slam. Instead,
as Flink writes in an earlier account of a Gonzales tussle with Lew Hoad,
“He remained a complicated man, wearing his grievances disdainfully,
altering his moods so frequently no one could ever be certain what to
expect from him. In any case, he remained a major force in professional
tennis through the sixties. He would play during his thirties in relative
obscurity, testing himself against the leading competitors who turned pro
after taking major championships.”
From the days of
Suzanne Lenglen and Bill Tilden, all the way through to Steffi Graf’s
1999 French Open triumph over Martina Hingis, Flink is a virtual Kilroy of
our sport. And in many, many cases, he truly was there. In the 35 years
since 1965, he has been to 87 Grand Slam events, carefully witnessing
match after match - and as a journalist, paying attention to those slight
details that make the difference between the banal and the sublime. In an
epilogue to the Jimmy Connors-Bjorn Borg 1976 U.S. Open final, he shows
the evolution of Connors’ career and shares an anecdote of Jimbo
discussing Ken Rosewall on the eve of the 1982 Open final: “Rosewall
more than anyone taught me how important it was to get down for my ground
strokes. He kept the ball so low all the time that he forced you to keep
digging and it was a great lesson for me.” Flink’s skill at
weaving the connective threads linking players from different eras turns
an individual sport into a community of champions, learning, building and
jousting with one another.
Laver was a habitual risk taker who had his share
of off days
|
But even
Flink’s encyclopedic knowledge of tennis history (there are probably
less
than a handful of American journalists who can dare verbally rally with him
on this stuff) make the prologues and epilogues mere salads, desserts and
cheese courses for the main entree of the match story. Laver and Rosewall’s
‘72 epic in Dallas, Borg and McEnroe’s scintillating ‘80 Wimbledon final
and two Evert-Navratilova struggles (scrupulously fair, Flink grants each a
victory) are among the 30 treated with blow-by-blow richness.
Each tale is paced appropriately, with Flink zeroing in for crunch time. Here’s
his
account of the critical stages of Evert’s ‘85 French Open final versus
Navratilova: “Serving at 5-5, 0-40, Chrissie benefited from a brief lapse from
Martina, who drove a forehand topspin crosscourt wide, allowing her rival to
reach 15-40. Down to a second serve as she had been on the previous point,
Evert took full advantage of a relatively short return from Navratilova. She
stepped in as if if were 2-2 in the opening set and directed a
two-hander crosscourt. Clean winner. 30-40. The next point was the single most
critical exchange of the match.”
You’ll have to read page 194 of the book to see what happened. You
darn
well better read
this book to understand what makes tennis so rich. And you’ll enjoy
reading it in any order, as each section is nicely self-contained. In the back is an enchanting section detailing Flink’s
ranking of the
top matches, an honorable mention list of 20 more and his all-time top
tens. Argue at your own risk. Enjoy at your own pace. Anyone who cares about
the history of tennis is in for a sumptuous platter. Snack or
feast as
you like.
Oakland-based Joel Drucker has been involved in tennis for
many years as a player and writer. He’s written extensively
about the game for such publications as Tennis Magazine, HBO
Sports and Biography Magazine. He also served as the technical
editor on Patrick McEnroe’s book, Tennis For Dummies. |
