40 years since Arthur Ashe's historic Wimbledon win

Forty years ago, and it’s the day of the men’s Wimbledon final. I had been following the tournament, not as a great tennis fan but because, despite his best years being behind him, Arthur Ashe had overturned the odds to reach the final.

I was a great admirer of this bright, articulate and modest young black tennis player. He had played in and captained the US Davis Cup team, and won the US and Australian Opens. But now, at 31, he was facing Jimmy Connors, nine years his junior and who had beaten Ashe in all their previous matches and hadn’t lost a game on his way to the final.

It was an open secret that these two Americans detested each other, due in no small part to their opposite characters…unlike Ashe, Connors was brash, arrogant and not at all patriotic, refusing to play in his country’s Davis Cup team.

On the morning of the match, every pundit thought Connors would win at a stroll, several saying it would be the most one-sided final played at Wimbledon for years. I was dreading the almost inevitable humiliation of Ashe in front of an international audience on tennis’s most famous world stage. So, that Saturday afternoon in 1975, I took a long walk from my flat in Blackheath down to Greenwich Park, avoiding listening to the many radios broadcasting the match. Bored by the Park, I meandered along Greenwich High Road and at around 5.00 plucked up courage to go into a shop where BBC radio’s Sports Report provided some background interest. I hardly believed my ears, they were describing how Arthur Ashe had outthought and outplayed Connors, winning Wimbledon 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4.

Ashe’s triumph has been called the most amazing ever seen because of the manner of his victory. For his success in the game had been built on power and audacious ground-strokes. But if he was to have any chance of beating a man deemed unbeatable, he would have to remodel his game with no time to practice the lobs, drop shots, chips and slices that believed would blunt Connor’s power on the Wimbledon surface. He also decided to change his serve - swinging to the wings instead of power down the centre. Again, hugely difficult to achieve without months of practice.

And yet his new game plan worked. The favourite was flung from side to side; pulled to the net and then beaten by a lob. After 20 minutes, Ashe won the first set 6-1 and leading 3-0 in the second, a spectator yelled: "Come on, Connors!" Connors, having chased yet another ball in vain, shouted back: "I'm trying for Chrissakes! I'm trying!"

However, Connors won the third set and then went 3-0 up in the fourth. Ashe, using great touch and guile, fought back to 4-4 and then, to Connors' surprise, attacked with a series of powerful, accurate shots. On match point, Ashe reverted to his new tactics – his serve pushed Connors wide and Ashe volleyed his weak return past him for the winning point and the umpire’s call: “Game, set and match to Ashe!”

A week before his 32nd birthday, Ashe had become Wimbledon’s first and still only male black champion.  Only 25 years previously, the All England club had banned black and jewish player's entry to the tournment, something of which Ashe - born in the Jim Crow segregated Virginia - must have been knowledgeable.

Sadly the story doesn’t have a happy ending…four years later, he suffered the first of three heart attacks, forcing him to retire from the game. In 1988 he was diagnosed as HIV positive, having contracted the virus through a blood transfusion during heart surgery.

In 1993, a few months before his death, aged 49, of Aids-related pneumonia, Arthur Ashe was still fighting bravely…he was arrested when protesting against the Bush Administration's treatment of Haitian refugees.

As this Wimbledon reaches its climax, more people should pay homage to the great man that was Arthur Ashe and recognise the scale of his achievement on that hallowed court in south west London 40 years ago. And maybe it's time the All England club look at a long term commemoration such as a statue or plaque for future generations to pay tribute to and be educated by, and one fitting to this great man's life?

by Paul Hensby