Anyone for Sense?

Somewhere in this vast, great nation, there undoubtedly is a strong, agile, fiercely competitive youngster who could be the best tennis player the world has ever seen. This youngster himself may never know it. Or even care. Little that surrounds the game of tennis today is likely to appeal to him much. For a starter, there is the scoring system, in which 1) "zero" for some reason is "love," 2) one point counts as ten, or 15, or merely "advantage," and 3) a "set" may be six games or go on forever. And then there is the hypocrisy of a sport in which amateurs refuse to turn pro, because that could mean taking a cut in salary.

One day, the game's archaic scoring system may be replaced with something akin to James Van Alen's VASSS (for Van Alen Simplified Scoring System), in which zero is zero, a point is a point, one game of 31 points decides a match, and both spectators and players are spared such dreary marathons as one of the doubles contests at last month's Newport Hall of Fame Invitational. The match lasted 6 hrs. 10 min., and the final score was 3-6, 49-41, 22-20. With that ever-present possibility, it is no wonder that the West Side Tennis Club's 14,000-seat stadium in Forest Hills, N.Y., was one-third empty throughout most of last week's U.S. National championships. The wonder is that it was two-thirds full.

Rackets & Relations. After all, the world's 15 top tennis players were not even competing in the Nationals. They are all professionals, and in tennis, unlike golf, pros are never permitted to compete against amateurs--on the theory, presumably, that such "amateurs" as Australia's Roy Emerson, who was upset by the U.S.'s Clark Graebner in last week's quarterfinals at Forest Hills, would sully themselves by associating with people who openly play for pay. Emerson himself commands $10,000 a year as a "public relations consultant" for Philip Morris, another $6,000 as a "racket consultant" for Slazengers' sporting-goods firm, plus an estimated $11,000 in tax-free "expenses," paid by tournament promoters. That's $27,000 a year--not bad for an amateur. Graebner, for instance, has to get by on $9,000 a year (his stipend as a member of the U.S. Davis Cup team). If it were not for the fact that his wife, Carole, also plays tournament tennis and collects her own expense checks, the Graebners would be hard-pressed to make ends meet.

Such shamateurism, says Robert J. Kelleher, president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, "is a negligible part of the game, affecting a very small minority of players. But it dirties everybody." Its byproducts are apathy and mediocrity. "The mediocre player has it made in the amateur system," explains Ecuador-born Pancho Segura, the longtime touring pro who now teaches at California's Beverly Hills Tennis Club. "He can live on charity until he's 35 or 36." It is not uncommon for amateurs to demand expense checks in advance from tournament promoters, then fail to appear at the tournaments. "If they were the Beatles, they would have signed a contract, and you could sue them," sighs Britain's Cliff Smyllie, chairman of the Welsh amateur championships. "But if a tennis player doesn't turn up--or turns up, takes his expenses and loses--you can't do a thing." One possible solution, suggested by California's Billie Jean King, the current Wimbledon champion and top-seeded female player at Forest Hills last week, would be a system of "incentive" bonuses. "Why can't we have bonuses for every win a player gets, and a cash prize for the winner?" asks Billie Jean. "That way you'd see everybody breaking their necks to win. Tennis would benefit."

Cracks in the Wall. Tennis would benefit even more from open competition between pros and amateurs. Today's apathetic amateur would have little choice but to knuckle down, polish his game and play for his life to have any hope of winning. Australia's Rod Laver, all-conquering as an amateur, knows how tough playing the pros can be; when he turned pro in 1963, he lost 19 of his first 21 matches. Forward-thinking officials in the U.S., Britain and Australia have been pressing for open tennis for more than a decade, but every attempt to gain approval from the International Lawn Tennis Federation has met with stubborn opposition from smaller nations and Russia--where shamateurism, not just in tennis but in all sports, is even more flagrant than in the U.S. At last July's I.L.T.F. meeting in Luxembourg, the vote against a motion that would have permitted member nations to experiment with open tennis was 129-83, and the motion cannot be brought up for reconsideration until 1969.

Still, there are hopeful signs. The U.S.L.T.A., insists Kelleher, is trying hard "to get rid of tennis' rich, country-club image." Such amateur shrines as Forest Hills and Newport are stops on the pro tour, and last month, for the first time in history, the hallowed turf of Wimbledon was trodden by pros competing in a threeday, $35,000 tournament that was won by Australia's Laver and drew 30,000 fans. "The best thing that can happen to tennis is to break the old traditions," says Pancho Segura. The walls are not yet crumbling, but cracks are beginning to show.

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