Bobby Riggs: The Sissie Game

[bottle]

I remember a first league interclub match years ago, where I was leading 6-2, 5-1 against a lower ranked opponent, when, all of a sudden I had an attack of lumbago. I couldn't default the match, because our team needed my victory to insure league victory. The pain was intense, I was bent sideways. I managed to win 7-6, just barely. Had to stay home from work for a week, I just couldn't stand up.

Great story. Mine has an unhappier ending. I was in the final of the annual tennis championship of the North Carolina School for the Arts, playing Ron, the black filmmaker guy who wrote Whoopie Goldberg's early films. He was faculty but had beaten an undergraduate to reach the final. I was not faculty but had beaten an undergraduate to reach the final.

There were a lot of film people standing about. At 5-1 in the first set (I was ahead), the meniscus in my left leg tore a little more than before.

I was lying on the court and couldn't get up. So I pushed the meniscus back in place. Ron thought I should go home. I wouldn't.

In the second set the score was 5-2 with me ahead when the same thing happened. This time manipulation of the knee didn't work.

"Well," Ron said to his admiring students. "You win any way you can."

My sister took me to the hospital for meniscus repair on New Year's Eve. The repair lasted for five years. Then came a partial knee replacement.

[kenh]

Got Tom's book and reading it. 3/4 of the way thru and it is a fascinating and fun read. Lots of insights to the book and lots of good tennis history.

[klacr]

Great to read about Bobby Riggs the human, and not about Bobby Riggs the character.
Grit indeed.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Lugano, Ticino
Switzerland

[gzhpcu]

I remember a first league interclub match years ago, where I was leading 6-2, 5-1 against a lower ranked opponent, when, all of a sudden I had an attack of lumbago. I couldn't default the match, because our team needed my victory to insure league victory. The pain was intense, I was bent sideways. I managed to win 7-6, just barely. Had to stay home from work for a week, I just couldn't stand up.

[johnyandell]

Curiosity couldn't agree more. Many matches between closely matched players can come down to the ability to absorb pain! Grit is one of my favorite words. Love it when my wife says I have that.

[curiosity]

Bobby's improbable rise to the top was, it seems to me, in part enabled by the nature of the game in his day, the equipment and surfaces. Fine. But about the "sissy" bit:

Who has not occasionally seen their match become a bit pretty, overfull with junk shots, half-speed placement gambits, void of the sweaty spirit-breaking struggle and punch that qualified an athletic activity as manly back in Bobby's day?

I can recall, though, as if it were yesterday... the first time I played against a bitter rival on clay at high noon on a hot humid July day. It became obvious to me that afternoon that tennis could require, to achieve victory, playing to the edge of death, nearly to heat-stroke, to the brink of humiliating collapse. It felt at that moment to be just as manly and as brutal as no-gloves boxing in a beer-fueled bar brawl. From the sweat in our eyes, to the blindingly intense sunlight and enfeebling heat, to the increasing reliance on maximum-force topspin drives whose main purpose was simply to take our opponent's lungs away...the game proved to be the equal of any sport in demanding a bucket-load of grit in order to prevail.

The kid with the racquet that Bobby bought for 100 marbles simply hadn't been given a proper introduction to the game.

[johnyandell]

Let's discuss Tom LeCompte's article, "Bobby Riggs: The Sissie Game"!