Hooked on tennis for a couple of weeks.
My drawings water colors are on Instagram @klonskyart
At 74 Crohn’s has shown up in my life.
When I get a flare up, which usually comes in the evening, I sit in front of the TV with a heating pad across my abdomen. I find the warmth helps.
I’m watching a lot of tennis.
I tried playing tennis for the first time with Anne years ago. But she played tennis as a kid and I could never beat her at it, so it became one more sport I don’t play. There are only so many times I enjoy losing at something.
This year’s U.S. Open has been a great diversion and helps get me through the gut pain I must endure.
By the way, in addition to the heating pad, I’m monitoring what things I eat that might cause flare ups. I’m seeing a Crohn’s GI doctor. I’m doing cannabis edibles now and then. Trying acupuncture. Looking for what ever works.
They tell me Crohn’s is not uncommon among Ashkenazi Jews.
I am descended from Ashkenazi Jews on both sides and carry their DNA.
But enough about my ailments.
This post is about watching great players who aren’t white play great tennis.
This has been the week to do it.
Tennis has been and is a mostly white sport forever.
Althea Gibson was the first African American to win a Grand Slam title in 1956.
Then there was the great Arthur Ash who won three Grand Slam singles titles. He won the U.S. Open in 1968.
Ashe started to play tennis at six years old.
He was the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open. He retired in 1980 and died in 1993. He was only 49.
I remember when I was a kid, my Mom would talk to me about Althea Gibson.
I don’t think my Mom gave a shit about sports in general or tennis in particular. But she followed Althea Gibson. For my communist Mom, Gibson was more than just a tennis player, just like Jackie Robinson was more than just a baseball player.
It was political. It was about race and social justice.
Even all these years after Althea Gibson, tennis is mainly a white sport.
Nearly 80% of pro tennis players are white. Only 7% are African American.
On a sweltering day in the summer of 1957, a slender young woman from Harlem became the first Black player to win the hallowed Wimbledon tennis tournament in England. After receiving the Venus Rosewater Dish from Queen Elizabeth II, Althea Gibson, 29, attended the Wimbledon Ball that evening, spinning around the dance floor in the arms of the Duke of Devonshire.
The celebration continued in Manhattan, where Ms. Gibson was feted with the first ticker-tape parade up Broadway to honor a woman of color.
But the following day, the illusion that the new queen of tennis had ushered in a chapter of racial equity shattered. When Ms. Gibson arrived in a Chicago suburb for her next tournament, she was refused a room at all of the upscale hotels, one of which also rejected a request to book a luncheon in her honor.
“Midnight had come for Cinderella, not in some small Mississippi town, but in liberal Greater Chicago,” a reporter wrote in the Saturday Review. (NY Times)
What has captivated me this week watching the U.S. Open?
I sat for hours watching three great tennis matches involving the “evolving” greatest of all time, Serena Williams. I watched two singles matches including what may be her last and then more when she teamed up with her sister Venus for a doubles match.
I have loved watching the intensity of Nick Kyrgios from Australia, whose father is Greek and whose mother is Malaysian.
He yells and swears and throws his racket to the ground in frustration. He’s pure rock n’ roll.
And last night I was scaring Ulysses with yells and clapping as Frances Tiafoe defeated the world’s number two player, Rafael Nadal.
Tiafoe is the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone.
I wasn’t the only one who got excited.
Tonight the young teenager Coco Gauff faces Caroline Garcia in a quarter final.
Still, the color of change in tennis moves so slowly.
I mean it’s been 70 years since Mom was momentarily a sports fan as she followed the career of Althea Gibson.