Arthur Ashe

1943-1993

American tennis player

Arthur Ashe's 1993 memoir, aptly titled Days of Grace, is a reflection on his brief but rich life as a champion tennis player, a father, an African-American man, and a compassionate and courageous human being. As the first African American to win a major men's tennis title and to be ranked number one internationally, Ashe used his position and reputation to speak out against inequities not only in the world of professional sports, but also against injustices wherever he saw them. That would prove to be a sacrifice more than simply a good deed. Ashe himself admitted in 1989 that had he focused only on tennis he could have been a better competitor. At the same time, it was clear by his words and actions that he didn't want to be remembered only for all his "firsts" as a black athlete but also as an African-American man who had fulfilled his "duties as a citizen," as he noted in his memoir. When he died at age 49 of AIDS-related pneumonia, thousands of mourners from all over the world attended his funeral.

Growing Up

Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was born on July 10, 1943, near Richmond, Virginia, in one of the local hospitals that cared for black citizens. The hospitals in much of the U.S. were not integrated; segregation was the rule for medical care. Integrated schools were also unheard of in the South, so Ashe attended an all-black school. Even the playgrounds of his childhood years were segregated, and he watched from a distance as white children played tennis, a game that immediately fascinated him. In 1947, his father was made superintendent of the blacks-only Brook Field, a public park with a pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and baseball fields. The Ashes moved to the caretaker's cottage in the center of Brook Field, which soon became young Arthur's entire universe.

Ashe was a sickly kid who suffered from measles, chickenpox, mumps, whooping cough, and diphtheria, among other illnesses, which left him thin and weak. He'd always been interested in sports but, with arms and legs "thin as soda straws," as he described himself in his 1967 autobiography, Advantage Ashe, he was too light for football and too slow for track. He began to hit tennis balls. Then, in 1950, about a year after he'd first picked up a tennis racquet, his mother, Mattie Cordell Cunningham Ashe, died unexpectedly. Mattie Ashe had gone to the hospital for a minor surgery but succumbed to toxemia, a poisoning of the blood. The seven-year-old Ashe was devastated and refused to attend her burial. In order to cope, he grew somewhat emotionally distant and poured his energy into his schoolwork and tennis, and excelled at both.

By channeling his grief into his tennis game, Ashe had found a way to make adversity work in his favor. He did the same with his schoolwork. Attending a segregated elementary school in Richmond, he and his classmates were always taught they had to work harder than white children in order to succeed. "Discrimination plus the bias women faced in the job market combined to provide us with some truly remarkable teachers," he told the Chicago Tribune.

"Every day we got the same message drummed into us. 'Despite discrimination and lynch mobs,' teachers told us, 'some black folks have always managed to find a way to succeed. Okay, this may not be the best-equipped school; that just means you're going to have to be a little bit better prepared than white kids and ready to seize any opportunity that comes your way.'" Ashe was further encouraged by his father, a strict but loving disciplinarian who steeped in his son the virtues of morality.

Early Lessons

A student at Virginia Union University and part-time tennis teacher at Brook Field, Ronald Charity, soon recognized Ashe's natural talent. Charity began to coach Ashe, and encouraged him to enter his first tournament, at the Brook Field courts, which he lost to a boy three years his elder. But Ashe was not at all discouraged. By the time he was ten, Ashe was competing against—and defeating—older, stronger boys, but the most important lesson he learned from Charity wasn't about shot-making; it was about sportsmanship. Charity had taught the young phenomenon not to gloat, as did his next instructor, Dr. Walter Johnson.

Johnson was a physician in Lynchburg, Virginia, who in his spare time coached African-American tennis players during summers at his home. His protégé, Althea Gibson , was the first to break the color barrier of the American Lawn Tennis league in 1956, after which she won the French and Italian titles, and numerous wins at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. From the summer of 1953 to the summer of 1960, Ashe worked with Dr. Johnson, who not only fine-tuned Ashe's game but also his conduct, the etiquette and composure that would become an Ashe hallmark. It was still prior to the civil-rights movement in America, and whenever black players were allowed to compete against whites, they were too aware that they had to be on their best behavior on the court. Ashe, like Johnson's other students, was schooled in the courteous acceptance of defeat and the humble pride of victory.

From 1955 to 1963, Ashe won titles in American Tennis Association (ATA) competitions. (The ATA was the African-American equivalent of the United States Lawn Tennis Association.) In 1960 and 1961, Ashe took the U.S. Junior Indoor singles title, which got him noticed by a Missouri coach, Richard Hudlin, a friend of Johnson's. It soon became apparent that if Ashe was to pursue tennis, he'd have to leave Richmond, a raciallysegregated city that precluded Ashe from playing whites. With winter approaching and the city's indoor courts closed to blacks, Ashe took Hudlin up on his suggestion that he spend his senior year in St. Louis. Once there, Ashe learned to leave his solid baseline game and became one of the original serve-and-volley players. He graduated from Sumner High School with the highest grade point average. But what gave him the greatest happiness was the realization of Dr. Johnson's dream that an African-American player would oppose a white player in a major United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA; now the USTA) competition. Though it had denied him access to competition several times on account of his race, the USLTA listed Ashe as the fifth-ranked junior player in the country and a Junior Davis Cup team member.

The Amateur Years

Numerous universities offered the young athlete and scholar a place in their freshman class. Ashe chose UCLA, which boasted one of the country's best collegiate tennis programs, and intended to study architecture or engineering. However, Ashe's coach urged him to major in business administration so he could better balance his studies, tennis practice and travel, ROTC, and the 250 hours of work his scholarship required he give to the college. The strategy paid off. When Ashe entered UCLA he was twenty-eighth in the U.S. amateur rankings. Two years and numerous tournaments later, Ashe was ranked sixth.

Under the tutelage of coach J. D. Morgan, who'd scouted Ashe, and Pancho Gonzalez , Ashe honed his aggressive court style, with a powerful backhand and speed-of-light serve. This was the ammunition that made him such a success on the faster grass and hard court surfaces. By the time he graduated from UCLA, he'd captured the NCAA singles and doubles (with Ian Crookenden) titles, played on the U.S. Davis Cup team, won the Johnston Award for his contribution to the sport, and was the country's number-one collegiate competitor. But perhaps most satisfying was the naming of February 4 as Arthur Ashe Day in the city of Richmond. "Ten years ago," Ashe said in a speech that day, "this would not have happened. It is as much a tribute to Richmond and the state of Virginia as it is to me."

Chronology

Ashe was inducted into the army in 1966, the year he graduated from UCLA. During the two years Ashe served in the army, first as deputy brigade commander in Fort Lewis, Washington, and then as a second lieutenant, his tennis career stalled somewhat. After boot camp, he was offered the position of assistant tennis coach at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, which he accepted, but it still didn't leave him much time to develop his game. He did reach the U.S. Indoor Championship finals in 1966, won the U.S. Clay Court Championship the following year, and at one point had a 9-0 singles Davis Cup record, but he missed a number of major tournaments and lost in the third round in straight sets to Australian John Newcombe at the U.S. Nationals.

Ranked Number One

Professional tennis players who'd experienced Ashe's topspin backhand or powerhouse serve knew he was a competitor with the makings of a champion. Though still an amateur, he'd won numerous tournaments against the sport's best players, and his Davis Cup team performance was admirable. But he hadn't taken a single Grand Slam event. No one knew better than Ashe himself that in 1968-his college years behind him, his two years of army service complete-he would have to put everything he had into tennis if he wanted to be successful as a professional.

Upon leaving the military Ashe was in excellent physical condition, and he was mentally prepared to be a winner. That summer he played well at Wimbledon, though he fell to Rod Laver in the semi-finals. But he was victorious in both the U.S. Nationals men's singles title and the first U.S. Open, a feat no man had ever accomplished. In addition, his Davis Cup team took the title from the Australians, a win Ashe cherished above all others. He once said he never lost sleep over any tournament other than the Davis Cup. To Ashe, there was an enormous difference between losing as an individual and losing as a representative of the United States.

The first black man to win a Grand Slam title and now the top-ranked player in America, Arthur Ashe had achieved true celebrity status. Photographs of him appeared on magazine covers, his name appeared on tennis-related products, major corporations signed him on as spokesman, and he offered tennis clinics for American Express and Coca-Cola. He was appointed tennis director at the Doral Resort and Country Club in Miami, Florida, and even made the tabloid gossip pages when he dated fashion models and stars such as singer Diana Ross.

Ashe put his hard-won fame to use. He turned professional in 1969 and immediately began to work to protect players' rights and interests. With his colleagues he created the International Tennis Players Association, acting first as treasurer and later as the union's vice-president. (The association was renamed the Association of Tennis Professionals in 1972, and two years later Ashe was elected ATP president.) He repeatedly spoke out against the apartheid policies of the South African government and succeeded in having South Africa expelled from Davis Cup competition. With his stature, Ashe's public outcry garnered world attention to the oppressive rule of apartheid, and in 1970 Ashe was selected to act as goodwill ambassador to Africa. The U. S. Department of State sent him to Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, where he met with government leaders, students, and diplomats. The following year, as a member of a delegation of tennis players, Ashe visited Cameroon, Gabon, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire. It was at a tennis club in Cameroon where Ashe noticed the young, talented Yannick Noah, who he arranged to have sent to France for tutelage under the care of the French Tennis Federation.

Center Court

Over the course of the next few years, Ashe's game seemed to stagnate. A new generation of competitors, such as Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors , were testing his dynamic serve-and-volley game with power, precision, and an almost appalling sense of confidence. By 1975, Ashe's ranking had sunk to fifth place. Some blamed his political activism for his deteriorating game, others his age (he was 31). Ashe steeled himself, determined to win the World Champion Tennis title that spring in Dallas, Texas. He did. But an even bigger victory was in sight.

Awards and Accomplishments

When Arthur Ashe stepped onto the grass at Wimbledon and bowed to the Royal Box, the last thing on his

mind was the fact that he was the first African American to compete in the exclusive court of the world's oldest tennis tournament. The date was July 5, 1975, and Ashe was playing for the men's singles title. The challenge would require his complete concentration. His opponent was one of the top-seeded players, twenty-two-year-old fellow American Jimmy Connors. The two had battled before and in all three of their matches, Ashe had been the loser. Sports fans on both sides of the Atlantic expected the brash and self-taught Connors to "slaughter" Ashe, as Ashe noted in his memoir Days of Grace.

In addition, only days before Wimbledon, Connors had filed a lawsuit against Ashe for libel. Ashe was not intimidated. He'd stood by his principles, having accused Connors of playing matches for big purses while refusing to join the United States squad for the international Davis Cup competition, where players are paid in the currency of patriotic honor, not hard cash. Despite the lawsuit, Ashe retained his cool and even demeanor.

Ashe won Wimbledon by finessing the hard-hitting Connors with a brilliantly strategic game of defensive tennis. He played conservatively, hitting balls deep then rushing the net, keeping Connors off balance. Also, Ashe had decided that rather than try to outpower the southpaw, he'd hit the ball softly, breaking Connors' rhythm. It would also force Connors to generate his own power, rather than simply redirect the ball using Ashe's velocity. Ashe's plan for the historic match would later help some of the decade's best players—Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, and John McEnroe —undercut Connors' phenomenal, dominating power game. With a 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 victory at Wimbledon, he not only obtained the number-one ranking in the world that year but saw the culmination of a lifetime of struggle. "When I took the match point, all the years, all the effort, all the support I had received over the years came together," he later reflected.

Back to Business

During a benefit tournament in 1976 for the United Negro College Fund at New York's Madison Square Garden, a professional photographer stepped up to Ashe to take his picture. By the day's end, Ashe had a date with the photographer, the stunning Jeanne Marie Moutoussamy. Four months later, Ashe—in a cast having recently undergone heel surgery- and Moutoussamy were married in New York City by Reverend Andrew Young, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Ashe's heel surgery had been successful, but another injury followed, and, compounded with recurrent eye inflammations, he decided to lay low for the year. Though he took the Australian Open doubles title, with his partner Tony Roche, he was forced to skip Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1977. This caused his ranking to fall, which in turn led the sportswear company Catalina to drop Ashe as a key endorser. Ashe was forced to come up with other means of providing an income.

Ashe's academic background in business and his real-life experience with some of the largest corporations in America made him comfortable acting as a consultant and entrepreneur. During the course of his life, he had a business relationship with Head USA, a manufacturer of sports gear that kept Ashe on board even though it lost accounts in the South due to Ashe's race. Doral Resort and Country Club maintained its association with Ashe, which had special meaning for Ashe since the nearby Admiral Hotel refused to accommodate him during a 1961 tournament in Miami, yet housed all the other junior players, who were white. In addition, Ashe became a columnist with Tennis magazine and the Washington Post, and was a consultant with clothing manufacturer Le Coq Sportif. "The longevity and human quality of these connections mean far more to me than the money they bring," he wrote in Days of Grace. Ashe also acted as consultant with the Aetna Life and Casualty Company, where he had been in charge of minority recruitment, and would later be honored by the offer of a seat on their board of directors.

The Greatest Burden

By 1979 Ashe still wasn't ready to give up tennis. He played thirteen tournaments but reached the finals in only two. Then, on July 30, a tremendous pain in his chest woke the athlete from a sound sleep. Within an hour, the pain would recur twice. Each time it subsided he went back to sleep. The next day, Ashe gave two tennis clinics in New York and while signing autographs, was struck again. Arthur Ashe had had a heart attack. In December he underwent a quadruple bypass surgery. He would never play tennis again.

But Ashe was optimistic and tried to get back into competition shape. It was not to be. On April 16, 1980, Ashe announced his retirement from competitive tennis. Yet he remained actively involved in the sport. That year he was made captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, whose members included the mercurial John McEnroe, Peter Fleming, and Vitas Gerulaitis, and led the team to victory in 1981 and 1982. He worked as a sports commentator for ABC and HBO television, gave innumerable clinics to inner city children, wrote articles and books on the sport, made a tennis video, and in 1985 was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1983, Ashe underwent a second bypass operation. Weak from the procedure, he was given a blood transfusion to try to bolster his strength and speed his recovery. In 1988, Ashe needed an operation on his brain, and tests following that surgery were positive for the virus that causes AIDS. Doctors concluded that Ashe had contracted HIV from the transfusion he was given following his second heart surgery. At the time the news was a death sentence. However, this did not stop Ashe from struggling for social justice. In 1985 he was arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington, DC, while protesting against the country's institutionalized racism. A few years later he was arrested again, for speaking out against President Bush's policy regarding the treatment of Haitian refugees with HIV/AIDS.

In 1992, USA Today threatened to run a story announcing that Ashe had AIDS. He talked it over with his wife and decided to scoop the paper. In a public press conference, Ashe not only admitted that he had AIDS but kicked off his campaign to educate the public about the disease and set up a foundation to defeat the disease. He spoke out against discrimination against homosexuals in general and AIDS sufferers for the remainder of his life. But he never asked for pity. When a well-meaning reporter for People magazine suggested that having AIDS must be the greatest burden Ashe had ever had to bear, he corrected her. "No, it isn't," he wrote in his memoir. "Being Black is the greatest burden I've had to bear.… Having to live as a minority in America. Even now it continues to feel like an extra weight tied around me."

Ashe completed his final memoir, Days of Grace, just two days before he died. The book concludes with an open letter to his daughter, Camera, then only six years old (she was born December 21, 1986), whom he wrote was a "daily affirmation of the power of life." That spirit kept Ashe active and outspoken throughout his fatal illness. "He was out doing things, making his point, and taking care of business right up until the end," former competitor Jimmy Connors recalled in Sports Stars. "I guess that sums up everything he stood for."

Ashe's Legacy

Arthur Ashe's legacy is manifold. Rarely have sports celebrities taken on social issues with such passion and commitment as did Ashe. He broke color barriers both in his own country and abroad, and fought tirelessly for social justice, founding the African American Athletic Association to mentor student athletes and helping preserve the history of African-American athletes with his contributions to the 1988 A Hard Road to Glory. He helped erase the stigma of having AIDS, raised public awareness of this devastating epidemic, and spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in an effort to get more funds devoted to AIDS research. In 1990, when President Nelson Mandela, freed from his South African jail after twenty-seven years, was asked which American he'd most like to meet, his immediate response was "Arthur Ashe." Tennis champion Martina Navratilova characterized Ashe, as reported in the Washington Post (and quoted in Newsmakers 1993), as "an extraordinary human being who transcended his sport, his race, religion and nationality and in his own way helped to change the world."

Related Biography: Tennis Player Yannick Noah

Yannick Simon Camille Noah was born on May 18, 1960, in Sedan, France, and at the age of three he moved with his family to his father's native country of Cameroon. In 1971, while attending a tennis clinic at a local club, Noah was given the chance to play with Ashe, who was making his second goodwill tour of Africa. Ashe, moved by the youngster's plight and his talent, arranged to have Noah enrolled at the French Tennis Federation (FTF) training center in Nice, France, where he trained for five years. One year short of graduation, Noah left school to focus exclusively on tennis. In 1977, Noah won the French junior title and the Wimbledon junior title, after which he went professional.

In 1978, Noah took the Australian Open and U.S. Open singles titles, and in 1979 made it to the semis and finals at the French Open and Wimbledon. His Grand Slam performances earned him the top ranking in France in 1980. At age twenty-three he won the French Open, and a year later he and partner Henri Leconte won the doubles title there.

Noah stayed off the tennis circuit for a year to recover from injuries and the devastating death of his grandfather. He came back to his game to win the Italian Open in 1985, but what looked like an auspicious return to the game was only transitory. He played his way to the finals of many tournaments and achieved the ranking in 1986 of third in the world in singles play and first in doubles, yet the more prestigious titles eluded him. After pursuing a music career for a few years, he trained the French team in 1996 for the Davis Cup and the Fed Cup, the premier international team event for women. In both events, France was victorious.

Noah lives in Montreux, Switzerland, and often participates in the charitable tennis tournaments and the ATP Senior Tour tournaments in Switzerland.

Increasing minority presence in all sectors of society was a vision to which Arthur Ashe dedicated his life. "I know I could never forgive myself," Ashe wrote in his memoir, "if I elected to live without human purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes from trying to help others." Ashe was adamant about the necessity of increasing minority participation throughout society, not just in the sports arena. "We deify black athletes," the Houston Chronicle quoted Ashe as saying in 1992. "Black families are eight times more likely to push youngsters into athletics than are white families.… The disparity is glaring." Shortly after his retirement, Ashe said (according to an article on About.com), "We have been on the same roads-sports and entertainmenttoo long. We need to pull over, fill up at the library, and speed away to Congress and to the Supreme Court, the unions and the business world."

SELECTED WRITINGS BY ASHE:

(With Clifford Gewecke, Jr.) Advantage Ashe, Coward, McCann, 1967.

(With Frank DeFord) Arthur Ashe: Portrait in Motion, Houghton Mifflin, 1975.

(With Louie Robinson, Jr.) Getting Started in Tennis, Atheneum, 1977.

Mastering Your Tennis Strokes, Macmillan, 1978.

(With Neil Amdur) Off the Court, New American Library, 1981.

Arthur Ashe's Tennis Clinic, Golf Digest/Tennis Inc., 1981.

(With Kip Branch, Oceana Chalk, and Francis Harris) A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, Warner, 1988.

(With Arnold Rampersad) Days of Grace, Knopf, 1993.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Ashe, Arthur and Arnold Rampersad. Days of Grace. New York: Knopf, 1993.

The Complete Marquis Who's Who. Marquis Who's Who, 2001.

Contemporary Black Biography, Vol. 18. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1998.

Newsmakers 1993. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Research, 1993.

Weissberg, Ted. Arthur Ashe: Tennis Great. New York: Chelsea House, 1991.

Periodicals

"Arthur Ashe's Widow Says She's Not in Agreement with Husband's Statue Being Erected amid Civil War Heroes." Jet (January 22, 1996): 34.

Bruning, Fred. "How a Private Citizen Lost His Privacy Rights." Maclean's (May 4, 1992): 13.

Chicago Tribune (November 28, 1988).

"France's Davis Cup Captain Yannick Noah Remembers Big Help from U.S. Davis Cup Captain Arthur Ashe." Jet (February 27, 1995): 48.

Johnson, Robert E. "Arthur Ashe's New Book, Days of Grace, Tells of His Three Burdens: Race, AIDS, and Davis Cup." Jet (July 26, 1993): 34.

Leavy, Walter. "Arthur Ashe: The Gentle Warrior 1943-1993." Ebony (April 1993): 110.

Lipper, Bob. "Arthur Ashe." Richmond Times Dispatch (February 1, 2002).

Review of Days of Grace. Ebony (September 1993): 18.

Other

"1998 Racial and Gender Report Card." Center for th Study of Sport in Society, Northeastern University. http://www.sportinsociety.org/ (July 5, 2002).

About.com. http://racerelations.about.com (July 10, 2002).

American Tennis Association. http://www.atanational.com (July 22, 2002).

"Arthur Ashe: Much More Than Tennis." About.com. http://tennis.about.com/ (July 7, 2002).

"Ashe's Impact Reached Far Beyond the Court." ESPN Classic. http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Ashe_Arthur.html (July 10, 2002).

Celebrities in Switzerland. http://switzerlandisyours.com/ (July 10, 2002).

Contemporary Authors Online. http://galenet.galegroup.com/ (July 4, 2002).

Fed Cup. http://216.39.7.20/ (July 19, 2002).

"Fête Le Mur." BNP Paribas. http://tennis.bnpparibas.com/ (July 10, 2002).

Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/ (July 5, 2002).

"Marvelous Messenger: Ashe stressed importance of striving for excellence outside sports." Houston Chronicle. http://www.houstonchron.com/ (July 5, 2002).

MCM.NET. http://www.mcm.net/ (July 19, 2002).

Sports Illustrated/CNN. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/tennis/features/1997/arthurashebiography.html (July 4, 2002).

"Women and Minorities in Tennis." Tennis Industry. http://www.tennisindustry.com/ (July 10, 2002).

Sketch by Jane Summer