Margaret Court and Bud celebrating the 40th anniversary of her 1970 Grand Slam
How about a party, mate? Aussies love a high-spirited get together, and the chance to throw one. What better reason than to hail the chief collector of important tennis championships?
That would be Margaret Court, the No. 1 guest at a celebratory Melbourne Park luncheon on the day of the female final, an occasion she graced many times.
You might say she crawled into tennis anonymously, yet departed upright, draped in headlines and stardust and all the right stuff that could flow from a racket. continue reading »
January 29 2010 | Grand Slam | No Comments »
Sculpture on a terrace of the Metropolitan Opera House
Call me Bud C. That’s Bud the Curmudgeon.
You can also call me grouchy, grumpy and cantankerous, too. That’s OK because it’s the way I feel when running up against the confusing, careless corruption of tennis language.
What I have in mind is the game’s most precious and rarest accomplishment: the Grand Slam. It’s the quintessential quadrilateral, a gem so luminous and virtually out of reach that it has been achieved merely six times since the origin 71 years ago. But it hurts, and I shed curmudgeonly tears at the way the Slam is treated by most print and TV journalists, as well as numerous players and officials who ought to know better. continue reading »
August 29 2009 | Misc. Articles | 1 Comment »
“Laver’s lost the first two sets!”
The cry ran through the Wimbledon press room like wildfire. But it was chilling to me.
Wimbledon ’69 had barely begun, and the defending champion, “Rocket” Laver, was under siege, losing badly to an anonymous Indian in the second round on Court 4, a patch of grass hardly fit for the emperor.
To the other reporters, it was the possibility of a juicy upset story. Not for me. I was helping Laver write his memoir (“The Education of a Tennis Player”) – but the New York publisher had made it clear: No Grand Slam, no book. So I was not exactly objective on the subject of Rodney George Laver at the halfway mark of his second Slam. continue reading »
January 31 2009 | Australian Open | 1 Comment »
MELBOURNE — Hail the Conquering Hero! (But please don’t keep on demeaning him.)
I’m talking about that red-headed, left-handed spellbinding lad, Rodney George Laver, a refugee from a Queensland farm Well, he hasn’t fallen off a horse for some time, or wielded the sweetest racket this side of heaven. But he’s among us again to help salute the 40th anniversary of his most recent Grand Slam. (There were two.) And of course the celebration will largely take place in the tennis pen named for him at Melbourne Park.
continue reading »
January 23 2009 | Australian Open | 5 Comments »
