Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Bud Collins on Althea Gibson

She was thunder and lightning.

In style, historic impact - and even meteorogically speaking on the day Althea Gibson began to blaze her way to recognition in a big league that she would, in time, dominate.

It was the sphere of international tennis in which Althea's pioneering black face was at first a novelty, then that of a powerful, conquering presence. There was thunder in her serve and lightning in her moves toward the net on long legs that would leap the tournament game's color bar and land her in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Although she had been out of the public eye for more than a decade, reclusive and ill, Gibson, who died Sunday, 34-days after her 76th birthday, was well aware of the mark she had made. Yet she wore lightly the mantle of someone known across the planet for achieving a first, hers winning a battle against prejudice.

"All of a sudden the dam broke," she remarked in reminiscing about that August afternoon 53 years ago when Althea certified that the US Championships was no longer a whites-only affair. It was three years after Jackie Robinsad on hintegrated baseball in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, and her New York scene was nearby, the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, where Althea stepped onto the grandstand court with the reigning Wimbledon champ, Louise Brough. An overflow crowd of 2000 at the secondary court wanted to see, as one spectator put it, "if the [nearly 6-foot 23-year-old] colored girl could really play."

She could.

Gibson had actually tweaked the game's racism of the time a year before when she was permitted to enter the Eastern Indoor Championships, and earned in American Lawn Tennis magazine her first headline: NEGRESS STARS IN EASTERN.

But there was debate within the US Tennis Association about accepting her entry in the American major at Forest Hills. Lobbying in her behalf were two former champions, Bostonian Sarah Palfrey Cooke, and Californian Alice Marble, whose attacking, serve-and-volley approach was also Althea's. Perhaps the tipping point was Marble's strong editorial in American Lawn Tennis, then an influential publication, declaring that it was about time for "real sportsmanship."

So there was Althea, after a nervous start in their second rounder, beating defending champion Louise Brough, 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 - four points away - when genuine thunder and lightning, and near tragedy, intervened. During the crackling rainstorm that closed them down for the day, a lightning bolt struck one of the large, brooding concrete eagles on the upper rim on the stadium, and sent it tumbling to the concourse. Luckily no spectator was in the way.

Did the storm save Brough, who regrouped to win three straight games the next day, and retained her title?

Althea would smile when the subject came up, saying the fall of the eagle, "may have been an omen that times were changing."

Having started from so far behind, lacking topflight competion until 1950, Althea never lost faith in herself, certain that the underlying qualities would be refined and surface as they did in Paris at age 29 in 1956, There she registered the first major singles triumph for a black: the French. Even though her offensive nature was better suited to the faster lane, grass, she was building a complete game, solid groundies that also netted her the Italian title that year. As well she seized her first major on grass, the Wimbledon doubles in the company of Brit Angela Buxton.

"Quite a combination. Not the most popular in those circles in those days," chuckles Buxton. "I a Jew and Althea black. We were without partners so joined forces."

By 1957 Althea was ready to make the tennis universe hers for two years. This had been predicted by her staunch supporter and patron, Dr. Walter Johnson, a tennis-loving black physician in Lynchburg, Va. Later he did the same for Arthur Ashe.

Wimbledon tumbled before her thunder and lightning, as did the US on her eighth shot. She was No. 1 by several lengths, and repeated the following year.

The improbable journey of the poor kid from Harlem, a truant who became a college gradate and a world champion, was almost at an end. The distance from Harlem to Forest Hills was short geographically, but the social milege she covered was immeasurable.

For Althea it was the best and the worst of times. Her place in history was assured: acknowledged by Ashe, and by Serena and Venus Williams as they won their first majors. And by who knows how many others encouraged by her gritty breakthrough. But we would never know how good she might have been at her calling. Surely, with her growing experience and prowess, the greatest days lay ahead. Days, however, that would not be played out because the lady had to earn a living. At 31, playing for expenses of the amateur era, was not enough.

Billie Jean King says, "I was admiring Althea, her guts, her game from far off, as a 13-year-old." But King and her Long Way Babies of the initial pro tours were too far, a decade-or-so, in the future. Gibson did the best she could. As a warm-up act for the Harlem Globetrotters she barnstormed, beating the lesser Karol Fageros night after night, usually one-set matches, on an improvised basketball floor court. It wasn't Centre Court, Wimbledon, but she said she made $ 100,000. One year was all the ersatz stuff lasted.

Boston saw only cameos of Althea. Once with the Trotters. Twice during the US Doubles at Longwood, a losing finalist in 1957 with Darlene Hard to Margaret duPont and Brough, and, 1958 with Maria Bueno to Jeanne Arth and Hard. She won the Ladies Invitational in 1958 over x at the Essex County Club in Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Of course by that time the invitations poured in from the restricted clubs that wanted her to sell tickets at their tourneys. Longwood [no longer restricted] wasn't forthcoming until she'd won her first US title and been named to the US Wightman Cup team. Gibson had no illusions. She knew that she wasn't wanted everywhere, and some clubs had cancelled their tournaments rather than include her.

She could be cool and withdrawn because she wasn't always sure who true friends were. And exhuberant as she was in just about her last public outing, the 1990 Wimbledon final, to cheer on another of the kids who had grown up trying to emulate her: Zina Garrison. Chic as no one had never been seen in the oh-so-proper Royal Box, she was beaming elegance itself in a pants suit.

So little tennis was televised in her time, a couple of hours of Forest Hills the year's ration, that not many today have an idea of how Althea strongarmed the opposition as smoothly as plucking daisies.

\ Before Althea the only chance for black women to attain sporting prominence was the Olympics, track and field. Once every four years, and no money.

Applauds Billie Jean, "You could say Althea was the start of sports for all women no matter who you were. And professionalism followed."

I always think of Althea whenever a thunderstorm assails a tournament, and her belief that times were changing in tennis, a bit of racism crashing like that stony eagle. Yes, though not enough yet. Still, she pricked the resistant bubble of intolerance. Not as a crusader but merely because she wanted a chance to play a game she loved with the rest of the folks.

Her autobiography is "I Always Wanted to be Somebody."

Well, she was.

Gibson's Major titles

French singles, 1956; Wimbledon singles, 1957-58; US singles, 1957-58. Australian doubles, 1957 (with Shirley Fry); French doubles, 1956 (with Angela Buxton); Wimbledon doubles, 1956 (with Buxton), 1957 (with Darlene Hard), 1958 (with Maria Bueno); US mixed doubles, 1957 (with Kurt Nielsen).

Years in the World Top Ten

1956, No. 2; 1957, No. 1; 1958, No. 1

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