Mondays with Murray

FRIDAY, JULY 19, 1968, SPORTS
Copyright 1968/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY

JIM MURRAY
 
A Tennis Compliment: 'Nice Shot, Amateur'

There are many definitions of the word "amateur." Jack Kramer liked to think it was a guy who "wouldn't take a check." Doc Kearns always said it was "a guy who gets paid off in the dark." In unmarked money. Jack Hurley summed up the breed with a fervent "God deliver me from amateurs!" His point was, when a guy gets paid off in a closet, you got no beef coming if he skips off with the money and doesn't show. A guy committing larceny to begin with has no license to holler copper.
   But, strictly on competitive merits, the word "amateur" means one thing to the fan in the bleachers: inferior. Don't the Green Bay Packers beat those college kids every year? Wasn't Pete Rademacher funny against Floyd Patterson? When is the last time an amateur won the U.S. Open: Has one EVER won the Masters? Shoot! In golf, the miss-hit putt is identified as going on the "amateur" side of the hole. If you want to compliment a friend, you address him as "pro" as in "nice shot, pro!"
   It gives me therefore great pleasure to announce that at least in one sport — tennis — the line of demarcation between an amateur and a pro is as invisible on the court as in the counting house. The first Open tennis tournament in history at Wimbledon was a sports shocker on the order of Rutgers beating the Rams, a two-handicap weekend golfer taking Jack Nicklaus through extra holes in an Open playoff, Harvard making the World Series, a YMCA fighter winning a heavy elimination, or the kid in a crowd at the carnival coming up on stage to flatten or pin the world's champ.
   Rodney George Laver, a southpaw who hits the tennis ball so hard he wears out a racket a set and who has a mound of fuzz at his feet after his first serve, won the tournament. Rodney George is a pro. So far, so good. The volunteers from the audience get carried out after all. Green Bay beats the kids with a last minute drive for a touchdown. Nicklaus closed out the two-handicapper with a birdie on the 21st extra hole as the kid drove into the rough.
   But, consider that, of the first dozen pros put out at Wimbledon, 10 were sent parking by amateurs! And the boys who play for hardware (and "expenses") were not picking solely on spavined oldtimers whose reputations had outlasted their prowess. Pancho Gonzales and Lew Hoad, to be sure, fell. But so did Roy Emerson, Cliff Drysdale, Fred Stolle, John Newcome and Andres Gimeno. Thus, amateurs eliminated the Nos. 3, 4, and 5 seeds in that tournament, and tennis couldn't have been more shocked by a belch from the Royal Box.
   All manner of excuses have been served up, most of them double faults. The real reason lies in the fact that the pro-game historically has been as exclusive as the Senate cloak room, and the players in it play such an incestuous competition that they beat (or lose to) each other almost by rote. The bushy-tailed amateurs introduced a new element to the game — surprise, the unexpected. Also, enthusiasm.
 
A Boost to the Sport
 
   The whole has had an extraordinary salutary effect on a game that was verging on the extinct as a spectator sport. Once again, we will have the best players in the world at Wimbledon, Forest Hills, the Pacific Southwest — and not the amateur residue.
   Rod Laver is one who is leaping over the net at the development. It has, he feels, given new impetus to the pro tour which is appearing at the Forum in Inglewood tonight. A $90,000-a-year player, Laver, who may be history's best, welcomes the infusion of amateur blood even if it means diffusion of dollars. "The greatest thing that could happen to the game," is his evaluation.
   One has to agree. "Amateurism is an anachronism, as obsolete as sword-wearing, the Hapsburg Empire, the player piano. It takes tennis out of the servants' quarters, abolishes athletic slavery. If a man has a talent people will pay to see, he should be able to take his cut by check, in unmarked money, or in broad daylight, or all three. That way he can buy his own silverware, and not have to get his money thrown out of a passing car or slipped under a door like a ransom in a kidnap.
 
Reprinted with permission by the Los Angeles Times

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