University of Virginia Library

Illegal Procedure

The Power Politics
of Tennis

With Bill Bardeerper

QUIZ TIME! What in recent years has surped all else,
eating, sleeping, going to work, as the favorites international
pastime? Watching television Nope. Going to the movies?
Nope. Reading? Of course not. What then? Politics, power
politics to be exact. While Nixon and Brezhnev were casting
lots over the planet Pluto, while Spiro Agnew and John
Connolly were drawing straws for the White House and while
John Dean was playing chicken with the President, tennis stars
were playing Russian Roulette with the Wimbledon.

And, in case any of you may have wondered, the tennis
being played out at the Perry Foundation Tennis Courts this
week is not the Wimbledon even though the brand may be as
mediocre and the contestants as obscure. No, that's the
Virginia State Junior Tennis Tournament, not the Wimbledon.
What a dumb mistake. Sure the Wimbledon has been given a lot
of coverage in the local newspapers and on the local radio
stations, but that certainly doesn't mean that the tournament's
been transferred to Charlottesville.

ANY SEMI SELF–respecting tennis buff should recognize
immediately with one quick glance that Jimmy Connors,
Jurgen Fassbender, Jan Kodes, Owen Davidson, Alex
Metrevelli and Bjorn Borg are not out there on the Perry
Courts. Wrong again! No, they're not sportcasters for CBS
television which is covering the Wimbledon. But if the
Wimbledon was being held here in Charlottesville those men
would most definitely be the highlights of the afternoon. After
all, they make up six of the top eight seeds in this year's
Wimbledon. You see, after 70 of the top men professionals
dropped out of the tournament, that's all that's left.

It all began a month or so back when Yugoslavian tennis
star Nikki Pilic decided he'd rather not play for his country in
it's Davis Cup match against New Zealand. Well, there are
some places you just don't do those kind of things, and
Yugoslavia is one of them. Yugoslavia lost the match, and as a
result Pilic was suspended from competition for nine months
by the Yugoslav Tennis Federation. To appease the Slavs, the
International Lawn Tennis Federation also suspended
Pilic-their's only for a month, but this still left him ineligible
for the prestigious Wimbledon.

HIS FRIENDS IN THE ATP (the Association of Tennis
Professionals) thought the whole thing stunk, so they like Pilic
(who was challenging the suspension in Court) decided last
week they might be able to bluff the ILTF into reinstating
Pilic. Neither Pilic's suit nor the ATP's bluff worked, however.
Pilic is back in Split with his wife and the tennis professionals,
Stan Smith, Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Arthur Ashe, John
Newcombe, Roy Emerson, Marty Reissen, Tom Gorman, Cliff
Richey, Cliff Drysdale, Clark Graebner, et. al., are out on the
street-called with not even a pair of duces in their hands, or
so it seems, at least.

Actually, the ATP still has a couple of cards up its
sleeves, none which will get Pilic or themselves back into the
Wimbledon but some good enough possibly to keep the ILTF
from pulling this kind of trick again. A group called the World
Team Tennis has approached the ATP with its plans for
starting league tennis in the United States in the fall. What the
officials of the WTT would like, of course, is to lure the
disgruntled tennis professionals away from the ILTF circuit
into their own.

THEY HAVE NOT BEEN met with much enthusiasm in the
past, but in their meeting with the tennis professionals in
London over the weekend they received a bit more
encouragement. ATP executive director Jack Kramer said to
the Associated Press, Sunday, "we have been cautious in our
approach to it so far," but "now that we have heard a little
more about it, the executive board is going to reevaluate
it."

It's probable that this is just another bluff since the
tennis professionals have been so totally unreceptive to the