Pastures New Spirit of Wimbledon

1977 was an annus mirabilis for Great Britain.

Queen Elizabeth II toured the country in celebration of her Silver Jubilee

as Britons quite literally danced in the streets.

At Wimbledon, the centenary All England Championships were graced by Her Majesty's presence

and for once the tennis gods shone on the home nation.

Virginia Wade was an elegant, all-court player with talent to spare, but a fragile nerve.

That year, I mean I was coming obviously

to the end of what was really my peak years

and I was thinking, "I've messed up so many times at Wimbledon,"

and the extra aura that it had with the Queen being there and being the centenary year

just managed to take my motivation

and make it stronger than my nerves.

'She's done it, she's done it.

'A fairy story come true.'

If I watch it now

or if I even talk about it, I might start getting emotional.

There was the Queen and there was so much noise going on, I have no idea what she said.

I just couldn't hear her.

APPLAUSE

# For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow... #

Then you hold the trophy up - it's very heavy - I'd never experienced anything like this.

To tell you the truth, it made me feel very, very small, which was very nice.

I just was part of the whole thing.

A fairy story indeed,

but a far cry from the preceding decades

when British successes at Wimbledon were few and far between.

In the second of our four-part series, we examine an era

of huge change, not just at Wimbledon, but on a global scale.

In the immediate post-war years, Britain was anxious to get back to normal,

yet acutely aware of the difficulty of doing so.

The land fit for heroes was still subject to rationing

and there were major shortages of staple foods.

The Centre Court, a metaphor for the country, was gouged by a bomb crater.

But the main aim was to get the show back on the road.

There was no better symbol of a world at peace than a sunny afternoon at SW19.

Americans would stop off in Ireland on their way here, in Shannon

where the plane would stop,

and pick up butter and cheese and whatever

because they just didn't have those things here at the time.

All of London was very grim still in 1946.

We hadn't really yet got over the war.

Food was rationed.

Some of the American players even brought their own steaks with them.

I took enough meat to have two steaks every day for the 14 days,

including about four days during the Queen's Tournament which I played in the doubles.

It worked out beautifully. I was mentally prepared.

I said, "I'll have no problems. I'll have my regular stuff."

It just worked out beautifully. That meat was a big help mentally for me.

I hate to admit it, but I guess I was a steak freak in those days.

It's part of the British nature to be generous with their sport -

invent the game, lay down the rules, export it and then watch as the rest of the world becomes the masters.

Beating the Mother Country became terrific sport after the Second World War

and where better to advertise the uprising than on the lawns of the most English of sporting events?

But of course, the Americans hadn't had a war.

Their own championship in America was played throughout the war years.

They didn't have any breaks and so they went on playing

and came here best prepared of all the competitors who played in 1946 and those next few years.

So we had some very great American champions.

I played a lot of matches against Don Budge when he was in the Air Force and I was in the Coast Guard,

so we kept sharp and we were lucky in America, being athletes, that this was available to us.

There were some great American stars of that era -

Bob Falkenburg who used to chuck sets

because he would get tired and conserve his energy by conceding a set.

Rather a curious thing to think of now, but that's what happened.

Jack Kramer, of course.

I'll be very honest with you. I'm fairly lucky in winning my two US Championships and my Wimbledon title.

Anybody that wins Wimbledon is a deserving champion.

You win because on that fortnight you've been the best player in the world.

Luck or not, the American men claimed five consecutive singles titles between 1947 and 1951.

But their dominance was eclipsed by that of their female counterparts.

You could name 12, 13, 14 really great American women,

the greatest of whom, of course, was Maureen Connolly,

the first woman to win the Grand Slam in 1953.

Even before her, we'd had Pauline Betz, Louise Brough. The list goes on and on.

But they were terrific players and set a very high standard.

In that outstanding generation, Maureen Connolly was the most talented,

Louise Brough the most effective, but Althea Gibson was the most surprising.

Long before the Williams sisters' explosion on to the global stage came the girl from Harlem,

six foot tall and with a touch of both Venus and Serena in her imposing presence on court.

She was intimidating.

She was tall. I don't know how tall, probably six foot two or so.

And she sort of towered over you.

She was long and spindly.

She threw the ball up miles high and this great, powerful serve came belting down.

She beat me often. And analysing her game, she had a great serve,

a very good serve,

and she had continental strokes,

which were, to me, always kind of baffling.

I didn't think they were solid, but she was making all these shots.

Althea Gibson's victories in tennis were as important to people

as Jackie Robinson's integration with baseball. She started playing

before the Civil Rights Movement and during the Civil Rights Movement.

At that time, a lot of people placed a lot of stock in what entertainers and athletes were doing

because they had such visibility that people held them in high esteem.

There were a number of high profile people like Sugar Ray Robinson and the boxer Joe Louis

who helped provide Althea with money, so that she could compete.

They also broke barriers in boxing, so they understood what she was going through.

The esteem of winning at such an international place as Wimbledon made Althea a huge star

and an important figurehead for black people in sport and in life.

People lined up outside of her apartment building in Harlem.

She was surprised to see how many people were standing at the airport to greet her.

People had celebrations everywhere that she went and people continued to celebrate for years

and she paved the way for a number of people from Arthur Ashe to Venus and Serena Williams.

Wimbledon had evolved into the premier global tennis tournament and demand was increasing

for show court tickets, but the All England Club's unique entrance policy remained unchanged.

It was the same in the 1950s and 1960s as it is today.

'If you want to see the 100 yards run in under ten seconds, stand by the Wimbledon gates on the last day.'

I think our approach to ticketing is very egalitarian.

I don't think there's many sporting events in the world

who have a public ballot for tickets open to anybody to apply,

then deliberately holds back ground passes

and a limited number of Centre Court tickets for people to queue up.

The last few years, we had 20,000 people queueing in Wimbledon Park

for 6,000 ground passes and 500 Centre Court tickets.

I think Wimbledon has always tried to dedicate its efforts very much to the fans.

That is the purpose of the queue at Wimbledon.

Wimbledon could easily sell all the Centre Court tickets in a few days to the highest corporate bidders,

but the queue is the fairest way of getting 6,000 or 7,000 people a day into our grounds.

I think it's become a rite of passage almost. Now we've moved it into the park, it's become...

Again for international people, if you go in the queue... If you're from Australia or South Africa

and you're in London, you do a couple of days in the queue.

So we provide a nice environment, but again they all add to the vibrancy, I think, of the atmosphere

for people who come in here.

What we've now seen is almost like an emergent strategy.

The queues are an important part of the fan experience.

It's part of the product and of the brand,

so rather than seeking to alleviate the queues,

it's almost as though the All England Club have tried to perpetuate the queues

because it's all part of the camaraderie, it's part of the communal spirit.

It's part of the event itself,

so I think in some ways it was entirely accidental,

but Wimbledon are now playing this out very, very well

because they've used the misfortune in a way that's helped to create a very interesting brand experience.

After the American dominance in the post-war years,

a new nation emerged as a force to be reckoned with -

the first country to view tennis as a team sport.

The Australians roomed together, practised together and drank together.

They call it "mateship", an unbreakable camaraderie which still lies

at the heart of Australian sporting success.

Well, I think the Australian group, which was started by Sedgman and McGregor...

..owed a great deal to Harry Hopman, the great coach and former player

who moulded those players into a great Davis Cup squad.

Harry was, you know, he was really a very strong person.

He couldn't teach you how to hit a ball that well,

but he was a stickler for fitness

and I think his teams won so many matches because they could go all day and they were the fittest players.

He was very strict. I can remember our first trip away.

It was Rosewall and Hoad's first trip away when they were 17.

And I was about 21 and he had us going to bed at ten o'clock at night

and I wasn't used to going to bed at ten o'clock at night,

but you had to get into bed at ten o'clock and turn the light out.

If you didn't do what he said, you'd be on the plane back to Australia.

You've got to take it back in its context. It was amateur tennis.

Amateur tennis didn't mean that you were playing for prize money.

You were playing for pride and trophies.

And it was your opportunity to represent your nation.

The Australians' domination of the game coincided with the first mass push towards professionalism,

but this wasn't a new idea.

Big Bill Tilden had blazed a trail as early as the 1930s.

Tilden, as he advanced and got into his 30s,

realised that he could make a buck off of this.

And so he began to tour.

Tilden gave older players an avenue to go into and they all succeeded him.

You became a champion, then you turned pro

and you had to leave the big tournaments.

I won at Wimbledon, I won the US,

then the Davis Cup, and then the opportunity opened up for me

to turn professional and make a career of being a top tennis player.

I got a telephone call in New York during the US Open, I think, in 1967,

wondering whether I was ready to sign a contract to play professional tennis.

At that point, I was ready to give up and retire from tennis and get a real job.

But I was offered 30,000 dollars,

which was four times what I could have made in any job back in South Africa at the time.

And, um...so I signed quickly.

The divide was absolute. By turning pro and accepting payment for playing the sport,

you were excluded from all of the Grand Slams, including Wimbledon.

By the 1960s, the amateur game was in turmoil.

The top players had all been poached by the pro tours,

led by former player Jack Kramer and promoter Lamar Hunt.

By 1967, the amateur game was really needing a boost

because all the great champions had been signed to professional terms.

Turning professional wasn't an easy choice

because in a way you're abandoning Australia to some degree

because of the Davis Cup being very important.

The touring teams had started you off, taking you round the world

to improve your game, to represent Australia.

You're not representing anybody when you turn professional, so it was a tough choice,

but at the same time, I felt I had to do something about my future

and I thought that was a legitimate way of accomplishing it.

The latest of the promoters was WCT, Lamar Hunt's organisation,

and he signed up The Handsome Eight.

Well, as personalities, we were supposed to be enthusiastic and exciting

and young and handsome.

The whole idea was to get a group of guys together

that WCT could turn into "personalities".

The capture of those players,

who included John Newcombe, of course, and our own Roger Taylor,

meant that the game now desperately needed to resolve the question

of amateurism and professionalism.

Any sport in which money is being made

and you're not paying the performers, but everybody else is getting money -

the coaches are getting money, the presenters are getting money,

the press and the people who sell the hot dogs are getting money...

Everybody is getting money but the performers. That's insane!

The pressure reached its height when the best players in the world, like Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall,

were no longer able to play in the best championships in the world.

And it finally happened as a result of the All England Club staging in 1967,

on the hallowed turf of the Centre Court,

a professional tournament. Shock, horror!

Wimbledon and the BBC had a trial tournament

of which I was the promoter and brought in the eight best players,

including Rod and Ken and Lew and Gonzales and everybody,

to find out if the fans would like to come to Wimbledon to see professionals.

We sold the place out, all three days that we played,

and that made it very easy for them to make the decision to go to open tennis.

-'And that's the championship.'

-Game, set and match to Laver.

'A very thrilling match indeed - 6-2, 6-2, 12-10.

'Rod Laver becomes the first professional champion at Wimbledon.'

In the history of the game, nothing was as important as that decision.

The first Grand Slam of this brand-new era was the 1968 All England Championships.

Fittingly, six years after his last, Rod Laver, the Rockhampton Rocket,

won back his men's singles title.

'Victory in straight sets - 6-3, 6-4, 6-2, to become Wimbledon's first open champion.'

The amateurs were against the pros and there was considerable talk about the pros being overrated

and that the amateurs were going to win and beat the pros.

Fortunately, we as the professionals did pretty well.

With the biggest stars back in the fold, the popularity of the championships exploded,

but still the hallowed ground of Centre Court remained pristine.

The All England Club stayed faithful to its ethos of understated elegance

to the detriment of potential advertising revenue.

Wimbledon is unique and I think it's unique even amongst the four Slams.

If you look at commercial activity around the tournament as one example,

you compare Roland Garros with Centre Court at Wimbledon,

at Roland Garros, lots of sponsors' logos, at Wimbledon, no sponsorship logos.

It is a very unique and distinctive property and the comparison that I would make with Wimbledon,

certainly in terms of other cultural assets if you like,

is it's a bit like Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

It's quintessentially English, it's very distinctive, it really screams out Englishness.

That's very different to other tennis tournaments and other sporting events

in this globalised environment that sport now operates in.

I think it's been particularly a business philosophy at Wimbledon

to differentiate itself from other organisations and other sporting events

and to make itself very individual.

I think by not having advertising on Centre Court and around the grounds,

that makes Wimbledon quite unique in the world of sport today

and if we did have a lot of perimeter advertising,

the danger is we would just compete with other events and not differentiate ourselves in that way.

The approach the All England Club has always taken is to have selected partners, rather than sponsors,

providing goods and services for the event.

Their minimal, almost subliminal presence on Centre Court has raised these brands to iconic status.

In 1978, Rolex decided to be more part of the sporting world.

And the elegance and exclusivity of this Wimbledon Championship

was really part of the heart of Rolex at that time and still is.

So it's a major thing for us.

Slazenger were immensely proud of our long-standing association

with the championships at Wimbledon.

We've been an official ball supplier to the championships since 1902.

That makes our partnership the longest-standing in sports history.

Robinsons Lemon Barley Water was indeed created at Wimbledon

and the story, I'm pretty certain it's true,

is that there was a Robinsons sales representative at Wimbledon

who on a hot and very sunny day noticed that the players looked pretty fatigued,

so he took the initiative and got together a jug with some iced water, some lemon juice, some barley powder,

mixed it together and encouraged the players to drink it because it would invigorate them for the next match,

so there was born Robinsons Lemon Barley Water.

It's very, very interesting because Wimbledon faces something of a conundrum

in that, at the moment, by not having more visible logos,

it is forgoing potentially a very strong revenue stream,

but at the same time, the more it commercialises,

the more potentially it tarnishes the essence of the Wimbledon brand.

We were talking about exclusivity, elegance, uniqueness.

It's really the same thing for Rolex.

Tradition, innovation.

So these are the roots of our association.

As the 1960s gave way to the '70s,

professionalism brought a new outlook to Wimbledon.

It was yet another Australian who led the way in the women's game.

Following her male counterparts, the exceptionally athletic Margaret Court

became the first Australian woman to claim the Wimbledon singles title,

heralding the arrival of a new breed of female tennis player.

I was very fortunate

that one of our all-time greats, Frank Sedgman, opened his gymnasium

to me and to work in one of his offices.

He trained with me. I used to train in the gym five mornings a week.

The English press used to give me a hard time. They used to call me the Aussie Amazon.

I always remember... I think it was my fitness that kept me in the game

for probably 15, 16 years without injury.

It was all the training I did as a young person. I loved it.

In those days, it wasn't lady-like to say that you go to the gym

and work out because it wasn't lady-like to have muscles.

Court and Goolagong, later Mrs Cawley, were two of a triumvirate of precociously talented women

who played out an intense rivalry that spanned 15 years.

Margaret set the bar physically, Evonne possessed bewitching, balletic grace,

but a diminutive American brought mental toughness with a touch of gamesmanship to the Centre Court.

I remember the first few times that I played Billie Jean.

She scared me

because she was always, um...

You know, she was always talking.

She seemed bigger than life to me.

She was an aggressive player, serve and volley player, and I thought, "Oh, God, here she comes!"

I used to spend more time watching her than paying attention to what I was doing.

Even though I had a lot of tough matches against Margaret,

I think Billie Jean was the one that gave me a really tough time.

I think Billie knew tactically how to do it too

and I think I was one that could turn off to her when she started to perform.

A lot of the younger players didn't understand that and she would get through them

in the tactics side of it also,

but she knew...

She never nerved me. I think that sort of helped me tremendously and got through her a little bit.

Evonne and I had played many times.

The only time I ever lost to Evonne was in the Wimbledon tournament.

I'd played her many, many times.

I think it was the year when I found I was on Centre Court and I was three months' pregnant.

I came along when Billie Jean and Margaret were on top and playing each other in all the finals,

so, you know, I had those two to contend with.

And then along came Chris and then Martina,

so I think it's been great knowing that I've played sort of both generations

and did reasonably well against both.

Knowing I got to play against the best of the best will always be a great feeling.

What's really important to us too is that we really helped forge the future of women's tennis.

I think every generation's job

is to make the next generation better.

Between the three of them, Court, Cawley and King won 11 titles.

Billie Jean went on to set records on the court and become a tireless campaigner for equality off it.

As the 1970s drew to a close, a new generation of professionals had emerged -

fitter, stronger and more powerful than their predecessors.

The new breed of tennis players were more than just athletes. They were personalities.

The ice-cool.

The brattish. The controversial.

And the heart-throbs.

Tennis and Wimbledon braced itself for the most exciting era the game had ever seen.

Subtitles by Subtext for Red Bee Media Ltd 2011

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