n like a lamb; out like a lion.
That was the 20th century journey of the diversion we know as tennis. Twenty-six years after the game arrived on the scene, a couple of genteel Brits, clad head-to-sneakered-toes in white, Blanche Bingley Hillyard and Reggie Doherty, won Wimbledon titles of 1900. Ushering the century out were the electric Serena Williams and the glitzy Andre Agassi, champions at the US Open.
Blanche and Reggie received silver cups for their amateur efforts. Playing limited, sunshine schedules, only outdoors, they seldom left England. Williams's and Agassi's Flushing Meadow cups ran over with gold, $750,000 apiece. Jets and dollars have made the world their 12-month playground.
Launched within an affluent social stratum, tennis had trickled in all directions, carried by a procession of determined, sometimes flamboyant champions like Suzanne Lenglen, Bill Tilden, Jean Borotra, Alice Marble, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Gonzalez, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe, Yannick Noah, Jimmy Connors, and now Agassi and the Sisters Sledgehammer, Serena and Venus Williams.
Although every sport has metamorphosed over the last 100 years, perhaps none, other than soccer and boxing, has spread so universally and astoundingly. Especially since the ''open'' Revolution of '68 that transformed and professionalized an essentially sheltered, amateur tournament game.
Pros have existed almost since the beginning, in the early days primarily as instructors. When some of them gathered for the European Pro Championships of 1923, their cups seemed tin. First prize (the only prize) was $120, going to a Limey with a heart of gold: J.C.S. Rendall. In one-for-all spirit, he cut it up into equal shares of $13.50 with fellow competitors.
At the declaration of integration of pros and amateurs, merely a handful of pros operated during that 1968 campaign when about $400,000 was available for 12 opens. But their names glittered: all-timers Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Gonzalez, King, and Casals among them. Everybody's in business now, grasping at stakes of well over $150 million in 2000.
Over the 20th century only the dimensions of the court remained unchanged. Money, television, airplanes, agents, advanced training and coaching programs, boot camps for children (also known as tennis academies) and, of course, souped-up high-tech rackets have made today's game radically different from the wood-age reigns of Tilden, Lenglen, and Helen Wills Moody. The 1990s supremacy of the latest all-timers, Pete Sampras, winner of $38,808,561 in prize money alone, and Steffi Graf, $21,839,777, has made them seem supercharged creatures from another solar system.
Now, power of stroke and mobility through time zones are the guiding principles, allowing the athlete - a one-person band - to survive not only competition on court but a planetary agenda, balancing personal demands and goals with the proprietary claims of homeland for Davis and Federation Cup duty.
Life was more leisurely, say, in 1938 when Don Budge carved out the original Grand Slam by grabbing the four majors (Australian, French, Wimbledon, US) inside that year. Three weeks by boat took him Down Under, almost a week to Europe. Other travel was by train or car. Budge's itinerary covered eight tournaments of which he won six, plus a successful defense of the Davis Cup. Sampras would kill for that kind of relaxed schedule, with virtually the entire winter off. Tilden, whose record of six straight years at No. 1 (1920-25) was tied by Sampras in 1998, hid out at an indoor court in Providence during the winter of 1919-20, fine-tuning his backhand. A guy who had been ranked No. 70 in the United States only three years before, he emerged like Superman from a phone booth to take over the world at age 27.
Tilden had every shot, to go along with an outspoken, imperious presence, and continued on the struggling pro tour into his 50s. You can find geezers who swear nobody could touch Big Bill now or ever. To me, great players of one era would be great in another, adjusting to the equipment and conditions, and surely Tilden and Budge were two of the century's greatest.
Undoubtedly, exceptional players abound more densely today. Professionalism demands it. But if lefties Laver and Martina Navratilova, twinkling for two decades - my ultimate champs of this fading century - were to surface in the next, in their prime, I wouldn't worry about their safety. Laver, with an unapproachable two Grand Slams (1962, 69), and Navratilova, with 167 singles titles and 162 doubles titles, would get up to present-day speed fast because they were swift and fit, fortified by complete games, combativeness, and smarts.
These are my upper crust (dauntless baker's dozens) for the 20th century, Navratilova and Laver at No. 1 followed by the rest, chronologically:
Men - Laver, Tilden, Fred Perry, Jack Kramer, Gonzalez, Rosewall, Roy Emerson, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Agassi, Sampras.
Women - Navratilova, Lenglen, Moody, Marble, Pauline Betz, Maureen Connolly, Althea Gibson, King, Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Graf, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Monica Seles.
Let the arguments and debates begin and go on forever. Check back in 2099, and we'll select the 21st centurions.
For solidity, give me Emerson and McEnroe, Navratilova and King because they were doubles geniuses, too, who could have won alongside Red Auerbach (the statue or himself).
To play for my life in a must match, I'd take Gonzalez and Evert.
The most influential players:
Dwight Davis, the Harvard kid who launched the Davis Cup, captaining the winning US team in 1900 ... Chic Mlle. Lenglen in abbreviated frocks liberated the women from corsets and petticoats, lured record crowds to Wimbledon where she was unbeaten (sparking construction of the present Wimbledon in 1922), and headed the pioneering pro troupe in 1926 ... Entrepreneurial Kramer, champion-promoter, kept the pro tour going until open era, set up the men's circuit that became the ATP Tour, was the name on the most popular racket ... Gibson, 23, leaped from Harlem over the color barrier at the 1950 US Championships, knocking out segregation that had held her and others back. Despite that late start in the big time, she won US and Wimbledon titles in 1957-58 ... Arthur Ashe, the calm champion-statesman instrumental in forming the ATP in 1973, whose distinguished presence and counsel is sorely missed ... King, a founder of the WTA in 1973 whose inspirational playing and evangelical preaching on behalf of female pros lifted the entire game - fortunately she remains an inspirer.
Most influential nonplayers:
Administrators Herman David (Britain) and Bob Kelleher (United States), steering open tennis into being in 1968 ... Jimmy Van Alen, who founded the Hall of Fame in 1954, and invented the tie-breaker in 1965 ... Gladys Heldman, brains behind the organization of the women's breakaway to their own pro tour in 1970-71 ... Howard Head, who started the out-of-control racket technology explosion with the odd-looking (then) oversized metal models in his name during the 1970s.
Who can name the prime matches? Too many of them, although Steve Flink tries compellingly in his new book, ''Greatest Tennis Matches of the 20th Century.''
The most written about: Budge's rebounding Davis Cup victory at neutral Wimbledon in 1937 over German Gottfried von Cramm (6-8, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 8-6) from 1-4 in the fifth. (That completed a 3-2 United States victory, assuring the Yanks of the Cup for the first time in a decade.) Lenglen's 6-3, 8-6, win over Moody, in the Cannes (France) final in 1926, the lone meeting of the goddesses, attracting the game's first world-wide press coverage.
No, I wasn't there. But here are a half-dozen shotmaking feasts that I covered, yet clinging in my neural mush:
Rosewall over Laver, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 6-7 (3-7), 7-6 (7-5), WCT final, 1972, a thriller to the wire ... King over Evonne Goolagong, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, US Open final, 1974, both attackers had the crown enthralled ... Borg over McEnroe, 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-7 (16-18), 8-6, Wimbledon final, 1980, a smorgasbord of Sunday-punching, Mac-dodging five match points in the tense breaker ... Seles over Graf, 6-2, 3-6, 10-8, French final, 1992, fiercely contested ... Graf over Sanchez Vicario, 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 10-8, French final, 1996, both at their best, Graf refusing to wilt when Sanchez Vicario served for it ... Jim Courier (United States) over Greg Rusedski (Britain), 6-4, 6-7 (3-7), 6-3, 1-6, 8-6, excruciating all the way, deciding the 3-2 Davis Cup joust at Birmingham, England, 1999.
And here's one I still don't believe: Chanda Rubin, climbing from the deepest pit (0-5, 0-40, third set) to cancel nine match points and beat Jana Novotna, 7-6 (10-8), 4-6, 8-6, at the French, 1995.
A miracle? Maybe, but clearly the miracle champs were Hall of Famers Dick Williams and Doris Hart. Williams not only lived through his abbreviated Titanic voyage (six hours in the frigid Atlantic, frozen stiffer than an undertaker's smile) but went on to US titles in 1914, and '16. Despite a virulent knee infection as a child and predictions of a lifetime as a cripple, Hart used tennis as therapy, won US titles in 1944-45, plus all the other majors on twisted, rickety-looking legs.
Other 20th century milestones:
1905 - Californian May Sutton, 18, is Wimbledon's first foreign champ.
1926 - Promoter C.C. Pyle signs Lenglen and New Yorker Vinnie Richards to lead his touring troupe, thus introducing playing pros.
1927 - France's Four Musketeers (Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, and Jacques Brugnon) break Tilden-powered seven-year United States stranglehold on the Davis Cup, 3-2.
1938 - Californian Moody, synonymous with supremacy, wins eighth Wimbledon, ending a career of .919 ball, 52 titles (19 majors) between 1919 and '38, and a 158-match streak. Budge completes first Grand Slam.
1953 - Californian Maureen Connolly, 18, spins the second Grand Slam.
1962 - Aussie Laver nails the third Grand Slam.
1967 - Aussie Emerson wins French, his 12th major, a male record.
1968 - Aussie Rosewall and a local, Virginia Wade, win the first open, British Hard Court. Ashe scores a singular double, winning the US Amateur at Longwood, then the US Open, the only amateur to win a major.
1969 - Laver, 31, Grand Slams again.
1970 - Aussie Court, 28, biggest winner of majors, 62 (24 in singles) registers fifth Grand Slam.
1971 - Chrissie Craze begins as Evert, 16, debuts with a run to the semis of the US Open, which she'll win six times. Her two-fisted backhand starts a trend, bolstered by Connors, Borg.
1973 - King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, in the schlockathon known as the ''Battle of the Sexes,'' pulling a record tennis crowd, 30,472, to the Astrodome and extraordinary TV ratings, spurring general interest. New men's union, ATP, shows surprising solidarity and nerve in boycotting Wimbledon, a protest against the barring of lodge brother Niki Pilic, who had been suspended by his Yugoslav federation for skipping a Davis Cup series, showing that players, not their amateur administrators, would control their destiny.
1975 - Navratilova upstages Manolo Orantes's upset of Connors in US Open final by announcing her defection from Czechoslovakia.
1978 - US Open moves to hard courts at Flushing Meadow. Connors wins, unique as the champ on three surfaces, previously grass and clay.
1985 - Big-serving German Boris Becker, 17, wins Wimbledon, the first unseeded and most callow champ.
1986 - Evert wins record seventh French, 18th major, is alone in winning at least one major for 13th successive years. She beats Navratilova, but Navratilova has a 43-37 edge in rivalry of the century.
1988 - Graf, 19, makes the sixth Grand Slam, adds a gold as tennis returns to Olympics after 64-year absence.
1989 - Michael Chang, 17, is youngest French champ, first American guy to win Paris in 34 years.
1990 - Navratilova, 33 and a US citizen, wins a record ninth Wimbledon. Sampras, 19, is youngest US male champ.
1993 - No. 1 Seles, 19, holding eight majors and headed for possibly greatest career, is struck down by knife-wielding (perhaps history-altering) Guenther Parche during a match at Hamburg.
1999 - Graf seizes her last victory, 22d major, the French. Agassi also wins the French, joining Perry, Budge, Laver, and Emerson in a select circle, winners of all four majors. Sampras is Wimbledon's man of the century with a sixth title, equaling Emerson's 12 majors. Serena Williams, 17, at the US, is the first black victor in a major since Ashe's 1975 Wimbledon.
Hail to them all, and bring on the 21st.
