The tennis player who just happened to be Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe memorial sculpture

The buzz was abuzz.

The talk of the tennis established was about a quiet, unassuming young man with tremendous talent and even more potential.  That’s what those in the know were saying.  It was also what Jackie Simms said. 

The young tennis player was coming up from Richmond to play in the Nationals.  For  purposes of this piece, the Nationals was forerunner to the U.S. Open, the grand slam tournament that was eventually moved from Forest Hills, to the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The young man with so much talent and potential was Arthur Ashe.

I only heard later on, that Arthur Ashe was black.  Jackie told me.  Jackie Simms happened to be black.  He just might the first black ballboy in U.S. tennis.

Jackie was from Atlanta.  We became friends right away.  He filled me in all about Arthur Ashe.  He told me Ashe was the reason he came north that September, and was now staying with his aunt.  That's why he applied for the ballboy position. To see Arthur Ashe.

Jackie already had a job. He worked for the Coca Cola Bottling Company in Atlanta and was proud of the uniform he wore to work there.  

“Up here, the Coca Cola uniforms are just plain khaki. No pinstripes. Ours have pinstripes.”  Clean, pressed, maybe even starched - Jackie wore that uniform to the stadium once or twice to show it to me.  You could see the folds...like in a flag.  To him, it was Marine dress blues.

Our ballboy uniform was a lot more skimpy.  Dull, green tee shirts that seemed like they might have been around since the beginning of the tournament, 1881.  The short blue shorts looked old, too, but were probably too short to have been around seventy-five years before.  By the middle of the tournament the ballboys (there were no ballgirls) also wore a tan.  
Sometimes, a match was called because of darkness, and continued the next morning.  Those were the day before lights.  And before sudden death.  A set could go 22- 24, or 32- 34. You had to win by two. 

I wasn’t much interested in tennis.  I didn’t even know when players changed sides so I was rarely ready with the white tennis balls when the server needed them.   
I once hit Dennis Ralston (think John McEnroe's temperament) in the head with a ball on a change-over.  The stadium roared, so did Dennis.

Young, talented and black in such a white sport, Arthur Ashe finally arrived at The West Side Tennis Club, The Stadium. I saw him pass by a few times - with a following.  Tennis officials, press, autograph seekers and a bunch of wooden rackets in his hands.  I noticed his glasses and that they helped make him seem like a really nice guy.

Mr. Ashe

He was a really nice guy.  He was the man he was to become.

Jackie and I figured out how to run into him by accident one day as he was coming or going from practice – I forget which – on one of the side clay courts.

I don’t know where we got the nerve or the rackets (he had the balls), “Mr. Ashe, Mr. Ashe”.  "Mr."-  even though he was our age.  He wasn’t annoyed.  It was like he knew us. Like we were going to ask him if wanted to go to the movies on Continental Avenue.  And he was going to say yes.

“Mr. Ashe, would you give us a tennis lesson?”

Pretty weird just to lay out a request like, just like that.  A lesson on what?  Serving? Returning serves? Passing shots? Lobs?  But he didn’t make us feel stupid. He just said, “Sure.”  And we went and hit the ball, the three of us, until we, not wanting to be a bother as if we weren’t already said,  "Thank you, Mr. Ashe".

And he said, “Sure” and “See you”.

Neither Jackie nor myself pulled Arthur Ashe in the draw.  So we didn’t get to ballboy any of his matches.  Which was fine.  Jackie and I already won the tournament.

As I said, Arthur Ashe went on to become the man he already was.  I’m sure Jackie did, too.

Thanks for the memory, Mr. Ashe.  Thanks, Mr. Simms.