Arthur Ashe was more than a tennis champion. Fifty years ago, he was the first black man to win the title in the men’s singles at the US Open and campaigned for civil rights and against poverty.
This stadium is delusions of grandeur. A showy building, massive and obtrusive, it sits enthroned above the landscape, it has nothing in common with its namesake. Arthur Ashe, as it says on the plaque in Flushing Meadows, was “a man of unique grace”, a “champion of extraordinary talent”. A player with a legacy that goes far beyond tennis.
In the USA, they like to pay tribute to the great merits of athletes, so the largest tennis arena in the world bears his name, with a statue of him in front of it. Fifty years ago Ashe was the first black man to triumph in the men’s singles at the US Open in New York, the boy from the southern states became an icon in “White Sports” and fought discrimination and poverty throughout the world with his popularity.
“But he never did it aggressively,” former German Davis Cup player Hans-Jürgen Pohmann told SID, “Ashe did it with his personality. He was distinguished by his humanity and his fairness.” Even today, Pohmann still has his back cold when he thinks of a trip to South Africa during the apartheid era. “It was the most emotional experience of my tennis career,” he says.
During the landing approach to Johannesburg, Ashe took his hand, “he had tears in his eyes,” says Pohmann. Ashe, then winner of Wimbledon, could not bear the oppression of the black population, the otherwise gentle man let himself be carried away by the statement that an atom bomb had to be dropped on Johannesburg. “He was still shaking all over his body during passport control,” says Pohmann. On the tennis court, however, Ashe found his courage again.
After a victory he cheered with the few black fans who were separated from the white spectators by a fence in the stadium. Ashe stretched his right fist into the sky as a gesture of support. Black Power – the sign of the African American civil rights movement in the USA. His widow Jeanne Moutoussamy Ashe once said that her husband had never cared much about going down in tennis history: “But the game gave him a platform to talk about the topics that were close to his heart”.
After the US Open in 1968, in the final against Tom Okker, Ashe also won the title in Wimbledon in 1975 (against Jimmy Connors) and at the Australian Open in 1970 (against Dick Crealy). He did this so elegantly that he was a welcome guest everywhere. Even in South Africa the white lords of the manor said about Ashe, Pohmann recalls: “He’s not really as black as we thought.” The black South Africans named Ashe Sipho in the Zulu language – a gift from God.
Ashe died at the age of 49 on February 6, 1993, and after several heart operations he had probably become infected with HIV through a blood sample. His work has a lasting effect, even in tennis. Although only Yannick Noah followed him in Paris in 1983 as a black Grand Slam winner, the era of the Williams sisters in women’s tennis would hardly have been possible without Ashe.
“First it’s a gigantic stadium,” Serena Williams said in the BBC documentary Arthur Ashe, “more than a champion,” but at the same time there’s the story of a man who “broke down so many barriers and did so much for black people in sport. Ashe motivated them, says Williams, “he gives me the opportunity to play tennis. He makes me try to be better. For him.”