US Open Re-Lived: Arthur Ashe

The Tennis Podcast

David Law

Sports, Wimbledon, Sports & Recreation, Tennis

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2020

⏱️ 106 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Following on from our most recent edition of Tennis Re-Lived on the life of Althea Gibson, in this episode we turn our attention to Arthur Ashe.

We cover his formative years growing up in Virginia under the Jim Crow laws, his development as an amateur tennis player while at college, his Grand Slam titles, his fights for civil rights and social justice, his passing from AIDS, and his enduring legacy.

Along the way, James Blake reveals how he indirectly credits Ashe with getting him into tennis, Leslie Allen talks about what it was like at Dr Johnson’s training facility for African-American players, Steve Flink analyses Ashe’s 1968 US Open victory and what made him so exciting to watch, Richard Evans discusses Ashe’s tactical masterclass against Jimmy Connors in the 1975 Wimbledon final , John McEnroe describes his special relationship with Ashe, Mary Carillo tells some of her favourite stories involving Arthur to explain what he was like, and Chanda Rubin reflects on his impact in tennis.

After looking closely at Ashe’s activism, including how he took on the issue of apartheid and the way he was criticised in some quarters for not being militant enough, we also reflect on Naomi Osaka’s decision not to play her match on Thursday at the Western & Southern Open, a move which led to tennis taking a stand against racial inequality by suspending play for a day. In what way was Osaka acting in the spirit of Ashe? And has the tide turned enough for athletes to now be rewarded for speaking out?

The Tennis Podcast is presented by Catherine Whitaker and David Law, and features Matt Roberts. It is produced weekly year-round, and daily during the Grand Slam tournaments. It is crowdfunded by listeners each December.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Mary and Bartoli. I'm Matt Vylander. This is Mary Carillo. I'm Stan Ravinka. I'm like Newt. I'm Andy Murray.
0:06.7	This is Janik Noah and you're listening to the tennis podcast.
0:21.0	Hello folks and welcome once again to the tennis podcast and our second of two special tennis
0:27.6	relived US Open relived episodes. The first of them focused on Althea Gibson and I hope you
0:35.1	listen to and enjoyed and appreciated that and we hope you feel exactly the same about this episode,
0:42.7	about a man just as important and significant to the tennis and sporting world Arthur Asherman,
0:49.7	whose legacy lives on in the tennis and sporting world and a man who both literally and figuratively
0:58.6	looms over the Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre. Of course the stadium there, the biggest
1:05.0	tennis stadium in the world is named after him, the Arthur Asherman. There's also the statue of him
1:11.7	there bearing one of his many, many famous and poignant quotes from what we get we can make a living
1:19.6	from what we give however we make a life. Gugling great Arthur Asher quotes by the way is quite an
1:29.1	experience. It's definitely not a one-pager, it's a sort of seven-pager at minimum because yeah he was
1:37.6	he was a man with an incredible turn of phrase and incredible skill with the tennis racket and
1:45.4	an incredible legacy in the sport. And I think more so than with Althea Gibson whose
1:53.5	history I was really not familiar with to any degree Arthur Asher I feel like I did know quite a
2:01.4	bit about coming into this certainly I was alive during the period of his suffering with having
2:09.8	contracted HIV AIDS in the late eighties and early nineties and his subsequent passing and the
2:16.4	naming of the stadium, the Arthur Asher stadium. And that meant that I was able to go back in time
2:22.5	and understand some of his history at the time but certainly preparing for this particular
2:29.2	podcast has really opened my eyes and I think and opened my ears to listening to the stories of
2:36.2	all the people that we've spoken to as part of this journey. We've got Matt's research into Arthur Asher
2:41.5	as well which is just exhaustive as far as I can see and I feel like we have an opportunity here
	...

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