Word: wimbledon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first he modestly tried to beg off, claiming urgent business in Paris. "But tennis is like alcohol once it gets in your bloodstream," said Sargent Shriver, 52, U.S. Ambassador to France, and there he was at Wimbledon competing in the Veterans' Gentlemen's Doubles. Bounding nimbly across the court, stretching for volleys, scrambling for lobs, Shriver and Partner Robert Kelleher, president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, easily defeated their first-round opponents 6-2, 6-0. Next day, though, they were paired against Jaroslav Drobny and A. V. Martini, a couple of old hands at the game...
Like Childe Harold, the folks who run Wimbledon should have known what kind of fruit would spring from those seeds. Ever since open tennis went into effect this spring, amateurs have been beating pros with astonishing regularity. Yet when the seedings were announced for last week's 82nd All-England Tennis Championships, nine out of the top ten were pros. Tournament officials obviously assumed that professionals, by definition, are better players than amateurs, and that the pros would be at the top of their game for the first truly big open tournament. With two exceptions, they were wrong...
...Tony Roche (No. 15) turned back the amateurs' challenge and fought it out between themselves for the title, with Laver winning 6-3, 6-4, 6-2. But not even that all-pro final could alter the fact that in the main it was Amateur Week at Wimbledon...
What was the matter with the pros? Partly, it was the playing conditions. Said Gonzales: "We are used to playing on poor courts at night under indifferent lighting in smoke-filled halls" -a far cry from Wimbledon's outdoor grass courts. The biggest problem was probably the pros' very professionalism -their tendency to hit "percentage" shots (while amateurs gambled on riskier shots that proved to be winners) and their basic disdain for their amateur opponents...
...American twist wins a lot of tennis matches- but a British twist finally won the big one. A twist of the arm that is. Faced with Britain's decision to ermit professionals as well as amateurs to compete at Wimbledon this year, representatives of the 65-nation International Lawn Tennis Federation met in Paris and voted "unanimously" (two unidentified nations abstained) to sanction open tennis on a worldwide basis thus granting the pros first-class citizenship at last and freeing the sport from the shackles of "shamateurism...