Word: wimbledon
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...this Wimbledon, or something dreamed up by an OPEC entrepreneur? Not only was the price of strawberries and cream up sharply, from $1.20 to $1.65, but a glass of champagne cost $3.30, a dollar more than last year. To top it all off, an unseeded but well-endowed Californian named Linda Siegel, 18, momentarily popped out of her daring, halter-neck tennis dress in mid-stroke during a losing engagement with Billie Jean King. GAME, SET ... OUT! chortled a Fleet Street headline...
...other ways, Wimbledon was as Wimbledon as ever. Banks of hydrangeas and geraniums were in dazzling bloom, and the usual profusion of red roses surrounded the members' enclosure at the All England Club. The tournament attracted record crowds, while the nation talked of virtually nothing else. True to form, the top seeds in the singles competition-Bjorn Borg and Martina Navratilova-moved relentlessly into the denouement of the fortnight-long pageant...
Unseeded, the young player has arrived at the Wimbledon finals, where he faces Guillermo Vilas. Something is wrong, however. The camera keeps cutting to the empty chair next to his coach (Pancho Gonzalez, playing himself and, very nicely too). Obviously someone terribly important in the kid's life is missing, and Vilas blows him out in the first two sets. How the lad (Dean-Paul Martin) got to Wimbledon, and the reason for his sudden loss of poise, is told in a series of flashbacks intercut with the unfolding drama of the big match...
Players is really two pictures. The final match goes five sets, with tie breakers, and it is wonderful, the most believable sports footage one can recall in a fictional feature. (Actually, Wimbledon was shot by a second-unit sports specialist, Rimas Vainorius.) The flashback material is so bad that you get the feeling the projectionist may have carelessly scrambled the reels of a double feature. Some of the training sequences will interest tennis hackers curious to know what it would be like to take lessons from Gonzalez. It must also be said that Dean-Paul Martin, Dino...
...camera for exactly four seconds, time enough to walk past a couch and out of the picture. She only emotes during an off-camera stethoscopy by the show's heartthrob, Dr. Chuck Tyler (Richard Van Vleet). "They probably didn't know I spoke English," grumbled the 1978 Wimbledon champ...