2023-07-04 21:27:00
It was one of the last highlights in a really great career. On July 5, 1975, Arthur Ashe won Wimbledon. Five days before his 32nd birthday, the American defeated his compatriot Jimmy Connors in four sets 6: 1, 6: 1, 5: 7 and 6: 4.
Arthur Ashe spread his arms and nodded triumphantly to the cheering Wimbledon crowd. As the first black winner on the holy lawn, the 31-year-old made history on July 5, 1975. His opponent: Jimmy Connors, 22 years old, defending champion, number one in the world and the big favorite.
Ashe didn’t give his otherwise self-confident US compatriot a chance that day in London SW19. After just one hour he was leading 2:0 sets, in the end it was a clear 6:1, 6:1, 5:7, 6:4.
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With a real game plan, Ashe had thrown the highly favored Connors out of the concept: he didn’t play pure power tennis, but relied on his first serve and served nibbled balls into the half field – a strategy that Connors mightn’t handle at all.
Jimmy Connors und Arthur Ashe
Photo credit: Image
Ashe dedicated his life to fighting AIDS
When Arthur Ashe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1943, there was little to suggest that he would one day win the world’s most important tennis tournament. Blacks were excluded from the elite sport at the time. Ashe played in public squares and dusty streets as a child until a teacher at a local school spotted the ten-year-old’s talent in 1953. The rest is history.
Ashe’s career ended five years following his Wimbledon triumph. Following heart surgery in December 1979, he announced his retirement in April 1980 at the age of 36. In 1992 he made his HIV disease public, he is said to have received contaminated blood during a bypass operation. From then on, Ashe devoted himself to the fight once morest AIDS in the last year of his life. He died on February 6, 1993 at the age of 49 from complications of pneumonia.
Ashe was inducted into the Newport Hall of Fame in 1985. In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A statue of him has been erected in his birthplace of Richmond, and in New York the largest tennis stadium in the world bears his name: the men’s singles final of the US Open is held annually at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
(SID)
Arthur Ashe
Photo credit: Image
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