For a brief one-day summer out of nowhere in my life it flashed like a comet across my sky.
My first competitive game of tennis was played at the Trinidad and Tobago Junior Championships at the age of 12 – and my last at 52, when Roy Dookun and I, over a hundred years old, finally won the Guyana National Doubles title. I really enjoyed my forty-year career in tennis – the excitement and sweetness of victory honey and the bustle of disappointment in the defeat, stress and excitement of intense competition which is a form of addictive drug, “playground fellowship,” “The tremendous honor of representing and leading your country, the rivalry so sharp in memory and the innumerable friendships, the game’s poetry suddenly became its best.
Over the years I have had a measure of success – captain of Cambridge University and later of the Guyana national team in the Brandon Trophy regional tournament and of the West Indies team in the Davis Cup play. I played in Wimbledon in the 1950s. There were no official world rankings then but when I played my best tennis, circa 1952 to 1956, I think unequivocally that I may have graduated as high as number 40. But the closest I ever got to winning a major Championship was not my own. ok but as a kind of helper or acolyte to an odd champion. Wisely, I feel like I’ve won just one Wimbledon Singles title.
In 1952 at a pre-Wimbledon garden party for players at the Hurlingham Club, I met Maureen Connolly and we got on well. She was only seventeen but had won the US Women’s Singles title the year before. His fame, and form, were very attractive. I was surprised to hear that her first love had been riding horses but her parents couldn’t afford to give her a pony so they gave her a tennis racket instead. Fate turns on such small hinges. I think I caught his attention more than I probably would have done by talking about the horse my mother loved when she was a little girl – her name was Beaucaillou and my mother took trotting everywhere in Trinidad for a long time.
Towards the end of the party she said she wanted a practice partner during Wimbledon fortnight – she never practiced against other women and hoped I was good enough to beat her. Early the next morning we practiced on the grass courts at the Queen’s Club. I was good enough to beat him. (In those days it was said that the worst man in the Wimbledon draw should be able to beat the Women’s Champion. I don’t know if that applies today). As a result, she was happy to continue our practice sessions. On the Wimbledon fast grass courts she felt that Louise Brough, a good volleyer, would be her main opponent so she asked me to net as much as possible – which I did and was a little worried to notice that her passing shots were not very effective . We would meet to practice in the mornings during Wimbledon whether or not she had an afternoon tournament match. So when Maureen Connolly won the Championship, the first of her three Wimbledon Singles titles, naturally I took credit. It was the closest I had ever come to the grandeur of tennis, in more senses than one.
When she won the final – quite easily against Louise Brough – I sent flowers to her dressing room and suggested we meet for a celebratory drink later. She answered yes but, this still surprises me, first she had to go to the Queen’s Club and practice her service, which she thought was very poor in the final that afternoon hi. How could she be serious, having just won Wimbledon? But she was. Summoned, I went but couldn’t help feeling that this was taking things a little further.
But that may be what genus is all about. I’ve read that anyone who practices anything – writing, composing, making furniture, painting, any musical instrument, any game or sport – for 10,000 hours will become good enough to be considered a genius in that activity . Repeated repetition of the movements and combinations and calculations that yield the best possible result means that what starts out is considered laborious and performed ‘ n weak. The brain that connects to the body-circuits becomes hard wired to achieve perfection. I did not know about this theory when I met Maureen Connolly but I think now it may be a confirmation of the truth of that theory. It was certainly a practicing fanatic. In our morning sessions, long after I had more than enough and got fed up, she wanted to hit and hit and hit and hit. She was seventeen but had been playing since the age of ten so she may have already reached her 10,000 hour quota. And then again there was that business of going out to practice serving her after winning Wimbledon!
Maureen Connolly went on to win 9 major singles championships including the grand slam in 1953 – the only woman to win all four major singles titles in the same year. In 1954, two weeks after winning her third Wimbledon singles title, while riding one of her beloved horses she had an accident and her right leg was crushed beyond repair, thus ending her tennis career at nineteen years old. He died of stomach cancer in 1969. I thought back to that summer time when our paths crossed and I felt very sad.