The 1975 Australian Open final between Jimmy Connors and John Newcombe is a tennis cult classic.
Kooyong over that Christmas/New Year was a blast of lurid `70s flair – a sea of terry towelling hats, zinc cream and polystyrene eskies. The lineup snaked up Glenferrie Road for miles and the capacity crowd spilled onto the fringes of centre court. Why? Everyone loves a rivalry, and fifty years ago nothing was spicier than Newcombe and Connors.
Jimbo’s Prince Valiant haircut and steel T2000 racquet was the brash face of the American tennis boom that was pushing aside the old guard. Connors humiliated Ken Rosewall to take the Wimbledon crown and added salt with another thrashing in the final in New York. In between he dethroned Newcombe as world number one. There was off-court politics too. Newcombe was involved with the Players Union (ATP) which Connors had run a $10m lawsuit against for restriction of trade.
According to the organisers, Connors only confirmed he would defend his Australian title a fortnight before the Open. All that stood between Jimmy and world domination was a wooden racquet and a broad moustache, but Newcombe’s trouble was that he ended 1974 cooked. He hadn’t reached a major final and by November his sense was that he needed a long break.
Despite his weariness, there was unfinished business with Connors and Newk was, at heart, a businessman. If he is playing, then so am I, he is alleged to have told organisers who must have rubbed their hands in glee and doubled the price of Barossa Pearl in the hospitality marquees.
Newcombe gave up the grog and hit the road, running for miles through the streets of Sydney in preparation. His first week in Melbourne was wonky but he made it through and gathered momentum. He overcame Geoff Masters 10-8 in the fifth in the quarterfinals and saved three match points on the way to winning 11-9 in the fifth in the semi-final against Tony Roche.
Newk then had two appointments. The first was with Stan Nicholes, the Davis Cup trainer/talisman who worked on his aching legs for hours and the second was with Roche to ask him if they could forfeit the doubles semi-final. There wasn’t enough left in his tank for both events. Roche took the request in the spirit of mateship, an unspoken understanding and acceptance of the situation.
Meanwhile, in the other half of the draw, Connors had breezed through dropping only one set in five matches. The dream match-up happened. Here it is on YouTube:
Perhaps scroll through to 01:43:30 when things start to get interesting. It is one set all. Connors is serving down 2-3 when Newk appears to get a series of bad calls. Unexpectedly, Connors agrees his opponent has been mistreated and so deliberately serves a double fault.
Handing back points to an opponent after a bad call was a tradition in pre-war tennis when linesmen could have a certain last-of-the-summer-wine feel to them. Players who knew they had received a dodgy point would double fault or put one into the net and nod to their opponent.
This was not Connors’s style. Manners might be free, but they came at a cost when you played the American. There he was, putting a couple long, and making sure everyone knew about it. The only person not applauding was Newcombe who thought it was a cynical act to get the crowd onside. The build-up for two weeks had been the cranky Yank and now he was winning the heart of Kooyong.
Why did Connors do this? According to his biographer Joel Drucker, Connors’s competitiveness was so intense that by far his greatest motivation was the contest and so the purity of it mattered to him. Others were not so sure. Sports Illustrated viewed it as an act of over-confidence.
For Newcombe, watching with his hands on his hips, there was a surge of raw emotion. One-on-one moments got his blood up too. In his head, he heard the voice of an old mate who taught him that there is only one place for a goose and that is in the oven. Jimmy, in his view, had just been a goose. He broke his serve and took the match in four sets. It was the last of his seven grand slam singles titles.
Connors famously said he would travel to the end of the earth to hunt down anyone who beat him, but he never returned to Australia, dismissing the event in his biography The Outsider, with a paragraph moaning about the timing, heat and flies.
The next year Newcombe again reached the AO final but lost to unseeded Mark Edmondson ranked 212 in the world … a story for another day.
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About Michael Sexton
Michael Sexton is a freelance journo in SA. His scribblings include "The Summer of Barry", "Chappell's Last Stand" and the biography of Neil Sachse.
Thanks Michael.
Great description of the event.
The moustache vs The Price Valiant haircut
Wood vs Steel .
The wily old dog vs the young pup – as it were.
If the nobs were drinking Barossa Pearl then the beer quaffing populace had the better of it.
Great piece, Mike
Newk had much to prove. In 1974 Connors won 3/4 Grand Slams but Newcombe kept claiming he was still world No.1. Connors reply to that was something like ‘Funny thing, I keep getting to finals and there’s another guy on the other side of the net.’ In 1974 it was 40-year-old Rosewall at Wimbledon and the US Open.