| COVER STORY: APRIL 2008 |
Tony Bennett laughs at funny man Alan King.
Jim Carrey rocks out at the U.S. Open.
1 ALAN KING
The late Alan King once confided, “When I was
27, I threw my golf clubs and my caddy into the lake.” Rarely has an act of
violence so suited a sport. After all, no celebrity was more devoted to tennis
than the Brooklyn-bred funnyman. From his nearly 50 years watching the U.S
Championships to his role as the beloved master of ceremonies at Indian Wells
(where he always introduced Charlie Pasarell as “the patron, the man who brought
tennis to the desert”), King was easily spotted by fans in his oversized straw
hat in his front ‘n center seats at the U.S. Open. The only comedian to have
his own tournament — the Alan King Tennis Classic in Vegas — the shtickmeister
they dubbed “the Jewish Will Rogers,” loved to comment on players such as Rod
Laver, whom King said “could have been coached by ZaSu Pitts.”
Plus, he was constantly spinning tales, like the story of the time when Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis showed up to practice on the court at his Long Island tennis house which prompted his wife to call out, “Hey, there’re two blondes with long hair here. Who the heck are they?” King was also fond of recalling how he, Frank Sinatra and U.S. champ Frank Shields would often go up to Tommy Dorsey’s Connecticut estate. But rather than going on court to play, Sinatra would cool it under a tree sipping whiskey. Then after a while, as the tennis heated up, the rather perturbed Sinatra would yell out, “You wanna quiet that racket? All that noise is interfering with my drinking.”
|
2 JOHNNY CARSON
Everyone knew about his late-night, chat-fest, few realized that, year after year, he quietly took his extremely low-profile seat behind Wimbledon’s Royal Box to watch the drama of tennis’ most compelling final. Simply put, Malibu’s greatest Nebraskan was a tennis nut. Sure, he didn’t start playing until he was 33, but when he realized his hilly home didn’t have room for a court, he bought an adjoining lot for several million just to create his own tennis retreat. And speaking of real estate, Carson sold his beach house to a well qualified buyer named John McEnroe for $1.85 million and, as part of the deal, insisted he got six tennis lessons. Okay, Johnny wasn’t much good. CBS’ Mike Wallace once quipped, “He’s been playing for four years and it shows...I served, he missed. I lobbed over his head with ease. Let’s say he was earnest. His best attribute on court was his enthusiasm.” No matter, Johnny passionately loved the game. He was not only a regular attendee at the Indian Wells final, he invited many a tennis star - from Don Budge and Jimmy Connors, to his favorite tennis guest Johnny Mac - to come onto his show to chat. But, sadly, our favorite Carson sports tale has nothing to do with tennis. Once he asked Arnold Palmer’s wife Winnie what she did before her famous husband would play a big round in order to bring him luck. “I kiss his balls,” she responded. At which point, Carson replied, “I bet that makes his putter stand up.”
3 CHARLIE CHAPLIN
None other than Charlie Chaplin conceived and enacted the first comedic take on tennis on film. In the 1914 short Star Boarder, the Little Tramp, in full costume, is seen in a segment entitled 40-Love. Not surprisingly, Chaplin offers a slapstick implosion. He nearly breaks his nose as he bounces a ball into his face. Then he whiffs completely on a forehand and suffers a full-out Chaplinesque pratfall. Finally, Chaplin blasts a ball out far beyond the fence. But not to worry, our hero then walks off court, all smiles, his leading lady by his side. A solid, if unspectacular, left-handed baseliner who owned a backyard court, Chaplin adored the game, whether he was going off to the Hearst Castle to play with the glitterati or sweating it out at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club.
One of his four wives, Paulette Goddard, was a devoted player. He also met one of his leading ladies — Marilyn Nash — on his home court. Chaplin was a close friend of the gifted but troubled Bill Tilden. When no one else would, he allowed the problematic champ to use his home court to give his lessons, and Chaplin was the prime protector of the problematic genius as he suffered his astounding free fall. At one point, Chaplin even futilely tried to get Tilden to seek refuge in his home on the French Riviera.
4 GROUCHO MARX
The guy was an endearing contrarian. After all, he coined those immortal fighting words (which supposedly referred to a prominent L.A. tennis club): “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.” So it’s not exactly shocking that when the Beverly Hills TC invited its members, Groucho and Chaplin, to join Fred Perry and Ellsworth Vines to play a match to celebrate the opening of their new clubhouse in ‘47, it was Marx who was the cutup. Arriving on court with 12 rackets and a suitcase, just two games into the match he laid out a picnic on court and lounged about, then took a rest in a blanket. Tennis was a nice chunk of Groucho’s life. When he went to one Jack Kramer vs. Frank Parker final in L.A., it was so hot he put on a pith helmet and sunglasses and cracked that he looked like something out of Animal Crackers. Groucho possessed a big forehand that he called “Iron Mike” and he liked to sit on his racket between points. His doubles pairing with his first wife, Ruth, often proved a bit dicey. “For goodness sake, will you please get off your racket and be ready,” Ruth once barked. “We need this point.” Undaunted, Groucho would shoot back: “Listen, Helen Wills. Don’t worry about me.” The couple’s talented son Arthur won a national collegiate tournament as a USC freshman and reached the final of the ‘40 Cincinnati Masters, where he lost to Bobby Riggs. After one of his son’s losses, Groucho scolded, “Listen here, sonny boy. If you expect me to pay out good money for rackets and lessons and sending you around to all the tournaments, then you’re going to have to take this more seriously. You can’t stay out until twelve or one o’clock in the morning, necking in that little car of yours, and expect to play tournament tennis. I’ll bet you Kramer and Schroeder are in bed every night at seven o’clock.”
5 WOODY ALLEN
We never spotted this New York Knicks fan at the U.S. Open and we don’t think he’s much of a player. But Woody recently made a movie — Match Point — which focused on the problematic love life of a fallen British pro. And then there was Annie Hall. The memorable ‘77 flick not only features the bi-coastal exchange in which Allen’s character Alvy Singer is told if he “lived in California, we could play [tennis] outdoors every day, in the sun.” But Alvy is a committed (though kind of self-hating) New Yorker, who suggests that America “looks upon New York like we’re-we’re left-wing Communist, Jewish, homosexual, pornographers. I think of us that way, sometimes, and I live here.” Plus, Alvy doesn’t want to live in L.A. because “the only cultural advantage [there] is turning right on a red light.” Then, there is the singular tennis scene in which Alvy meets Hall at the Wall Street Tennis Club. Okay, the pasty Alvy (who makes John McEnroe look sun-bronzed) strokes just one shot — a way-too-loopy forehand. But here, as the bound-for-dysfunction couple awkwardly tries to connect, Annie offers her skittish sing-song — “La-de-da, la-de-da” — and we see her for the first time in full regalia, including her statement tie that was given to her by her “Grammy Hall,” to which Allen replied that he never got a tie from his grammy because she “was too busy being raped by Cossacks.” La-de-da, la-de-da.
6 ROBIN WILLIAMS
Aficionados of the history of stand-up comedy know Robin Williams’ take on the invention of golf well. The nasty riff that rages on about those sadistic Scots in skirts who came up with a sport where you knock a ball with a stick that’s shaped like a tire iron past sandboxes and pools into a gopher hole that’s hundreds of yards away (a sport where every time you miss you have a “stroke.”) Still, there are many tennis snapshots in the Williams’ family album. His mom Laurie was a tennis fanatic and Williams himself has been courtside for many a tournament from San Jose to Flushing. He even appeared in an L.A. exo alongside Billy Crystal, Sampras and Agassi, who, when asked what he feared most about Williams’ game, said, “His shorts (which Williams subsequently admitted “looked like a Hebrew eye chart).” When asked how he prepares for a match, William said, “Deep meditation and a little medication.” Williams recently told Harold Hecht, “It’s weird when you watch women’s tennis now with all the grunting and shouting. It’s a bit like phone sex. So, you have to be careful not to get too excited.”
7 BILL COSBY
A confessed tennis nut, Coz penned Bill Cosby’s Personal Guide to Tennis Power (Or, Don’t Lower the Lob, Raise the Net), was a regular on the pro-am circuit in the tennis-boom years of the ‘70s, and once lent his comedic genius to the festivities at Ashe Kids’ Day prior to the U.S. Open. Playing doubles with Whitney Reed on one occasion, Cosby, a highly competitive player, went ballistic when Reed launched an impromptu on-court impersonation of Charlie Chaplin. Screamed Cosby, “God——-, Whitney, put the mother———- ball away!” Cosby once asked Hall of Famer Don Budge for a few forehand tips, sparking the following exchange: “What am I doing wrong?” “You’re on the court.” “How far off should I get?” “Have you ever tried fishing?” In his book, Cosby wrote, “The serve was invented so the net can play. Generally, the net is a very good player with a fine sense of humor. It blocks all first serves, nips all second serves and laughs at you. And why not?...[After all] after you toss the ball in the air, it’s all up to God anyway, so get it over the net any way you can.”
8 JERRY SEINFELD
It wasn’t all that surprising to see Seinfeld and Larry David sitting side by side at the ‘07 U.S. Open. After all, tennis made regular appearances on the nine-season sitcom Seinfeld, in which Seinfeld starred, David wrote and our sport inevitably led to jolly mayhem. Remember the episode when Jerry was smitten with a deaf U.S. Open line judge and George wants to use her to read the lips of his ex-girlfriend to find out what she’s saying about him? Or when zany Kramer became a ballboy at the Open and collided with Seles? Or how ‘bout the time Elaine lent her boss’ racket to a lady with whom she had a job interview and had to sneak into her office to get it back? Then there was the time Jerry bought a new racket from a sleazy pro who turned out to be a fake. Then Kramer was knocked unconscious by tennis balls from an unkind ball machine.
9 SIR PETER USTINOV
The late comedic actor loved Wimbledon, where he left fans in stitches with his rants about a supposed outbreak of “mad strawberry disease and the denigration of strawberries over the past 11 years.” Ustinov played tennis in many an exotic port. Perhaps his favorite venue was a club in Turkey (dedicated in equal measure to tennis and fencing) called the Istanbul Tenis re Eskzim Kulup, where Ustinov noted that an “audience of uninhibited Turks cramped my style by roaring with unrestrained laughter every time I threw the ball into the air.” An unsparing critic of his own game, he explained why in one key match he was aced: “I failed to return the ball not because I could not reach it but because I did not see it.” But he once did ace the great Dutch champion Tom Okker, and was quick to note that, “The ace in question was so slow that Okker fell attempting to reach it and play was held up while he received medical attention.”
10 JON LOVITZ
A regular on the celeb pro-am circuit, the former SNL star can often be spotted at Davis Cup matches, the Countrywide Classic in L.A., or out on the town with ATP vet Vince “Ain’t Afraid of Ya” Spadea. The duo once mingled with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Jim Carrey and Pamela Anderson at David Spade’s birthday party in Santa Monica. After Lovitz hazed Arnold for the way he pronounced California (“Ga-lee-four-nya”), Spadea said, “I didn’t know you could be the governor of a place you couldn’t pronounce.”
HONORABLE MENTION: Jay Leno (who’s featured McEnroe and Roddick, and more recently had Justin Gimelstob give viewers a curious, behind-the-scenes view of the U.S. Open), Billy Crystal (who once interrupted a sparring Sampras and Agassi at an exo by urging, “Kids, kids, don’t quarrel. I’ve got a colonoscopy in two hours.”), Jim Carrey (who had ‘em in the aisles at the U.S. Open) and Dennis Miller (who once joked that authorities were “hunting for legendary fugitive D.B. Cooper in Sampras’ chest hairs.”)
