rest of my life. i ll always do that. he won t be able to play tennis the rest of his life. at the age of 35, i know what my strengths are fairly much. and i know what my weaknesses are. but i think more than anything else, which i couldn t do ten years ago, is admit that there s some things i can t do. whereas when i was 24, 25, there was nothing i didn t think i could do. he fought back and continues to fight. putting himself through agonies in order to not be overcome by younger, stronger, hungrier men. it is like some eastern ritual, but it works. a year ago, he had fallen from the top ten to a ranking of 257th in the world. today, he s back to number eight. arthur ashe wasn t supposed to have a chance in the finals of the grand prix masters tournament, not against the teenage star john mcenroe. but serving at triple set
point in the first celt, the 19-year-old mcenroe double faulted three straight times. this event was like a huge deal for me. i was in college at the time, and to play arthur there, and actually save a couple match points was just so crazy. it meant a lot to me. arthur was tough. mcenroe got the $100,000 first prize. ashe got $65,000 for second. he got more, there gratitude of everyone who is over 30 and feels younger. i would be willing to stack myself up against any 28-year-old on the tour, anyone. because i work harder than just about anybody. i m in excellent shape. i take care of myself. and i ll be around for a while. i think about denial a lot because i accuse arthur of being in constant denial. but there s good denial and there s bad denial.
wearing the foster grants. ray-bans. bruce springsteen s sidekick, john patrick mcenroe jr. i remember wondering how arthur and the volatile younger generation of tennis would get along. what did i say? tell me. please tell me. please tell me. you could see sam smith, rod laver, and arthur, they were perfect gentlemen. and then these young shouting hoodlums acting wild kids come along. i think it was quite a challenge. i like to stick to protocol. i like to stick to the rules. there are a lot of little incidents with john. if a match was supposed to start at 1:00, john would always wait until three minutes past 1:00, always.
a long time. that s because i can t recall that ever having happened. there was a picture of arthur ashe propped up in the hospital bed with a huge white bandage running right down his middle. will you tell us what happened? that obviously ended my tennis career. because i retired about 2 1/2 months right after that. and got on with the rest of my life. i had made my official announcement of retirement in march 80. the incoming president of the usta asked to see me at the u.s. open and told me that i was the one person they wanted to coach the american davis cup team. i knew that our team would be built around mcenroe. in his first news conference
things like that. i remember a match where arthur didn t say a word to me at all. he s looking at these stats, and i m like, this is a bunch of baloney. but i would say the only time there was real friction, i believe it was the final match against argentina. basically, i guess that had been building up a little bit. john mcenroe, besides playing his usual brilliant tennis, got into his usual antics on the court. you shouldn t be in the chair, all right. you re junk. you were very strong in your point that the u.s. had never defaulted a match. you were not about to let john mcenroe do the same because of his behavior. how do you prevent this, arthur, and what do you tell a mcenroe? john had behaved so poorly, i called our davis cup committee chair person and i said, look, i thought what john did yesterday was ridiculous. it makes us look bad.