Ashe vs Connors, Wimbledon 1975: The Final Won by Taking the Pace Away

Saturday, 5 July 1975, Centre Court. Jimmy Connors was 22, the defending champion and the man who had gone 99–4 the year before. The ATP's account calls him the top seed; the Wikipedia draw lists him at No. 2. He had not dropped a set on the way to the final. Across the net stood Arthur Ashe, seeded sixth, five days short of his 32nd birthday and playing his first major final since the 1972 US Open. In three earlier meetings Connors had lost two sets out of eleven to him.

Two hours and five minutes later the score read 6–1, 6–1, 5–7, 6–4, and Ashe was the first Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.

The two frames

The ATP's account names both racquets and nothing more about them. That is the honest extent of the record: no stringer's sheet, no tension and no weight survive for either man in this final.

What matters here is that Connors fed on pace. His game took the ball early and flat and sent the opponent's speed back faster than it came. The whole of Ashe's plan was to give him none.

The plan

The night before, Ashe sat with four pages of notes on Connors' six previous matches. The advice he collected was close to unanimous. Charlie Pasarell told him to slice, to drop the ball short to the Connors forehand and to give him as little pace as possible. Donald Dell's list had the same shape: slice wide in the deuce court to the backhand, keep the ball deep, serve well. A third adviser, McNair, pointed to the wide serve to the backhand in the deuce court. A few weeks earlier at Chichester, the ATP notes, Bernie Mitton had slow-balled Connors on grass with some success.

None of it was how Ashe had played most of his career. It was the right answer to one opponent.

Set by set

First set, Ashe 6–1. Connors won the opening game. Ashe won the next nine. Soft, low slices, short balls to the forehand and the wide serve pulled Connors off the court and gave him nothing to drive back. About twenty minutes.

Second set, Ashe 6–1. At 0–3 a spectator shouted "Come on, Connors!" and nobody else in the stadium could help him. The ball kept arriving without pace, below the knee, and Connors kept trying to supply the pace himself.

Third set, Connors 7–5. The champion found his range. He saved four break points along the way and closed the set with a forehand winner. For the first time in the afternoon, the match looked as if it might turn.

Fourth set, Ashe 6–4. Connors led 3–0 behind backhand winners down the line. Ashe broke back in the fifth game, broke again for 5–4 and served it out. At 40–15 he sliced wide to the backhand and finished with a smash into the open court.

The decisive passage

The fourth set is where the plan had to survive success. A tactic built on denying pace is uncomfortable to keep playing when the opponent is suddenly hitting winners off the slow balls anyway. Ashe stayed with it at 0–3. He described letting every muscle go limp for 45 seconds at each changeover, and he did not change the shape of his game. Two breaks later it was over.

"The tactics may have looked suicidal." — Arthur Ashe, after the final

What is not on this page

There is no ace count, first-serve percentage or winner table here. Those figures were not recorded for this final in any source we read, and a table of them would be invention. The score, the date, the seeds, the duration, the head-to-head and the two frames are above, with their sources.

Why it still matters

The 1975 final is the clearest case in the Open Era of a match won by subtracting pace. For a club player it is also the most useful one, because it does not depend on a serve nobody else has. Hitting the ball slower, lower and wider to someone who wants it fast and flat is a choice any player can make on any racquet.

There was a story off the court too. Connors' manager had filed lawsuits over Ashe's criticism of Connors for skipping the Davis Cup, and the ATP records that they were soon dropped. On the day, none of that decided anything. Four pages of notes did, along with a man willing to play against his own instincts for two hours.