Arthur Ashe

President Reagan greets Arthur Ashe (left) in 1982
Country	United States
Residence	Richmond, Virginia
Born	July 10, 1943 Richmond, Virginia, USA
Died	February 6, 1993(1993-02-06) (aged 49) New York City, New York, USA
Height	6 ft 1 in (1.85 m)
Turned pro	1969
Retired	1980
Plays	Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Career prize money	US$1,584,909 (according to the ATP)
Int. Tennis HOF	1985 (member page)
Singles
Career record	818–260 (at Grand Prix tour, WCT tour, and Grand Slam level, and in Davis Cup)
Career titles	33
Highest ranking	No. 1 (1969)
Grand Slam results
Australian Open	W (1970)
French Open	QF (1970, 1971)
Wimbledon	W (1975)
US Open	W (1968)
Doubles
Career record	323–176 (at Grand Prix tour, WCT tour, and Grand Slam level, and in Davis Cup)
Career titles	18 (14 according to the ATP)
Highest ranking	15 (August 30, 1977)
Grand Slam Doubles results
Australian Open	W (1977)
French Open	W (1971)
Wimbledon	F (1971)
US Open	F (1968)

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) was a professional tennis player, born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. During his career, he won three Grand Slam titles, putting him among the best ever from the United States. Ashe, an African American, was the first black player ever selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the only black man to ever win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, or Australian Open. He is also remembered for his efforts to further social causes.

Early life and tennis career

Born to parents Arthur Ashe Sr. and Mattie Cordell Cunningham Ashe, Arthur and his younger brother, Johnnie, suffered a tragic loss when their mother died suddenly from heart related complications during routine surgery. Arthur Ashe first attended Maggie L. Walker High School, being coached by Ronald Charity, and later coached by Robert Walter Johnson. Tired of having to travel great distances to play Caucasian youths in segregated Richmond, Ashe accepted an offer from a St. Louis tennis official to move there and attend Sumner High School. Young Ashe was recognized by Sports Illustrated for his playing.

Ashe was awarded a tennis scholarship to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1963. That same year, Ashe became the first black player ever selected to the United States Davis Cup team.

In 1965, Ashe won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) singles title and contributed to UCLA's winning the team NCAA tennis championship. While at UCLA, Ashe was initiated as a member of the Upsilon chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Ashe was also a member of the UCLA Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant after completing camp at Fort Lewis, Washington in the summer of 1966.

The Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, on the campus of UCLA

In 1968, Ashe won the United States Amateur Championships against Davis Cup Teammate Bob Lutz, and the inaugural US Open and aided the U.S Davis Cup team to victory. He is the only player to have won both of these amateur and open national championships in the same year. Concerned that tennis professionals were not receiving winnings commensurate with the sport's growing popularity, Ashe supported formation of the Association of Tennis Professionals. That year would prove even more momentous for Ashe when he was denied a visa by the South African government, thereby keeping him out of the South African Open. Ashe used this denial to publicize South Africa's apartheid policies. In the media, Ashe called for South Africa to be expelled from the professional tennis circuit.

In 1969, Ashe turned professional. In 1970, Ashe won his second Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open.

In 1975, Ashe won Wimbledon, defeating Jimmy Connors in the final. He also won the season ending championship WCT Finals. Arthur played for a few more years, but after being slowed by heart surgery in 1979, he retired in 1980.

Ashe remains the only black man to ever win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, or Australian Open. He is one of only two men of black African ancestry to win a Grand Slam singles title, the other being France's metis Yannick Noah, who won the French Open in 1983.

In his 1979 autobiography, Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, ranked Ashe as one of the 21 best players of all time.

Grand Slam singles tournament timeline

¹The Australian Open was held twice in 1977, in January and December.
A = did not participate in the tournament
SR = the ratio of the number of Grand Slam singles tournaments won to the number of those tournaments played

Activities after retirement from professional tennis

After his retirement, Ashe took on many new tasks, including writing for Time magazine, commentating for ABC Sports, founding the National Junior Tennis League, and serving as captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1983, Ashe underwent a second heart surgery. He was elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985. He also founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS.

Personal life

Ashe served in the US Army from 1966–68, reaching the rank of first lieutenant. On February 20, 1977, Ashe married Jeanne Moutoussamy, a photographer he had met four months earlier. Andrew Young, the US ambassador to the UN, performed the ceremony at the UN chapel in New York City. Arthur and Jeanne adopted one child together, a daughter, who was born on December 21, 1986. She was named Camera after her mother's profession. Camera was only six years old when her father died.

In 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack, an event that surprised the public in view of his high level of fitness as an athlete. His condition drew attention to the hereditary aspect of heart disease. Ashe underwent a quadruple bypass operation, performed by Dr. John Hutchinson on December 13, 1979. A few months after the operation, Ashe was on the verge of making his return to professional tennis. However, during a family trip in Cairo, Egypt, he developed chest pain while running. Ashe stopped running and returned to see physician and close friend Douglas Stein, who had accompanied the family on the trip. Stein urged Ashe to return to New York City so he could be close to his cardiologist and surgeon.

In 1983, Ashe underwent a second round of heart surgery to correct the bypass surgery he received back in 1979. In 1988, Ashe fell ill and discovered he had apparently contracted HIV during the blood transfusions he had received during his second heart surgery, which ultimately led to his death. He and his wife kept his illness private until April 8, 1992, when reports that the newspaper USA Today was about to publish a story about his health condition because of his increasingly gaunt physical appearance forced him to make a public announcement that he had the disease. In the last year of his life, Ashe did much to call attention to AIDS sufferers worldwide. Two months before his death, he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery and was named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year. He also spent much of the last years of his life writing his memoir Days of Grace, finishing the manuscript less than a week before his death. Ashe died from AIDS-related pneumonia on February 6, 1993. Ashe is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. His wife continues on with civil rights activism, most recently contributing a video to New Yorkers for marriage equality.

Civil rights leader

Ashe, the first African-American male to win a Grand Slam event, was an active civil rights supporter. He was a member of a delegation of 31 prominent African-Americans who visited South Africa to observe political change in the country as it approached racial integration.

He was arrested on January 11, 1985, for protesting outside the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. during an anti-apartheid rally. He was also arrested again on September 9, 1992, outside the White House for protesting on the recent crackdown on Haitian refugees.

Honors

The Arthur Ashe Stadium at the 2007 US Open

• In 1979, Arthur Ashe was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. In commenting on his induction, the Hall noted that, ”Arthur Ashe was certainly a hero to people of all ages and races, and his legacy continues to touch the lives of many today. For Arthur Ashe, tennis was a means to an end. Although he had a lucrative tennis career, it was always more than personal glory and individual accolades. He used his status as an elite tennis player to speak out against the moral inequalities that existed both in and out of the tennis world. Ashe sincerely wanted to bring about change in the world. What made him stand out was that he became a world champion along the way.”
• In 1985, Ashe was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
• After his death, Arthur Ashe's body lay in state at the governor's mansion in his home state of Virginia. The last time this was allowed was for Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
• The city of Richmond posthumously honored Ashe's life with a statue on Monument Avenue, a place traditionally reserved for statues of key figures of the Confederacy. This decision led to some controversy in a city that was the capital of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.
• In 1993, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.
• The main stadium at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Park, where the US Open is played, is named Arthur Ashe Stadium in his honor. This is also the home of the annual Arthur Ashe Kids' Day.
• In 2002, Ashe's achievement at Wimbledon in 1975 was voted 95th in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Arthur Ashe on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
• In 2005, the United States Postal Service announced the release of an Arthur Ashe commemorative postal stamp, the first stamp ever to feature the cover of a Sports Illustrated magazine.
• Also in 2005, TENNIS Magazine put him in 30th place in their list of the 40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era.
• His wife wrote a book, Daddy and Me, a photographic journey told from the perspective of his young daughter. Another book, Arthur Ashe and Me, also gives young readers a chance to learn about his life.
• ESPN's annual sports awards, the ESPY Awards, hands out the Arthur Ashe for Courage Award to a member of the sports world who best exhibits courage in the face of adversity.
• Philadelphia's Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education Center and Richmond's Arthur Ashe Athletic Center are named for Ashe.
• The Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center at Ashe's alma mater, UCLA, is named for him. The center opened in 1997.
• He was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Hall of Fame in 1983.

Schools

There are a number of schools honoring Arthur Ashe.

• In Henrico County, Virginia (adjacent to Richmond), an elementary school in his honor was opened in the fall of 1994 as Henrico County's first volunteer uniform school, with grades kindergarten through to five, a PEDD program^{[clarification needed]}, and a Head Start program.
• The Arthur Ashe Charter school in New Orleans, Louisiana.
• P.S. 161 – Arthur Ashe school within New York School district No.28 is located in Jamaica, New York.
• The Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr Middle School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
• The Arthur Ashe Academy in the Southfield, Michigan school district offers sixth through eleventh grades.

Grand Slam finals

Singles: 7 finals (3 titles, 4 runner-ups)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
Runner-up	1966	Australian Championships	Grass	Roy Emerson	6–4, 6–8, 6–2, 6–3
Runner-up	1969	Australian Championships	Grass	Roy Emerson	6–4, 6–1, 6–4
Winner	1968	US Open	Grass	Tom Okker	14–12, 5–7, 6–3, 3–6, 6–3
Winner	1970	Australian Open	Grass	Dick Crealy	6–4, 9–7, 6–2
Runner-up	1971	Australian Open	Grass	Ken Rosewall	6–1, 7–5, 6–3
Runner-up	1972	US Open	Grass	Ilie Năstase	3–6, 6–3, 6–7(1–5), 6–4, 6–3
Winner	1975	Wimbledon	Grass	Jimmy Connors	6–1, 6–1, 5–7, 6–4

Doubles, 5 finals (2 titles, 3 runner-ups)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Partner	Opponents in the final	Score in the final
Runner-Up	1968	US Open	Grass	Andrés Gimeno	Bob Lutz Stan Smith	11–9, 6–1, 7–5
Runner-Up	1970	French Open	Clay	Charlie Pasarell	Ilie Năstase Ion Ţiriac	6–2, 6–4, 6–3
Winner	1971	French Open	Clay	Marty Riessen	Tom Gorman Stan Smith	6–8, 4–6, 6–3, 6–4, 11–9
Runner-Up	1971	Wimbledon	Grass	Dennis Ralston	Roy Emerson Rod Laver	4–6, 9–7, 6–8, 6–4, 6–4
Winner	1977 (Jan)	Australian Open	Grass	Tony Roche	Charlie Pasarell Erik Van Dillen	6–4, 6–4

Grand Slam, Grand Prix and WCT Tour titles (33)

Singles

1.	August 1, 1968	U.S. Amateur Championships, Boston MA, USA	Grass	Robert Lutz	4–6, 6–3, 8–10, 6–0, 6–4
2.	August 29, 1968	US Open, New York City, USA	Grass	Tom Okker	14–12, 5–7, 6–3, 3–6, 6–3
3.	January 19, 1970	Australian Open, Melbourne, Australia	Grass	Dick Crealy	6–4, 9–7, 6–2
4.	1970	Berkeley, California
5.	1970	Paris, France
6.	1971	Charlotte, USA
7.	1971	Paris, France
8.	1971	Stockholm, Sweden

• 1972 – Louisville WCT, Montreal WCT, Rome WCT, Rotterdam WCT
• 1973 – Chicago WCT, Washington
• 1974 – Barcelona WCT, Bologna WCT, Stockholm
• 1975 – Barcelona WCT, WCT Finals, Los Angeles, Munich WCT, Rotterdam WCT, San Francisco, Stockholm – WCT, Wimbledon
• 1976 – Columbus WCT, Indianapolis WCT, Richmond WCT, Rome WCT, Rotterdam WCT
• 1978 – Colombus, Los Angeles, San Jose

Video

• Wimbledon 1975 Final: Ashe vs. Connors Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date: October 30, 2007, Run Time: 120 minutes, ASIN: B000V02CTQ.

See also

Tennis portal

• Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York, NY
• Arthur Ashe Athletic Center, Richmond, VA
• Arthur Ashe Courage Award
• Arthur Ashe Kids' Day
• Levels of the Game, a 1969 book by John McPhee, exploring the 1968 U.S. Open semifinal match between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe

Further reading

Books by Arthur Ashe.

• Ashe, Arthur; Clifford George Gewecke (1967). Advantage Ashe. University of Michigan: Coward-McCann. pp. 192. http://books.google.com/books?id=UcqBAAAAMAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Retrieved September 9, 2009. 
• Ashe, Arthur; Neil Amdur (1981). Off the court. New American Library. pp. 230. ISBN 0453004008. http://books.google.com/books?id=&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Retrieved September 9, 2009. 
• Ashe, Arthur; Rampersad, Arnold (1993). Days of Grace: A Memoir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-679-42396-6. 
• Ashe, Arthur (1993). A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete. New York, NY: Amistad. ISBN 1567430066, 1567430074, 1567430082. http://lccn.loc.gov/93007395. 

Books about Arthur Ashe, by date published.

• Robinson, Louie (1969). Arthur Ashe: tennis champion. Washington Square Press. pp. 135. ISBN 0671292781. http://books.google.com/books?id=LqRPAAAACAAJ&dq=arthur+ashe&ei=kW6oSuXTIIPYNc_P6K4K. Retrieved September 9, 2009. 
• Deford, Frank; Ashe, Arthur (1975). Arthur Ashe: Portrait in Motion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-20429-1. 
• Weissberg, Ted; Coretta Scott King (1991). Arthur Ashe—tennis great. Demco Media. pp. 109. ISBN 0791011151. http://books.google.com/books?id=wi-CNgAACAAJ. Retrieved September 9, 2009. 
• Collins, David (1994). Arthur Ashe: against the wind. Dillon Press. pp. 128. ISBN 0875186475. http://books.google.com/books?id=wgeSAAAACAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s. Retrieved September 9, 2009. 
• Towle, Mike (2001). I Remember Arthur Ashe: Memories of a True Tennis Pioneer and Champion of Social Causes by the People Who Knew Him. Cumberland House Publishing. ISBN 1-58182-149-2. 
• Steins, Richard (2005). Arthur Ashe:a biography. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 103. ISBN 0313332991. 
• Mantell, Paul (2006). Arthur Ashe: Young Tennis Champion. Simon and Schuster. pp. 224. ISBN 0689873468. http://books.google.com/books?id=TOgIQMjFE8QC&dq=arthur+ashe+school. 
• Henderson Jr., Douglas (2010). Endeavor to Persevere: A Memoir on Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, Tennis and Life [Kindle Edition]. Untreed Readsurl=http://www.amazon.com/Endeavor-Persevere-Memoir-Connors-ebook/dp/B004EYTBHG.