| “A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background,” The New Yorker’s John McPhee once wrote, in a Profile of the tennis star Arthur Ashe. “Ashe feels that [his opponent Clark] Graebner plays the way he does because he is a middle-class white conservative. Graebner feels that Ashe plays the way he does because he is black.” The two players, in the article, are facing off at the U.S. Open in 1968, a particularly turbulent year in both politics and sport. The tournament’s 2024 edition begins tomorrow and will conclude, in two weekends, with the finals contested at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest tennis venue in the world. The facility named in his honor suggests the extent of Ashe’s impact, which was already being discussed at the time of the Profile. Some observers, McPhee writes, likened Ashe to Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in baseball, and certain similarities were indeed undeniable. Both men had been barred from competitions because of their race, but the comparison also undersold the obstacles faced by Ashe. The article evokes tennis during a very different moment in its history, when even Grand Slam competitors worked day jobs, and when a potential U.S. Open winner might take the subway (then twenty cents) to get to the courts. Still, its insights about the sport remain fascinating, and so does its psychological rendering of Ashe, who continued to be underestimated. “People say that Arthur lacks the killer instinct,” another African American player tells the writer. “And that is a lot of baloney.” | 
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