Best Wimbledons

Don Wassall

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We have been discussing the pandering "best of" lists on the baseball forum. I just watched "The Best Wimbledons" on ESPN Classic, which was made in 2005. The show listed the 20 most memorable Wimbledons, replete with periodic intervalsof some black guy rapping as the network cut to and from commercials (always appropriate music for a tennis show).


All of the 20 picks were actual great matches, except for two, which were included for pure anti-white, pro-black propaganda purposes, especially number 7, which was Althea Gibson winning in 1957. Nothing about that finals was shown or mentioned other than the final score. Instead, we were told the match was "a seminal moment in the civil rights movement," and that it "inspired a generation of African Americans to take up tennis," which "paid off a generation later with Zena Garrison and the Williams sisters."


So after 50 years of blacks being "inspired" to take up a sport, they have produced exactly three female players worthy of mention. Such a barren white presence in any sportover such a long period of time wouldbe cited as indisputable proof of whites' lack of athletic ability, but with blacks it somehow becomes evidence of their peerless athleticism.


Number three was Arthur Ashe's win over Jimmy Connors in 1975. Ashe was of course portrayed as a saint and Connors a devil. Some black journalist crowed that Ashe "out thunk" Connors to win, blah, blah, blah.


At the end of the show, the narrator, the annoying Trey Wingo, announced that to make sure there had been no worthy exclusions ESPN was going to turn it over to those two renowned tennis experts, Mike
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& Mike
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. These two buffoons had no objections to the list, except for a single anonymousletter Greenberg read aloud that castigated the show for not showing more of the Williams sisters. Both clowns readily agreed with that obviously scripted assessment, with Dumbo The Elephant blurting out, "They sure can play," when the show was supposed to be about great matches rather than great players.
 

Poacher

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Don Wassall said:
Such a barren white presence in any sport over such a long period of time would be cited as indisputable proof of whites' lack of athletic ability, but with blacks it somehow becomes evidence of their peerless athleticism.

What a great point.

I sure hope the top two were Fed/ Nadal and Mac/ Borg.
 

Quiet Speed

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Interesting. I did not see the Ashe-Connors finals. Usually when I hear the telling of the match, it is brought up that the strategy used by Ashe was developed by several people, in particular Donald Dell. Dell was a one time Davis Cup captain.

From Wimbledon's official web site:

...strategy that had been refined at dinner the night before with Donald Dell, Charlie Pasarell, Marty Riessen and Fred McNair. Ashe had called former Davis Cup coach Dennis Ralston and they made a list of things to concentrate on. At dinner, the list was amended and Ashe left with five or six key points written on a piece of paper that he looked at on the changeovers during the match.
 

Don Wassall

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Poacher said:
I sure hope the top two were Fed/ Nadal and Mac/ Borg.


Borg-McEnroe 1980 was number one. The show was produced in 2005 so it was too early for Federer and Nadal.


I've already forgotten what number two was. I have a difficult time watching any of ESPN's "list" shows due to the way they are produced -- frenetically paced,glib observations by interview subjects, rap music and the rest of it.


I only watched this one to keep track ofthe obligatory over-rating of blacks and the oohing and aahing over their athleticism and saintly personalities and where they would be placed on the list. And because the Australian Open always gets me interested in tennis.
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Edited by: Don Wassall
 
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Althea Gibson always struck me as a one-hit wonder, so to speak, in tennis. How did she perform after that 1957 win; you never hear about her after this. I take it she faded into obscurity and was viewed as a novelty thereafter.Edited by: OldSchoolBoy75
 
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