The Arthur And Arthur Show

The personal journeys of Arthur Ashe and Arthur “Bud” Collins converged at the 1968 US Open, and the sport was never the same

- Stephen Tignor

The two Arthurs sat in a broadcast booth high above Longwood Cricket Club and talked. One of them, Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr., was a bespectacled, 25-year-old African-American who had just won the National Amateur championship. The other, Arthur Worth “Bud” Collins, Jr., was a 39-year-old reporter who had just made his national debut as a TV commentator. Each was in the midst of a long-awaited professional breakthrough. This being the summer of 1968, so was the sport they loved.

Their conversation went out over WGBH, Boston’s public TV station. With no commercial constraints, Ashe and Collins talked at length about race relations in the U.S., the future of South Africa, and what it was like for Ashe to play at clubs that wouldn’t admit him as a member.

“I hope I see changes,” Ashe said.

Change was everywhere in 1968, and it was even coming to tennis. The following week, the USLTA would welcome professionals to Forest Hills for the first time. Unable to let go of its history entirely, though, the governing body, as Collins put it, “conducted a contrived carnival for that transitional year”—the U.S. Amateur Championships, at Longwood.

The event was split between past and future. It was staged at an old-line private club, yet it was the first major U.S. tennis tournament to be broadcast in color. Because of that, it was also the first to allow non-white clothing. For his semifinal, Ashe daringly donned a “trophy yellow” shirt.

The two Arthurs each personified this progressive-conservative blend. Ashe became the first African-American man to win a national championship, but he was also a clean-cut Army Lieutenant who had declined to turn pro. And while Collins, with his bow ties, loud pants and gift of gab, would personify the preppy side of tennis for many, he was a serious journalist committed to progress.