Sun, Sep 05, 2004 page24

• Grand Slam champ Doris Hart recalls a sophisticated game

  • AP
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  Women's tennis was less colorful in 1954, and not just because the balls and dresses were white. Entourages, demanding parents and outrageous outfits came later. There was no prize money but plenty of camaraderie, with opponents sometimes meeting after their match for sodas.

  Still, the US Championships were serious business, and Doris Hart was annoyed to find herself one point from defeat in the final -- especially since she had settled for runner-up four of the previous five years.

  Now 79, Hart has the large hands, erect posture and graceful bearing of a champion athlete. And her memory's so sharp she can vividly describe match point when she trailed Louise Brough 50 years ago.

  "I missed my first serve, and I sort of poofed in the second serve to her backhand," Hart recalls, rolling her eyes. "Louise had a terrific backhand. I thought, `Oh, my God. I'm in trouble.'

  "But she hit it right in the bottom of the net."

  If Hart was a little lucky, she was also very good. She rallied to beat Brough that day in 1954 for the first of two successive titles at the US Championships, which later became the US Open. She won the French Open twice, won Wimbledon and the Australian Open once each, totaled 29 major doubles titles and ranked No. 1 in the world in 1951.

  As Hart sits in her Coral Gables apartment watching this year's US Open, she cringes at Serena Williams' latest ensemble, marvels at the smooth shotmaking of Roger Federer and dislikes the way most players try to hit everything so hard.

  "There's really not much strategy involved," she says. "It's not that appealing to watch, I don't think."

  Hart's game was finesse rather than power. A childhood infection nearly forced doctors to amputate her right leg, and she had to compensate for sluggish foot speed throughout her career.

  "Everybody thought she had polio, because she was a little bowlegged," says her best friend of more than 60 years, former doubles partner Shirley Fry. "For her to do what she did was special because she couldn't run as well as other people. And yet she had the smarts."

  Hart's best weapon was the drop shot, especially effective in an era when three of the four major tournaments took place on grass. She played her first Grand Slam tournament in 1946 at Wimbledon.

  "We got there right after the war, and the English people had nothing," she says. "A bomb had hit Wimbledon, and part of the stadium was gone. That was a cold reminder of the war."

  Hart made her first trip to the Australian Open in 1949.

  "I flew, and it took forever," she says. "There were no jets, and we had to stop at every little island to refuel."

  The arduous journey was worth the trouble: Hart left Melbourne with her first Grand Slam title. She won the French Open for the first time in 1950, and the following year came her greatest achievement -- three Wimbledon titles in one day.

  First Hart beat Fry in singles, 6-1, 6-0.

  After drubbing her pal, they teamed up to win the women's doubles final. Then Hart won the mixed doubles title with Frank Sedgman.

  "It's the greatest feat, I think, in women's tennis," says Gardnar Mulloy, one of the top US men in the early 1950s. "Because of rain delays, she had to play all three matches in one day, and she won them all. Today's players would say, `My God, I've got to have a day's rest.'"

  Says Hart: "I wasn't tired. I was on Cloud Nine."
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