US OPEN

September 12, 2004

Smith Court

Jack Kramer

THE MODERATOR: It's our great pleasure to have two of the greats in tennis history here with us today, Reverend Dr. Margaret Court, who won 18 US titles in her illustrious career, as well as Jack Kramer, the 1946 and 1947 US champion. Both Court and Kramer will be inducted into the US Open Court of Champions later this afternoon, along with Steffi Graf and John McEnroe. With that, we'll open it up for questions for these two tennis greats.

JACK KRAMER: Did he say what are we doing these days? Go ahead, Doctor.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Well, I pastor a very large church in western Australia. We have about -- over 2,000 people, which we have a Bible school, community services, a lot of things linked with it. So my life's very full today. Not enough days in the week.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Doctor of law.

JACK KRAMER: I'm spending my time, I got very lucky in the early '50s, bought into a golf course operation. So my family and I control 36 holes of a public golf, which takes three or four of my days to go out there and try to help them spend the money properly. Outside of that, I have a pretty good interest in horse-racing. I'd advise you not to get into the horse-racing, unless you like losing money. But I have four pretty good horses. And I'm waiting to get back to California, because in early October, they're all getting ready to rumble at Santa Anita.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Here, to the US Open?

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I haven't been here for probably 22 years.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: How it's changed here?

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Well, I always think Forest Hills had a very unique atmosphere. There was something about the stadium, I guess, a little bit like Wimbledon. But I think every arena builds its own atmosphere, sort of thing. I think this has an atmosphere. I came here originally, I think it was -- when it was the other stadium was the only one...

JACK KRAMER: The Armstrong stadium.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Yes. I think back then they used to call it "the cement jungle." But it's changed. The facilities here are very, very nice now.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Well, Forest Hills was on grass. I think it's a different style and type of game than that that you see today. It's more baseline. I guess we were more serve-volleyers. But, I mean, I played there many times. I know Jack did. So I don't know what it would be like here to play on this, you see.

JACK KRAMER: Well, I think Margaret, you could have won here just as easily as you did on the grass. I'm not so certain that I could have. But I loved Forest Hills, started playing there in '38, played my last year in '47. The difference in the game, Margaret, is fascinating. In the years that I played, we stayed at the Vanderbilt Hotel, which was a players' hotel. And I think the room cost us - we had to pay for ourselves, there was no prize money involved - it was 250 a day to stay there. We all had to ride out on I think the E train to get to Forest Hills to get to the tennis stadium. Now the kids here have 280 cars ready to pick them up. The things have changed. Boy, wouldn't it be wonderful to play for all this loot.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I think it's easier today in many ways. We used to have to play week in, week out, 10 months a year. Just as Jack said, the money wasn't there, so we had to play, then we'd go back to Australia. So we didn't have the opportunity to take three weeks out and play when you felt like it or you didn't feel like it. I think we played singles, doubles and mixed. They just play singles. I guess it's different today probably because of television and press, but you have everything with you today; we couldn't afford to take families, we didn't have psychologists, we didn't have masseurs with us. And I admire the men because they played five sets of doubles and five sets of singles and the mixed doubles, I think. I don't know whether they'd make it today if they had to play that. You saw the Lavers and the Kramers that would play those long, continuous day in, day out. I don't think they could do that today.

JACK KRAMER: Well, Margaret, I think what you say is true about the good old days, it was tough in many ways. But quite frankly, I watch a lot of the tennis on television, and I've come to the opinion that anybody that is good enough to make the draw in both the ladies' and the men's singles, they're one hell of a great tennis player, and they're not being overpaid at all. To go through and win seven matches, these two guys that are going out there today are really some players and they deserve to be the No. 1. And I don't know what Lleyton Hewitt's ranking is right now, but he might be very much closer to No. 1 after this afternoon. But boy oh boy, they really have a lot tougher job than any of us had. In my day, if you played anybody before the quarterfinals that could win three or four games in a set, even though you played best-of-five, why, you had to have an unlucky draw. Nowadays, as I say, it's not unusual where the best player in the world can get bounced in one of these tournaments in the first round. The depth is just wonderful.

JACK KRAMER: Well, Roger is a complete player. What he has - and it's not luck - he has the ability to change his game slightly as to what his opponent's doing to him. He's not known as a great aggressive player, but he's so good on the defense and so good at the return of serve that he's forcing the other player mentally to get a little bit of scaredness, "I got to serve a little better or Roger's gonna knock it by me." "I got to make a better approach shot or he's going to pass me." He's getting errors because of the threat of his skills. That's why he's the champ.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I didn't quite get that.

JACK KRAMER: I took a stroll out there. I'm quite humbled and very proud, and I think the folks that were honored last year probably feel the same way. The thing, Margaret, that I think is so fascinating, is that we're going to be there as long as this place is the number one facility in America, and perhaps the world. All the people, for a long, long time, are going to go by. They might not know who we are, but we're going to know we've been very, very blessed to be honored by the selection this year. I'm very pleased.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Yes, it's an honor.

JACK KRAMER: I haven't played in eight years. I've had three hip operations, a fractured femur in the right leg. My grandkid ran me into a ditch in the golf course. I almost fractured my right knee. I'm lucky to be walking, let alone play that tough game (smiling).

JACK KRAMER: That racquet did everything for me and my family. The racquet, actually, ladies and gentlemen, paid off more money than I was able to ever make playing all those damn tours. Of course when we were playing in the tournaments, we were paying our own way and there was no prize money. The compensation was there, and I'm happy to say the Wilson sporting goods company did a fabulous job. They direct and they produced a racquet that the champs could play with. In fact, Johnny McEnroe, by using my Pro Staff, he gave me another $60,000 a year in royalties. I'll have to thank John when I see him. I've tried to do it many times. The racquet financed the purchase of my golf course and it's been everything to me.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I was coaching up until about two and a half years ago. Then I got so busy with the ministry side of things, so I don't play, but I get on the rowing machine, I do a bit of jogging and walking.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I think they're having a really good look at the moment of the whole future of the game in our nation. I've always said I believe they have to go back to individual coaching a bit. I think they've done so much of the early years of group coaching, and I believe you lose out champions in that because they take them into that too early. Champions, I believe, are very sensitive people. They often need a coach or somebody to bring the best out of them. I feel we've lost a lot of them, and they are having a look at the whole scheme in Australia at the moment.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Well, I think next year they're changing the whole system of everything. They haven't been doing something very right for 15 years. If you look at Hewitt, Rafter, they're all from individual coaches, and Philippoussis.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Federer, I feel, is probably more back to our era, the style of play. I think he's so good all-around, and he's got all the strokes. I mean, he can be aggressive if he wants to. He can chip. He can topspin. He can do anything. He's got that talent there. He had a good Aussie that coached him originally (smiling).

JACK KRAMER: Well, it sort of goes in cycles. There's no doubt about it. I think it was 1987 when Michael Chang and Todd Martin peaked, Sampras, Agassi, and Jim Courier all came out together. So we had a wonderful run for American tennis in all ways. I don't know why we're down to really one top player, but a lot of talent, but I can say this, I've been involved in talking to the people involved in High Performance tennis. There's a lot of great programs that are getting put in place and a lot of effort's been put forth to bring the top kids together more often in competition, in trying to get some evaluation of kids that are 12 to 14, that if they have a bad set of grips, particularly not going to have a strong serve, they're trying to get this advice to the youngster and his parents and his coach - they all have coaches - so they straighten out all of these problems when they're very, very young. If you wait too long, you can never change your grip on a serve like that. It would appear to me, part of America's problem is that for a long while the parents were looking at various sports and tennis looked like it was the best sport. If you had a good athlete at six or seven, get him into tennis. The worst you can do is get a college education. The problem is if the kids get started too early, those balls that they play in the competition come like this (arching) so they end up with these wild grips and so forth and it keeps them from really getting the style of game that's best suited for their mental and their physical attributes. I would hope that we can show the parents in America that want their kids to be good tournament players, get them started around 11 or 12 when they're really physically able to listen to a good coach, come up with the sound strokes, and go from there.

JACK KRAMER: Sure. It's only natural that when anybody is on a run like Roger's on a run, you got to start comparing him to all the people who played before him. Personally, I would have loved to have seen Don Budge or Ellsworth Vines play with this equipment. I don't care who's on the other side, whether it's Roger, Agassi, no matter, I think they would have figured out a way to win. They had the power, control. I am sort of hung up on those fellows. Roger is a complete package. He'll only get better and he'll bring everybody else along. Because if he sets the standard, you've got to play against him - the idea of how good you have to be -- you've got to beat Roger to be No. 1. It's a great thing.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I mean, you look at somebody like Laver who won two Grand Slams. To me, I mean, I didn't see Jack play, I didn't see...

JACK KRAMER: I saw you play, sweetie (laughter).

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I didn't see Althea Gibson play. To me, the time and era I've been in, to me, he was one of the greatest. It's very hard to compare.

JACK KRAMER: Absolutely.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I think you probably look at the statistics and time. You see champions come through today. People say "They're great champions," and they've won one Grand Slam, two Grand Slams. You see somebody like him and what he did, over a period of time, to me, that's when you start saying, "Hey, I think they're a great champion."

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I guess with myself, I was probably the first woman to lift weights and do circuit training and to run the sand hills. Jack and I were saying earlier how the equipment today, how beautiful it is. I mean, you just get such wonderful touch with it. I think if you'd like to put them out on a court with the racquets that we used, I think many of us would have fit in to this time very well, particularly athletic-wise, racquet-wise. Everything that goes with it today, to me, from a -- I guess a psychology, the trainers, everything makes it a little bit easier than when we had it.

JACK KRAMER: As for me, playing with my racquet, if you can believe it, because of Don Budge, he convinced me to keep increasing the rate of the racquet. I was using 16 ounces. So you can imagine, you're sort of limited as to what the spin that you could put on the ball. I'd say, using that kind of a racquet and playing against a guy like Roger Federer, he would have beaten me 6-Love. I would have hoped if I would have changed my style of play and with this better piece of equipment, that I might have been able to compete with these fellas. But my game against his game, no comparison. He would have shut me out.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: We pioneered the metal racquets, Billie Jean King and myself. I think she used the round Wilson. I used a Cammold (phonetic spelling) and a Yamaha. They're nothing like they are today. They didn't know how to string them. I won a Grand Slam with a Cammold. I mean, every four or five games, the strings would break because the rivets were wrong. Nobody knew how to string them properly. We went through pioneering a lot of the metal racquets.

JACK KRAMER: The Prince company was the one who did it in '78 or '79. They brought in the larger head racquet. That destroyed the ability for a manufacturer to make a wooden racquet. With that lighter piece of equipment, we've seen the skills of the game go up. So the company that invented that deserves a lot of credit for increasing the greatness that we watch out on the court. But I still say the kids of today have it a lot tougher than we did, Margaret. Because you play in any tournament, particularly those 32-draws. I mean, it's just brutal what the No. 2 in seeds go against the first-round draws. That's why we have all the upsets.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: Well, I was playing, Jack, when they did have a 32-draw. We came in with that in the early '70s, once Open tennis came in.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: That's right.

MARGARET SMITH COURT: I agree on that because we do, we lift players up so quickly today, and then they're not in the game in five years' time. They seem to come and go much more quickly than what they used to.

JACK KRAMER: Let's hope Roger doesn't get satisfied if he continues to win and gets too wealthy that he doesn't have the extra incentive to go out there and play. A champion of his stature, the game needs him, and he's 23 now, as I understand it. Let's hope he has the same drive that Sampras had for so long. The great thing about Andre Agassi, and I hope he doesn't quit, he loves what he's doing, he's still one of those guys that nobody wants to play. Gee, I hope he goes a little longer. When you think about it, Bill Tilden won his last championship - I believe he won eight, all told - but he won his last one when he was 37. I hope you get the news out to Andre Agassi, he's not over the hill, there's a lot of victories out there.