in play from the back of the court. Then, in my senior year in high school, in St. Louis, Missouri, I had turned myself into a serve-and-volley player. I became adventurous, sometimes even reckless.
I liked being reckless, as long as I was reckless only on the tennis court, and as long as I won. Fans deserve to see a player with flair, someone for whom tennis is an art as well as a craft. Because I became bored fairly easily I would try the difficult shot, or sometimes even the impossible shot, just for the hell of it. I was known for being a winning but frequently erratic player—or “liberal,” as the proudly conservative Clark Graebner once termed it in agenteel disparagement of my approach. I admit that I was capable of following flights of exhilarating tennis with bonehead misses. From time to time, my mind certainly wandered on the court. On the whole, however, I was entertaining, and I liked that.
Because I did not want my career to end in 1979, on December 13 of that year I underwent a quadruple coronary bypass operation. With long, skillful incisions, my surgeon, Dr. John Hutchinson, removed veins from my legs and implanted them in my chest to take over the functions of my clogged arteries. He pronounced the operation a success. If he could not assure me that I would be playing tennis professionally again, he nevertheless gave me hope that my life might be pretty close to normal.
Then, on March 9, 1980, I discovered that my life would never again be perfectly normal. That afternoon, in Cairo, during a long anticipated visit, I left my hotel near the pyramids for what I hoped would be a pleasant run. Three months had passed since I had undergone open-heart surgery. As far as I was concerned, I was completely recovered and only weeks away from a return to professional tennis. I was loping along gently, easing into the main phase of my run, when the angina struck. It hit me relatively softly, but hard enough to stop me dead in my tracks. I felt the world come to a halt. I walked slowly back to the hotel.
“Back already, Arthur?” Jeanne asked, half awake from a nap. “What happened?” She was cool as could be, but I could tell she knew something was wrong.
“Just a touch of angina. I thought I shouldn’t go on with the run.”
“Let’s call Doug.” Douglas Stein, a physician and one of our closest friends, had accompanied us on the trip.
When Doug came, he took my pulse and listened to my heart. Then he asked me to try some exercises, jumping jacks. As soon as I started, the angina returned. He checked my pulse again, and listened to my heart.
“You were right to stop running,” Doug said. “Your heart wants no part of it.”
“Should I be getting back to New York?”
“I think that’s a good idea, Arthur.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Doug responded. “If your heart is acting up, you should definitely be close to your cardiologist and your surgeon. At the very least, you should be close to top-class medical facilities, where you would be recognized and taken care of at once. There are fine doctors here in Cairo, but we really don’t know anyone. I don’t think this is an emergency, but there is no point in taking chances.”
As we flew out of Cairo, I knew one thing for sure: My career as a competitive tennis player was over.
We decided that instead of rushing back to New York, we would linger awhile in Europe, which I knew fairly well from years of playing tennis there. We stopped in Holland, a country I love. In Amsterdam, at my urging, we headed for the Rijksmuseum and its outstanding collection of Rembrandts.
Of the old masters, the work of Rembrandt moves me more than any other. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on Fifth Avenue in New York City, I have several times studied his celebrated
Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer
. It evokes in me a wicked sense of the close kinship that exists between admiration and envy. In other museums in
I liked being reckless, as long as I was reckless only on the tennis court, and as long as I won. Fans deserve to see a player with flair, someone for whom tennis is an art as well as a craft. Because I became bored fairly easily I would try the difficult shot, or sometimes even the impossible shot, just for the hell of it. I was known for being a winning but frequently erratic player—or “liberal,” as the proudly conservative Clark Graebner once termed it in agenteel disparagement of my approach. I admit that I was capable of following flights of exhilarating tennis with bonehead misses. From time to time, my mind certainly wandered on the court. On the whole, however, I was entertaining, and I liked that.
Because I did not want my career to end in 1979, on December 13 of that year I underwent a quadruple coronary bypass operation. With long, skillful incisions, my surgeon, Dr. John Hutchinson, removed veins from my legs and implanted them in my chest to take over the functions of my clogged arteries. He pronounced the operation a success. If he could not assure me that I would be playing tennis professionally again, he nevertheless gave me hope that my life might be pretty close to normal.
Then, on March 9, 1980, I discovered that my life would never again be perfectly normal. That afternoon, in Cairo, during a long anticipated visit, I left my hotel near the pyramids for what I hoped would be a pleasant run. Three months had passed since I had undergone open-heart surgery. As far as I was concerned, I was completely recovered and only weeks away from a return to professional tennis. I was loping along gently, easing into the main phase of my run, when the angina struck. It hit me relatively softly, but hard enough to stop me dead in my tracks. I felt the world come to a halt. I walked slowly back to the hotel.
“Back already, Arthur?” Jeanne asked, half awake from a nap. “What happened?” She was cool as could be, but I could tell she knew something was wrong.
“Just a touch of angina. I thought I shouldn’t go on with the run.”
“Let’s call Doug.” Douglas Stein, a physician and one of our closest friends, had accompanied us on the trip.
When Doug came, he took my pulse and listened to my heart. Then he asked me to try some exercises, jumping jacks. As soon as I started, the angina returned. He checked my pulse again, and listened to my heart.
“You were right to stop running,” Doug said. “Your heart wants no part of it.”
“Should I be getting back to New York?”
“I think that’s a good idea, Arthur.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Doug responded. “If your heart is acting up, you should definitely be close to your cardiologist and your surgeon. At the very least, you should be close to top-class medical facilities, where you would be recognized and taken care of at once. There are fine doctors here in Cairo, but we really don’t know anyone. I don’t think this is an emergency, but there is no point in taking chances.”
As we flew out of Cairo, I knew one thing for sure: My career as a competitive tennis player was over.
We decided that instead of rushing back to New York, we would linger awhile in Europe, which I knew fairly well from years of playing tennis there. We stopped in Holland, a country I love. In Amsterdam, at my urging, we headed for the Rijksmuseum and its outstanding collection of Rembrandts.
Of the old masters, the work of Rembrandt moves me more than any other. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on Fifth Avenue in New York City, I have several times studied his celebrated
Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer
. It evokes in me a wicked sense of the close kinship that exists between admiration and envy. In other museums in
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