Sport: A Contempt of Court

Tennis sometimes seems as much a scandal as a sport

In consecutive weeks, major sports events an ocean and a world apart stepped ("one leg at a time," as the sportswriters say) into trouser controversies. Early last week, during the final round of the U.S. Open Golf Championship at Oakmont, Pa., Forrest Fezler ducked into a portable comfort station after finishing the 17th hole and emerged to play the last hole historically (also horrendously) in shorts. Last week at Wimbledon, England, where tennis shorts have been customary since 1946, Trey Waltke competed in long white Bill Tilden-like flannels, complete with an old school tie for a sash, until Ivan Lendl excused him in the second round, 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. "Nice pants," Lendl said as they shook hands.

The different stirrings caused by these incidents were intriguing. Fezler's fellow golfers, presuming that he was merely tweaking the dandruffy officials of golf, were actually surprised to learn that Fezler, in fact, had an endorsement contract with a company that makes shorts. On the other hand, or leg, everyone in tennis, the players, the tournament directors, the promoters, the agents, the sponsors, the groupies, the drug dealers and the reporters, were flabbergasted to find out that Waltke did not have a clothing contract, that he had done it just for fun. Hardly anyone could recall the last time a tennis player did anything for fun.

As Waltke's costume signified, the decidedly un-Victorian game of tennis is visiting its past again, spending a 97th fortnight at Wimbledon. Last week, on just one typical afternoon at the old club, eighth-seeded Vitas Gerulaitis lost, chucked his racquet into the stands and refused to talk to anybody. Fifteenth-seeded Hank Pfister, able to put more top spin on his racquet, bounced it off the spongy grass court 15 ft. into the sky, across a fence and into the audience. He also lost, owing to a warning for "racquet abuse," a point's deduction for "an audible obscenity" and a delay of game penalty that cost him a tie breaker and a set. "You cannot default the No. 1 or No. 2 seed because they are the life of the tournament," complained Pfister afterward. "Tournaments don't need a guy like me."

Nobody could argue with that. By the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, he means Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, but especially McEnroe, who almost at that precise moment was coiled at the foot of an umpire's chair threatening to walk out of the tournament. In an injured voice, McEnroe said later, "I was warned for delay of game just for trying to put grass back into the hole I made." By the way, he had just gouged the turf with his racquet.