High Life | 5 September 2009

Gstaad

My Davis Cup partner Nicky Kalogeropoulos won both the Wimbledon and Roland Garros junior titles in 1963, and the following year, at four–all, 30–all in the fifth set against the French champion Pierre Darmon, signalled his opponent’s ball good after the umpire had called it out giving Nicky a breakpoint. He lost the match but has been known ever since for his sportsmanship.

As I write, the US Open is at full tilt, and Nicky rang from Costa Rica to wish me a happy birthday. I didn’t bother to tell him he was three weeks late. We talked instead about a new book with the unfortunate title, A Terrible Splendor. It’s about the greatest tennis match ever played, the fifth and deciding rubber of the 1937 Davis Cup between Germany and the US, played by the number one in the world Donald Budge and Baron Gottfried von Cramm, the world’s number two. I knew both men, having been trained by Budge for one year in 1956 and befriended by Gottfried in the Sudan in 1958. The baron and I would hit every morning before the heat set in, and in 1959 I won the Sudan championship with Gottfried in the stands cheering me on. Ironically, I beat a German in the final. (I joked in a letter that my opponent had died of heat stroke following the match and a Greek newspaper called my victory a hollow one.)

Von Cramm was born into a very ancient aristocratic German family, and his devastating good looks, as well as his unparalleled sportsmanship, made him an idol both in Germany and Britain. He reached the final at Wimbledon three times, losing all three matches (although in his second final he had pulled a muscle and should have defaulted but gallantly refused to do so).