ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the brave new world of professional tennis since its inception in 1968, and especially since 1978, when vulgarity and rowdiness were given a boost in America by the dehumanizing conditions of the new National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadow. France got its constitution but also a bloody revolution which replaced the traditional hierarchical authority of the ancien regime with a reign of terror and egalitarian anarchy which was only saved from chaos by the autocratic bureaucracy of Napoleon Bonaparte. In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that open tennis should have come about in the late sixties or early seventies. Tennis, descendant of a game invented at monasteries that became the sport of kings. Bjorn Borg was the best tennis player in the world when he came to seek his fifth straight win at Wimbledon. Tennis is a sport in need of soul, and the Open's sweat, vitality, intensity and insanity is refreshing.".
