Thomas Muster

Portrait of Thomas Muster by Tom Lohner’s

What do a drunk driver in Miami, a Viennese furniture company, and the only world #1 never to have won a match at Wimbledon have in common? A few more rpm when the drunk driver struck, and Muster might be dead. A few more rpm on the ball as Muster sits in a chair, his reconstructed knee in a cast. Not Josef Hoffman’s famous Sitzmaschine armchair from 1905, with its nod to the machine age, but a chair simply built without arms so that Muster himself could become a machine, hitting ball after ball for hours on end. “I was motivated. I was on fire.” Became “The King of Clay,” Nadal before Nadal. A punishing lefty, a beast. His high bouncing topspin strokes wore down your shoulders while he went to work on taking out your legs. “You just have to listen to him out there. He sounds like a bulldog who’s chewing on your leg and will not stop chewing, no matter what.” (Pete Sampras).  In 1995, Muster became Austria’s only grand slam champion by winning the French Open. In 2008, Muster gave an hour-long talk at an Austrian tennis club while the famous Austrian cyberpunk post-apocalyptic painter, Tom Lohner, painted Muster’s portrait. After the hour’s up, the painting’s finished. It’s poster-like, celebratory, with a style akin to the early 20th century futurist painters whose credo was “a roaring motor car is more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace.” Muster’s painted as if he’s half-machine, half-human, his body an amalgam of hard metallic surfaces and tennis technique. Maybe that’s what it takes to be grand-slam champion. And what about Wimbledon, its pastoral grass? After a few first-round losses, Muster skipped Wimbledon like so many other clay-court specialists of his era. Wimbledon’s grass was too slippery, too fast, too dangerous like cars, like the one that hit him, Muster hitting back by striking ball after ball in a Viennese chair, a story you should teach your kids.

Tom Lohner with Thomas Muster

* About the Artist
The wildly inventive and popular Austrian artist, Tom Lohner, has the following credo: “Where passion pulls – follow. Never question this – it may be the only chance in your life to be truly alive.” Celebrated for paintings that combine a traditional medium of acrylic colors and futurist aesthetics, Tom Lohner is perhaps most famous for his Art of Hard Rock  series, where he transformed 13 iconic rock stars into animals, a show that toured throughout Europe in various Hard Rock Cafes. As a classical music lover, my favorite painting of his is Vivaldi. Check it out! Thrilled that Tom Lohner will be painting “Maria Sharapova” for a future post of “Tennis Players as Works of Art.”  You can learn more about him and his work on Tom Lohner’s website.

Tom Lohner Instagram | Tom Lohner Facebook

The artist on painting Thomas Muster:
Everyone says that Mr. Muster is a grumpy guy - I totally deny that. He was such fun and once we warmed up I asked him about his profession. If he was encouraged back in the days to play tennis etc - or if he had people doubting him etc. Luckily he was supported well by his parents - from then on of course it was hard work to get to where he was and still is now (as an Austrian tennis legend) but more fun was that he told me, that it might have been a wiser choice to become an artist such as me because being a sports star you only have a certain amount of years. He looked at me, patted my back and said: You can still do what you do in your late 90's - even tied to a wheelchair if you feel like it. AND THAT - made my day! :-D

If you wish to make any comments on “Thomas Muster,” feel free to leave them below or contact me.  My other innovative writings on tennis, along with audio recordings, are available on my website. You can also follow me @LinebargerDavid on Twitter.

Michael Chang, Tiananmen Square, and God

Original Drawing by Leonardo Luque*

Original Drawing by Leonardo Luque*

“The tanks came in on the middle Sunday” while Michael and his mother watched television: 300 dead, or is it thousands? Tomorrow Ivan Lendl, the world #1; tomorrow a lone Chinese man stops a line of tanks. At seventeen years old, Chang is 5’ 9,” 135 pounds, a speedy defensive baseliner without enough firepower to hurt Lendl. Chang is Chinese-American (both parents Chinese) and deeply religious (reads the Bible every night). “God’s purpose,” Chang says, “was for me to win the French Open the way it was won” painful leg cramps worsening “God’s purpose” stay the course eat bananas gulp water “God’s purpose” try anything underhanded serves schoolyard tactics moonballs lobs sudden winners out of nowhere “God’s purpose” cramps prayers Chang not unlike Odysseus shipwrecked desperate swimming exhausted when he reaches shore and the Greek goddess Athena closes his eyes. Would Odysseus have fallen asleep without Athena? Would Chang have won the French Open without God?



* About the Artist
Leonardo Luque, a retired Columbian naval officer, earned his fine arts degree in 2012 from Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, Columbia. Currently the third-ranked Columbian player in the ITF world rankings for men’s 60 singles, Leo has drawn all his life and is especially interested in the beauty and motion of the human body. After traveling through China and Panama, he settled down with his family in 2014 in Boca Raton, Florida where he continues his portrait studies at the Art School at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

If you wish to make any comments on “Michael Chang,” feel free to leave them below or contact me.  My other innovative writings on tennis, along with audio recordings, are available on my website. You can also follow me @LinebargerDavid on Twitter.

Gladys Heldman

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
- Philip Larkin, “This be the Verse”

Gladys Heldman Photo courtesy International Tennis Hall of Fame

Gladys Heldman
Photo courtesy International Tennis Hall of Fame

Bring me my Scotch! Tone is everything when Gladys speaks to her ten-year old daughter Julie. Bring me my Scotch! Imperative demanding royal and riddled with anxiety’s ambition, its genetics its fire its ice, its lack of mother love multiplied by Gladys’ alcoholic father of wealth, accomplishment, generosity, charm. Gladys Heldman: a brilliant woman who earned a BA from Stanford and an MA in Medieval History from UC Berkeley in just four years. Gladys Heldman: a mother of two daughters who would give birth to two more remarkable children: World Tennis magazine in 1953, and the Women’s Tennis Tour in 1970. At the altar of World Tennis magazine, Gladys Heldman barebreastedinbedsmokingcigaftercig Gladys Heldman a smartcrazydrivenfemaleinthe1950s corresponding with readers around the globe Gladys Heldman writingeditingcallingschmoozingstrategizingrewritingTheRules. Easy question: Was there ever a more creative, consequential tournament director/promoter in the history of tennis? For the 1962 US national championships, at a time when few foreign players came to America to play, Gladys Heldman arranged a charter airplane to fly in 80 players from all over the world. Players before Profits! Or: Players and Profits! In 1970, a famous photo tells the story of how Gladys Heldman helped give birth to the women’s professional tennis tour: 9 women holding one-dollar bills like flags of solidarity against a male tennis establishment that threatened to end their careers. To create all this innovation and much, much more, “a woman,” as Virginia Woolf writes in her famous feminist essay of 1929, “must have money and a room of her own.” Gladys Heldman had both. Double scotch, double scotch, double scotch. I’m Sorry, I’m Sorry. (That’s what ten-year old Julie said when she failed to meet her mother’s demands.) I meant two double vodkas with lunch, then just before dinner: double scotch, double scotch.

*I was inspired to write this piece after listening to Julie Heldman read Driven: A Daughter’s Odyssey, a remarkable book of insights, honesty, and terrific writing. Required reading for anyone who loves tennis and would claim to know its history. Chris Evert calls it a “must read.”

A response from Julie Heldman:

I’m touched by David’s powerful portrait of my mother Gladys, and how he captured her contradictions by weaving in the power of her personality, her world-changing achievements, her nutty idiosyncrasies, and her failures as a mother. 

Julie Heldman, ranked #5 in the world in 1969 and 1974, won 22 women’s singles titles.

Here’s a scene from my book Driven. After the end of the Houston tournament that started the women’s pro tour, Billie Jean King’s husband Larry arrived at our family home, hoping to replace Gladys as the tour director. He wanted her to speak to the players.

“Only Mom could have made this tournament happen through her creativity, her thoroughness, her connections, and her steel backbone. But at this moment she’s shut down. . . . She looks stricken. Her words are agitated and frantic, showing she can’t function. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it. You’ll have to do it for me.’

Driven is available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle. I also spent hours in the studio recording the audiobook version, which can be found on Amazon, iTunes, Apple Books and Audible. What a joy to hear my voice bravely conveying the emotions I'd hidden for so many years. 

If you wish to make any comments on “Gladys Heldman,” feel free to leave them below or contact me.  My other innovative writings on tennis, along with audio recordings, are available on my website.

Ivan Lendl and the Cold War

Original drawing by Jota Leal *

From 1982 until Gorbachev/Reagan tore down that wall, Lendl was in the finals of eight straight US Open championships. Not as talented as Jimmy Connors or John McEnroe (his main American rivals at the Open), Lendl became our Boris Badenov, our Ivan Drago in Stallone’s Rocky IV. His power baseline game seemed robotic, humorless, harsh, unrelenting--the Soviet bloc in the cold war era. He “deformed the ball” on the forehand side, welcoming the chance to smack it at close range at an opponent’s body or head. “A man comes to net by his own risk, and should be prepared to defend it,” Ivan said. Not genteel, but effective. “Ivan, do you like America? Would you like to live here?” Lendl had seen the Russian tanks in Prague, had learned to keep quiet. Year after year, we half-created while Lendl half-played “Ivan the Terrible.” After becoming a US citizen, Lendl was finally free to protest: “I enjoy life. I like jokes.” “Nobody hates communists more than me—not even Rush Limbaugh!”

*About the Artist
Originally from Venezuela, Jota Leal currently exhibits at the Gallery of Music and Art in the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas and at Sally Fine Art in Taipei, Taiwan. His portraits feature a unique blend of surrealism, caricature, and whimsical humor. You can see his portraits and learn more about him on his website.

If you wish to make any comments on “Ivan Lendl and the Cold War,” feel free to leave them below or contact me.  My other innovative writings on tennis, along with audio recordings, are available on my website.

Pete Sampras and Nirvana

Original Drawing by Leonardo Luque

Remember your first funeral? Pete put his first Wimbledon trophy in his coach’s casket. Earlier he broke down and cried between points and games against Courier in the 1995 Australian Open quarterfinals before somehow winning the match. Tim Gullickson, brain cancer, gone. Each grain of salt vanishes/becomes the cosmic ocean. Hinduism 101. The problem in Hinduism is that this essential truth lay hidden beneath a magical yet deceptive illusion of surfaces (Maya) that deceives us distracts us from understanding. The problem for sports fans when contemplating Sampras was much the same. Pete’s tremendous competitive will--“the strongest willed athlete I’ve ever seen” (Paul Annacone)--lay deceptively buried beneath the veil the veneer of a superb classic athlete, someone who made everything look easy: his all-court game, his running forehands, his gift of history’s best big clutch serve. On fast courts, especially, opponents were dispatched too easily. Spectators grew bored, the headlines cruel: Samprazzzzzzz would put you to sleep. How many are awake enough to see beneath life’s surfaces? How many might be enlightened? The answer in Hinduism is that everyone will be. Just give it enough time, enough lifetimes.

If you wish to leave any comments on “Pete Sampras and Nirvana ”, please click “comment” below. If you’d like to be notified of upcoming posts, feel free to contact me at linebarg14@gmail.com.

Monica Seles

Randomly choose a number from 1-4.

I.  Better if the violence happens offstage as in Greek drama. Just give me the plot, the facts. The nine-inch boning knife, the deranged fan of Steffi Graf coming out of the stands, the attempted killer walking free. Catharsis means the purging of pity and fear, what spectators should feel.  Ok, ok. I just felt stunned, and then, like everyone, I went on with my life. Monica Seles?  Wasn’t she the one who was stabbed?

II.  One by one, a whole bag of Oreo cookies. Run a dozen 400 meters back to back, then train for three hours more. What’s on TV? What’s in the fridge? Are there any Pop-Tarts left? Overeating one way to cope with violence. Raped, stabbed, depression, doubt, numbness, withdrawal . . .  How many struggle against demons we guess at but never know? How many, like Monica, come out free and clear on the other end?

III.  The joyous all-out control-abandon-release of her ground strokes. The two pitched (uw whee) of gruntscream gruntscream gruntscream. Two hands of both sides, the forehand indistinguishable from the backhand. No one hurled more arms legs body mind propeller hips shoulders pinwheel buzzsaw grunt backhand scream forehand scream ferocity joy crazed ball machine double time triple time missiles torpedoes Monica’s game like a military weapon that even Leonardo with all his imagination could not have invented for the women’s game. 

IV . From 91-93 captured seven grand slams. Three straight French, three straight Australian.  Youngest ever in history to win the French open at 16 years old. Ranked #1 in 91 and 92. If not for being stabbed on the court in 1993, how many grand slams would Seles have won?

*This story was originally published in Mulberry Fork Review.

Art Announcement: If you know anyone in the tennis or arts community who would like to create an original drawing or painting in response to this writing on Monica Seles by Feb. 15, 2020, I will plan on including it (if appropriate) in a future post on “Tennis Players as Works of Art.” If you are interested, please send an electronic image of your original work to linebarg14@gmail.com.  If you have any questions, just let me know.

If you wish to leave any comments on “Monica Seles”, please click “comment” below. If you’d like to be notified of upcoming posts, feel free to contact me at linebarg14@gmail.com.

Bjorn Borg

Original Drawing by Leonardo Luque

I wanted to be Ringo Starr one year for Halloween. Long hair, girls screaming, rock star. A few years later I wanted to be Borg. Long hair, headband, topspin, rock star. No one burned as brightly for five or six years. The Angelic Assassin, beatific like the beats, then simply beat, burned out, retired at 26. Five consecutive Wimbledon titles. Four consecutive French Opens, six overall. The best on grass like Sampras or Federer, the best on clay like Nadal. Best on the fastest surface: serve and volley, attack. Best on the slowest surface: patience, long rallies, endurance, ground strokes. Never before a human being like that. “They should send Borg away to another planet,” said Nastase. “We play tennis. He plays something else.” Racquets strung so tight the strings break, ping like guitars or violins in the middle of the night. Is I magen (Ice in the stomach). Pulse rate in the 30s, a myth, of course, like the stories of Odin, Frigg, Thor, Balder . . . 

If you wish to leave any comments on “Bjorn Borg”, please click “comment” below. If you’d like to be notified of upcoming posts, feel free to contact me at linebarg14@gmail.com.

Ken Rosewall's Backhand

Original drawing by Leonardo Luque

The older ones who knew would stop and watch. The younger ones have almost forgotten. Rosewall’s slice backhand as repeatable, as simple, as breath itself.  If you could hit it at 22, you could hit it at 70, at 80. Easy on the body, the mind. Not slice, as most say, but struck almost flat with backspin as subtle as the Dao itself: soft yet hard, power yet touch, yin and yang. Rosewall’s backhand can go anywhere; it can do anything or nothing at all:  down the line, cross-court, dink, lob, approach shot, passing shot, rally shot, forcing shot . . . Oldest major singles champion at 37, ranked number 2 in the world at 40 years old.  Longest gap between first major and last major in three different grand slam championships: Australian, French, US Open. 5 foot 7, 145. Muscles, breath, elegance. Not color and flash, but simplicity, artistry, line. Poussin, Botticelli, the aging Matisse. As tennis players get older, as their bodies become ghosts of their former splendor, they all dream of Rosewall’s backhand.

If you wish to leave any comments on “Ken Rosewall’s Backhand”, please click “comment” below. If you’d like to be notified of upcoming posts, feel free to contact me at linebarg14@gmail.com.