Ashe Was Tennis’ Magical Man : Reaction: After his AIDS announcement, a stunned tennis world recalls the impact he had.

When Roscoe Tanner walked onto the carpeted tennis court of the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1973 to play doubles, his first match as a professional, he took a quick look around. He saw Ken Rosewall, Fred Stolle and Arthur Ashe.

Tanner was nervous, but he breathed a sigh of relief.

“At least I knew the Big Guy was on my side,” Tanner said.

The Big Guy was Ashe who, despite a rather unimpressive frame that stretched to 6-1 and carried only 155 pounds, always seemed to command the sort of respect that tennis has glimpsed only on occasion.

Tanner was struck once again Wednesday by the impact of Ashe when his former doubles partner revealed at a news conference in New York that he has AIDS. The announcement by Ashe, the 1968 U.S. Open, 1970 Australian Open and 1975 Wimbledon champion, shocked and saddened many of those who knew the 48-year-old tennis pioneer.

“Gosh, I’m terribly, terribly distraught,” said 1938 Grand Slam winner Don Budge. “It’s a damn shame. It just makes you sick. There hasn’t been a higher class guy in tennis.”

Tom Gorman, who followed Ashe’s successful reign as Davis Cup captain that featured two championships in five years, said news of Ashe’s illness will have a profound effect on the sport.

“It affects the tennis world like the basketball world was affected by Magic Johnson,” Gorman said. “It’s Magic all over again, on our scale. Arthur was such an incredible figure in the tennis world that probably a lot more people are going to be a lot more aware of this horrible disease.”

Ashe is the second major American sports figure to contract the AIDS virus. Johnson, 32,announced Nov. 7 that he was retiring from the Lakers because he had tested HIV-positive.

Johnson, in a statement released through his marketing and publications company in Century City, extended support to Ashe and said he looked forward to working with Ashe in the fight against AIDS.

“It takes great courage and strength to make such an announcement,” Johnson said in the statement. “I’m sure Arthur will meet this challenge head on and become a leading voice in the fight to educate, raise funds and increase awareness to all, especially our youth.”

Ashe called a news conference in a midtown Manhattan hotel Wednesday, the day after he was approached by reporters and editors of USA Today, who had apparently been tipped that Ashe was infected with the AIDS virus.

Ashe said he is certain he contracted the virus from a blood transfusion after the second of his two heart operations, a double bypass in 1983. Ashe also had a quadruple bypass in 1979. Routine screening of blood for HIV was not done until 1985. Ashe said he has known about the diagnosis since 1988, when he had a brain operation after he lost the use of his right hand. Ashe said a biopsy revealed toxoplasmosis, a marker for AIDS.

Ashe said that his wife, Jeanne, and 5-year-old daughter, Camera, are HIV-negative.

“Hasn’t the guy been through enough already?” Tanner said. “You just get stunned. For me, it’s very hard to believe it all. When I first turned pro, he did so many things to help me. And he didn’t have to--he was No. 1. When I won the Australian Open in 1977, he even coached me.

“Now, I’m dumbfounded. It even kind of makes me mad. It’s like, ‘Come on, let’s find a cure for it.’ Hopefully, they’ll get something done fast.”

Three-time Wimbledon champion Fred Perry had a similar reaction to the news of Ashe’s illness. “That’s terrible. . . . I’m just so very, very sorry. At Wimbledon last year, I saw him again and we said hello and chit-chatted. I had no clue he was ill. He never said anything to me and he certainly never let on about anything.”

Chris Evert said she is praying for Ashe.

“Arthur is one of the great human beings ever to play the game of tennis,” Evert said. “It just seems so unfair that in his young life he has had a heart attack, open-heart surgery and now has to be stricken with this virus.”

Ashe, born in Richmond, Va., was an 18-year-old high school student in 1961 when he won the National Interscholastic Tennis Championships and thrust himself closer to the forefront of tennis. Not long afterward, Ashe was there.

Ashe was ranked No. 1 in 1968 (he was again ranked No. 1 in 1975) when he set a tennis record that will never be matched at the dawning of the Open era of tennis. The sport was giving way to professionals when Ashe completed a unique double play. He won the last U.S. Nationals, in which only amateurs could compete, and then the first U.S. Open, where professionals were allowed.

At Forest Hills, N.Y., in the first U.S. Open of the professional era, Ashe defeated Tom Okker, a Dutch professional, and became the first amateur to win the U.S. Open.

There were a series of other ‘firsts’ connected with Ashe’s name, usually because of his race. Ashe was the first great black male professional tennis player. In 1963, he became the first black to play Davis Cup for the United States and later became the first black captain of the U.S. team.

Omar Fareed was the team physician when Ashe played Davis Cup and later served as captain. Fareed’s daughter, Shireen, is married to Charlie Pasarell, who was Ashe’s roommate at UCLA, where Ashe was an All-American and NCAA singles and doubles champion in 1965. Fareed has known Ashe since 1963.

“I’ve known for quite some time about Arthur’s condition,” Fareed said. “A lot of us who were close to Arthur knew about it and we confided in each other, but I never talked to him about it myself. What could I say anyway? It was one of those things. . . . I couldn’t do anything about it.

“It’s just a terrible tragedy that a transfusion could affect him as an innocent recipient of blood,” Fareed said.

Former No. 1-ranked British player John Lloyd, coach of the Los Angeles Strings, said he learned six months ago that Ashe may have had the AIDS virus. “It was like a for-sure type thing,” Lloyd said. “But it’s a private matter, so it’s just something you know about and that’s it until the person comes forward.”

In 1975, Ashe became the first black man to win Wimbledon, when he upset the highly favored Jimmy Connors. Nothing like it had happened before on the famed grass courts on Church Road just across the Thames from London.

Budge, the 1937 and 1938 Wimbledon champion, remembered looking on in amazement at the serving tactic Ashe employed to help him defeat Connors, 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4, in the final.

“Ashe continually served wide to Connors’ two-handed backhand on the deuce court as Connors stood three or four feet behind the baseline,” Budge said. “Connors had to run past the doubles line just to reach the ball. Ashe was the first one to play Connors the right way, to put the ball where his reach was limited. But that was typical of Ashe as a player. He was just so adept at what he tried to do.”

The first American player to earn more than $100,000 per year, Ashe made headlines in 1972. He also managed more headlines the following year, when he became the first black to play in a major tournament in South Africa--three years after the South African apartheid regime had refused to grant him a visa to enter the country.

It was largely through Ashe’s efforts that South Africa was banned from Davis Cup in 1970. Ashe also used the apartheid issue to educated American black athletes on the need to use sports to promote civil rights. Ashe assumed a principal role and addressed the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

One of the founders of the Assn. of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Ashe was elected the second president of the players’ group in 1974 and served five years. Mark Miles, chief executive officer of the ATP Tour, said today’s players owe Ashe a debt of gratitude.

“A month ago, Arthur took part in the ATP Tour’s university program . . . giving players a perspective on the history of the game and educating top players on their social responsibilities,” Miles said. “Arthur has been a friend, confidant and adviser to me and the tour on South African policy, helping us . . . reach a decision to bring professional tennis back to that country.”

As a player, Ashe continually distinguished himself on the tennis court. The slim right-hander won his second Grand Slam title in 1970, when he won the Australian Open. Ashe was also Australian Open runner-up three times--1966, 1967, 1971--losing the first two times to Roy Emerson and the ’71 final to Ken Rosewall. And he was U.S. Open runner-up in 1972, losing the final to Ilie Nastase.

Ashe teamed with Marty Reissen to win the 1971 French Open doubles title and with Tony Roche to win the 1977 Australian Open doubles title.

On July 31, 1979, Ashe was conducting a tennis clinic for youngsters in New York, when at ge 36, he suffered a heart attack. Five months later, Ashe had a three-hour quadruple bypass surgery at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York. He announced his retirement in April, 1980.

Ashe had heart surgery again, a double bypass procedure, in June, 1983. He said at his news conference Wednesday that it was a few days after this second operation that he received two units of blood that he believes were infected with the AIDS virus.

Ellsworth Vines, whose singles triumph at Wimbledon preceded Ashe’s by 42 years, said he was shocked by the news.

“It’s really a sad case,” Vines said. “But it just goes to show you, you’ve got to be careful and even when you are careful, you can still get it. Now, how the hell can you be careful if you get it in a blood transfusion? How? How? I mean, that’s terrible.”

* MAIN STORY, A1.