Sports Then and Now

Roscoe Tanner won the 1977 Australian Open and was a finalist at Wimbledon in 1979.

Blond, beautiful, athletic—filled with untapped promise, Roscoe Tanner should be among our heroes in tennis.  Instead he sits atop a rare list of tennis gone-bad boys.

Tanner remains one of the finest tennis players of the 1970s. In 1977, he won the Australian Open and in 1979 played Bjorn Borg to a trauma-inducing final at Wimbledon, extending him to five sets before finally falling to the mystique and iron will of the ice man.

The significance of that match goes beyond the intensity of its level of competition. It was the first live broadcast of Breakfast at Wimbledon, now a tradition to tennis loving fans in the United States.

NBC had prayed for John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors to meet Borg in the finals. Instead, they got Roscoe Tanner, who played the match of his life. We owe the continuation of the early morning live broadcast to him for making it memorable.

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A year ago Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer in a classic Wimbledon final. Now that he is back for the U.S. Open, will Nadal be able to regain the top perch from Federer.

A year ago at this time, we were all squirming in uneasy anticipation waiting to see how Roger Federer would answer the challenge put forth by Rafael Nadal after the Spaniard scorched the green lawns of Wimbledon and exacerbated excruciating pain on the red clay of Roland Garros.

Make no mistake about it—Nadal intended to take over the No. 1 ranking in men’s tennis before summer’s end.

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