Tennis Hits the Books
When mapping out books to cover during Black History month this year, Zina: My Life in Women’s Tennis was an immediate selection. Zina Garrison emerged from a public park’s program in Houston, which makes her book an obvious choice for a tennis blog sourced from Texas. Additionally, she was my Dad’s favorite player. It was a foregone conclusion that this book would come up pretty quickly in the rotation.
The tennis careers of Zina and Lori McNeil represent an intermediate state of blacks in professional tennis between Althea Gibson and the William’s sisters. While Zina did not experience the same challenges as Althea, her experiences were probably closer to Althea than how Serena has experienced the sport and the professional tour.
For example, Zina played the majority of her career without significant endorsement contracts. For eight consecutive years between 1984 and 1991 she was ranked in the top 10 at some point in the year and finished in the top 10 five times. However, that was not enough to secure the endorsements that would be automatic for a player of her caliber in current times.
In 1990 when she reached the Wimbledon Finals there was sudden interest in sponsorships. In fact she changed clothing lines between the semi-finals and the finals due to a new deal. Zina describes the scramble her agent performed in between rounds to secure deals with Reebok, a German jeans company, Sun-Maid Raisins, and Budget Rental Cars.
Zina describes similar experiences with some of the sordid history of the USTA Player Development Program. A first hand stark data point detailed in the book was how the USTA selected juniors for the US Open Girls draw. In 1982, Zina was ranked #2 in the United States in junior singles and had reached the quarterfinals of the French Open junior draw. The USTA selected five other players for the draw and placed Zina on the alternate list. All five players selected before her were white.
My Dad’s Favorite Player
My Dad was a huge fan of tennis and was particularly supportive of Texas players. When my parents attended the US Open in 1988 as a part of the USTA Texas delegation, he made my Mom watch the junior singles matches of Alex O’Brien and Steve Bryan, Texas boys who were contemporaries and friends of my brother.
The first day my Dad went down to breakfast at the tournament he arrived at the hotel restaurant at the same time as Zina. They looked over the price list and collectively decided to try a cheaper option at the restaurant across the street. The way my Dad tells the story is that they had breakfast together regularly during the tournament. In fact on the day that he was to return home, my Mom encouraged him to wait to eat at the airport, but he refused because Zina would be expecting him.
Rubbing elbows with Zina was one of the highlights not only of that trip but his life. Zina reached the semifinals of the US Open that year, which he always regarded as being fueled by those breakfasts. He was thrilled for each and every one of Zina’s career achievements before and after meeting her.
There are a lot of vignettes in Zina: My Life in Women’s Tennis that will emerge as jumping off points for future essays on Fiend at Court. In the meantime, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the full picture of the development of black professional tennis players and modern tennis history.
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