What Took You So Long, Champ?
Lenny Simpson
I don’t believe in coincidence. And if you trace the events of my life, and the encounters with people that made my rise in the tennis world possible as a young black man in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you’ll agree that it takes more faith to believe in coincidence than to believe that God orchestrated every part of my extraordinary journey.
The first instance of God’s sovereignty happened before I was born. My parents bought a parcel of land from Dr. Hubert Eaton in downtown Wilmington, N.C. and built our house there. Dr. Eaton was one of the leaders of the black community in Wilmington, and he was also a talented and dedicated tennis player who loved to teach the sport to young black kids in the city. He had a tennis court and a pool in his backyard, and his house was a gathering place for aspiring tennis players. It was like Wilmington’s black country club.
When I was a tiny boy of five, I would perch in the big oak tree in my front yard every day to watch my next-door neighbor, Nat Jackson, emerge from his house in a white shirt, white shorts, white socks, and white tennis shoes and holding a wooden thing I had never seen before. I was intrigued, but once Nat walked around the corner, I couldn’t determine his destination. I made sure to be back in the tree late each afternoon when he would return home, always drinking a cold Coca-Cola.
Finally, my curiosity, and my thirst, got the best of me and I asked Jackson where I could get a Coca-Cola. I couldn’t have known it at the time, but Nat was a singularly gifted tennis player who won national titles in both singles and doubles in the 1930s. He told me he would show me if my parents said it was OK. And even though my mom was hesitant at first to let me go to Dr. Eaton’s tennis court, soon I wore her down and, on my first visit, had my second legendary encounter with a person who would change my life.
When I walked up to the court that day Dr. Eaton greeted me warmly and introduced me to all of the people gathered there. The last introduction he made was to a 26-year-old rising tennis star who had come to Wilmington from the slums of Harlem. Her name was Althea Gibson, and she was just three years from becoming the first black athlete to win a Grand Slam event at the French Open and four years from toppling the same barrier as the champion at Wimbledon. Althea’s words to me that day, to a little five-year-old boy who had never picked up a tennis racquet, gave shape to my dream and still bring me to tears every time I remember them.
Nat Jackson said to her, “Althea, I want you to meet my good friend Lendward Simpson, my next-door neighbor.” And she looked down at me and said, “Lendward, it’s nice to meet you. But what took you so long, champ?”
That phrase seems like almost nothing, but the power of those words still take my breath away. And if that wasn’t enough, she noticed I wasn’t holding a tennis racquet and gave me hers. The racquet that I used to learn the game came straight from the great Althea Gibson.
My God-ordained journey and its intersection with amazing people was only getting started. When I was nine, after developing my game at Dr. Eaton’s house, I went to a summer tennis program for the American Tennis Association Junior Development Program
run by Dr. Robert Johnson in Lynchburg, Va. Johnson, in partnership with Dr. Eaton and others throughout the country, identified up-and-coming black tennis players and brought them to his training center for four months every summer. I went for ten years straight, from age nine to nineteen, so it’s safe to say that the person and player I became was shaped mightily by those summers in Lynchburg.
But one of my most influential relationships started when I arrived for that first summer and Dr. Johnson explained that every newcomer was typically matched with an older player so that the veteran could show the rookie the ropes. My mentor was none other than a 14-year-old prodigy named Arthur Ashe. That day started a friendship that became one of the most important in my life—Arthur and I would eventually become roommates on the tour, he would later coach me, and he defeated me in the second round of the 1964 U.S. National Championship. (I was the youngest male player ever to compete in the event.) When Ashe died at age 49 after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion, I was one of eight people chosen to give a eulogy at his funeral.
Dr. Eaton, Althea, Dr. Johnson, and Arthur each changed my life, as an athlete and as a person. When I work with kids in my hometown of Wilmington now through my One Love tennis and mentoring program, I’m simply passing on the type of inspiration that these pioneers planted in me at a young age. God ordained that my paths would cross with those extraordinary individuals, and I hope that a new generation of kids in Wilmington will, in the same way, be changed by adults who believe that tennis can still help shape a life.