50th Anniversary: Arthur Ashe Tribute
"It was a tumultuous world in that summer of 1968 after the springtime assassinations of martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Arthur Ashe - a quietly charismatic yet undemonstrative man, a sportsman of the highest order, a competitor with a dazzling propensity to sprinkle winning shots all over the court - was just the right man at precisely the right time to secure the first u.S. Open event ever played. I was up there in Portal 9 that day, a 16 year old rooting unabashedly for Ashe, watching this remarkable individual become the first African American man ever to win a major in the world of tennis. That day has lived irrevocably with me ever since
- tennis historian Steve Flink
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