Up to that point, the most notable moment of Lendl’s Open had come in his third-round win over Mark Vines on the Grandstand. During that match, a nearby trash compactor had exploded—these were the gritty days of NYC and Flushing Meadows—and ash and cinders had been sprayed into the arena. Lendl, ignoring the chair umpire, had wasted no time packing his bags and stalking off court—to, naturally, cries of “Choke artist!” from the beery Big Apple crowd.
Now, two days later, Lendl walked into that same Grandstand, which was filled beyond capacity for his fourth-round match with Gerulaitis. Talk had already begun about a possible semifinal match-up between McEnroe and the young Czech. Lendl had won their quarterfinal at the French Open, and many believed he would do it again here. But Gerulaitis was inspired. For the first time that he could remember, his hometown crowd was on his side.
“I kept thinking, ‘the boy is back,’” Gerulaitis said after the match. “It was the first time they were behind me. Maybe it’s because I’m ranked about 2,000 now.”
The twitchy Gerulaitis and the stone-faced Lendl couldn’t have made for a starker contrast. Over the years, Gerulaitis had become a ball of tics on court. Before every serve, he dipped his head, shook his blond locks, and peeked back over his right shoulder. “He looked like a rooster checking the henhouse for interlopers,” sportswriter Michael Mewshaw said. At this point in his career, Lendl emphasized intimidation. He wore dark clothes when he could, and his facial expression never changed even as he leveled one of his Howitzer forehands straight at an opponent’s head. While Gerulaitis used little bunny steps to sneak up to net and angle off volleys, Lendl pounded the baseline with heavy-footed strides. The difference could be heard even in the sound of their shots. Gerulaitis’s left his strings with a light ping; Lendl’s with a resounding thud.
Their match was a see-saw marathon. By the middle of it, Gerulaitis was so worked up that he fired a ball at a lineswoman, only to hit a spectator in the leg. He repeatedly harangued the umpire to “give someone else your seat, it’s the best in the house.” After losing the fourth set, 6-3, he walked to the sideline and saw his coach, Fred Stolle, stand up and lean out from the crowd. “He told me to stop bleeping around,” Gerulaitis said later. He settled down and the two players began the fifth set.
“Vitas was always a tough opponent for me,” Lendl says. “He was quick and he rushed straight up the middle of the court, so it was hard to find an angle to pass him.” That’s how most of the points in the fifth set developed, with Gerulaitis chipping and coming forward and Lendl replying with a rifled passing shot. The two remained knotted at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3.
From the vantage point of 30 years, tennis seemed to be moving in two directions in this set. Gerulaitis, a student of the great Aussies of the 50s and 60s, was going back in time, to the serve-and-volley, chip-and-charge Big Game of previous decades. Lendl the power-hitting baseliner was taking the sport forward all the way to the present day. A few months later, the two would face each other again, in the final of the 1982 Masters at Madison Square Garden. Gerulaitis, his 1981 slump well behind him, came in on a high. The same was true for the ever-improving Lendl. Gerulaitis got the better of their duel for two sets and seemed to have victory well in hand. But the tide began to turn when he was up a break and 2-0 in the third. In that game, Gerulaitis took a return of serve and rushed the net behind it. An angry Lendl took out his frustrations by drilling a forehand right into Gerulaitis’s forehead. Vitas was floored, literally, even if he wasn’t too worried for his health: “I have nothing in my head to really damage anyway,” he joked afterward. But the momentum had shifted, and Lendl would come all the way back to win. Symbolically, tennis had changed as well. In the future, the rifle-shot forehand would rule, and players would come to net at their peril.
At 3-3, 30-30 in the fifth set at the 1981 Open, Gerulaitis made the same move he would later make at the Masters. He took Lendl’s serve and followed it in. Lendl also did the same thing, slapping a forehand right at Gerulaitis. This time, though, the future was denied. Rather than taking it on the forehead, Gerulaitis deftly ducked to his left and knocked off a volley winner. “I decided at the beginning of the day that he was going to have to hit 2,000 passing shots,” he said. “He made 1,999 of them.”
Gerulaitis went on to break serve and, to the roars of the crowd, serve for the match. He walked to the back of the court and saw a familiar face. Patrick McEnroe was a 15-year-old ball boy working his older brother’s friend’s match. Gerulaitis looked at him and said, “Give me a good one, Lenny,” using Patrick's childhood nickname. He took the ball that McEnroe tossed him and won that point. A minute later he reached match point.
The two players rallied. Gerulaitis thought about coming to the net but stayed back instead. He didn’t want to give Lendl another crack at a passing shot—or a shot at his forehead. The safe play worked. A Lendl backhand caught the tape and fell backward. Gerulaitis lifted his arms and exulted. Tears came to his eyes as he put his hands to his lips and blew kisses to his 6,000 new supporters. “I love you, I love you,” he cried. The slump was over. Vitas had made it on Broadway at last.
Gerulaitis was last glimpsed on his day triumph running from reporters in the parking lot. “The boy is back!” he called out from the driver’s seat of his yellow Rolls-Royce.
