started to yell for a policeman.” It turned out there was one in the basement of a nearby building. Clay ran there in tears and found Joe Martin, an off-duty Louisville cop who trained young boxers. Clay was hooked from day one. At first Martin thought the skinny kid’s talents were “just ordinary,” but he was easily the hardest worker he had ever trained. “It was almost impossible to discourage him,” Martin told Thomas Hauser, author of Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times. Soon after meeting Mar - tin, Clay beat a fellow novice fighter and promptly shouted, “I’m gonna be the great - est in the world!” By 1960, the 18-year-old Clay was accom- plished enough to win a gold medal at the Olympics in Rome. The ring wasn’t a place of violence for Clay; it was a stage where he could express the showmanship and artistry that he had inherited from his father. Clay won with speed rather than power. Ashe discovered tennis at age 7, when his father took a job as a policeman at one of Richmond’s Negro recreational facilities, Brook Field Park. The younger Ashe may not have seemed a likely future tennis champion; in the 1950s, the sport was still the province of exclusive all-white clubs. But with daily ac- cess to the courts at Brook Field, he quick - ly caught the eye of local teaching pro Ron Charity. Like Cassius Clay, Ashe’s playing style belied his personality. Cautious off court, he was a slashing, risk-taking attacker on it. By the time he was 10, Ashe’s reputation had spread as far as Lynchburg, Va., and the home of Dr. Robert Walter Johnson. In be - tween his medical rounds, Johnson had pio - neered the idea of the junior tennis acade- my on a court in his backyard. His goal was to develop the Jackie Robinson of tennis, a player good enough to break the sport’s color barrier and beat whites at their own game. In 1950, he succeeded when his star student, Al - thea Gibson, became the first African-Amer- ican to compete in the U.S. Nationals (now the U.S. Open).
1940
july 10, 1943 Arthur Ashe is born in Richmond, VA.
1953 Ashe begins working with Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, who had coached Althea Gibson. “My life started on its big upturn that day,” he wrote in his autobiography, Advantage Ashe .
1950
1963 Becomes first black player elected to the U.S. Davis Cup team
1960
august 1966 Enlists in the Army
november 1973 First black man to play in the South African Open july, 5 1975 Upsets heavy favorite Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon final. april 1980 Retires after undergoing heart surgery sept, 1968 First black player to win the U.S. Open.
1970
1980
1990
february 6, 1993 Arthur Ashe dies of AIDS- related pneumonia.
2000
2010
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