Emerson Mark Not Easily Relinquished

BLACKBUTT, Australia —  As Pete Sampras stalks a 62-year-old man named Roy Emerson, is he also being stalked--by the Curse of Blackbutt? Sampras, who is stalking now at Wimbledon, wouldn’t be the first to be cursed, according to an old-timer in these hills.

It’s doubtful Sampras could even identify Blackbutt, an Australian one-saloon town of 800 on the outskirts of nowhere in the Queensland bush. But the residents, who rely on cattle and timber for a living, can identify him, all right: the Yank who wants to steal their native son’s all-time tennis record of 12 major singles championships.

For 32 years, that mark has stood as firmly as the dark-trunked eucalyptus trees from which the community gets its name and substantial sustenance. Although Emerson is too old now to defend himself from Sampras, the Curse seems as strong and protective as ever.

You can feel it lurking like the deadly snakes in the grass where the Emersonian journey began. Eventually it became a campaign of conquest in New York, London, Paris and Melbourne between 1961 and 1967, as well as unequaled feats in driving his homeland to eight Davis Cups.

The rude, homemade ant-bed court on which Emerson first struck a ball lies shrouded in deep grass and weeds. It hasn’t been played on for decades, since the Emerson family moved off the dairy farm where he developed those strong, springy, sharp-volleying wrists by “milking hundreds of cows as a boy.”

Such rural courts were widespread during Australia’s planetary dominance when country boys served as prominent cogs. Rod Laver began on one, on his family’s Queensland station (ranch).

“It wasn’t hard to build one,” Emerson says. “With the tractor you just knocked down some termite or ant hills that were plentiful, looking like traffic cones. Spread the red grit on a fairly level space. Put up a couple of chicken-wire fences and a net. You built it and the neighbors came to play.”

Only the net posts remain in his tennis field of reveries, the tips barely showing. They seem mysterious relics of a long-departed king. Visiting what amounts to an Australian shrine--though virtually unknown--amid low green hills and unending bluer-than-blue sky is like poking around a pyramid where a pharaoh left his curse.

“This is the home of the Curse,” asserts 72-year-old Kevin Allery, a Nanangoshire councilman and lifelong resident of Blackbutt. “Sampras will never overcome it even though he has 11 titles. I knew it when another dinkum Queensland boy, Pat Rafter, beat him at the U.S. Open last year. And what about the others?”

He means principally Bjorn Borg and Laver, who stalled at 11. “The Curse,” he says. “Everybody thought those two’d roll Roy, eh?”

True enough. Laver completed his second Grand Slam in 1969 at the U.S. Open, his 11th major. He was No. 1, a factor for another five years who seemed a cinch. But . . .

Borg, only 25 when he won his 11th, the 1981 French Open, lost his next two major finals--Wimbledon and the U.S. Open to John McEnroe--and was through.

Allery says Ken Rosewall, Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl had potential to go beyond their eight titles, and McEnroe his seven. Were they accursed? Allery simply smiles.

Emerson says Sampras “will break the record, and good on him. Pete’s a great champion. I didn’t even know I held the record until Pete started getting close.” In 1967, Emerson took it from Bill Tilden by winning his 11th, the Australian. Five months later he won the French. Emerson won the Australian Open six times, the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open twice each.

Emerson disclaims any involvement with the Curse, but he has friends. Allery hints at consultation with an Aboriginal witch doctor in Morgo to give the Curse a booster. “We want to keep the record in Blackbutt.”

Long the town champion, Allery “rolled Emerson--and Laver too. Had ‘em for dinner one after the other when I won the tournament at Kingaroy.”

Emerson confirms. “We were kids, but, yeah, Kev beat us.” Wiry white-haired Allery beams at the recollection. He beat the man who beat Tilden’s record.

Shaded by jacaranda and hoop pine, Allery is standing on a plot of crimson earth beside the one-time Emerson homestead, a yellow, one-story frame house on 5-foot steel stilts that encouraged air to circulate. About a mile distant, long-since razed, was Nukku Grammar School. There Emerson was “last in my class--but also first, the only one”--and sometimes followed to school by a pet calf.

As Allery peers downhill at the lonely, thickly overgrown shrine, the farm’s current proprietor, Eric Wilson, says, “I’d be careful about walking down there, mate. Lots of [lethal] brown snakes. I shot a 5-footer in the pantry last week.”

Is Pete Sampras snake bit by the Curse of Blackbutt as he treads in Roy Emerson’s sneaker steps?