Douglas Henderson Jr.

Books have always meant the world to me. When I was growing up, there weren't computers. We did research in libraries. Television had a few channels, not the hundreds of stations available today. But we had books. And I devoured them.

I've always wanted to write a book. I guess you could say that it was on my bucket list. By reading books, I was able to venture off into distant lands that I would most likely not get to visit in "real life." I could sail on the Nile, or up the Mississippi with Mark Twain. I could watch Einstein not do well in school, but go on to become one of the most influential and iconic scientists and intellectuals ever. Through reading and research, I could discover so much more about the various people I greatly admired: Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Malcolm X, Jackie Wilson, Robert Kennedy, etc.

What made these great people tick, I silently asked myself. As my research probed deeper, I took my research to a deeper level as I began reading whatever I could find that they had read. I found this particularly fascinating and sometimes was even able to trace from such material back to something one of my heroes had said. As you may have guessed by now, biographies were my favorite genre.

I grew up without a male figure in my household. But I didn't need one. I crafted one together - like some great quilt. A little bit of this person, a dab of that one, a large amount of him. Like some alchemist, I created the perfect father figure from my heroes. This fictitious father figure greatly molded my character, my personality, my life. All of this would have been impossible without reading and research.

One of the beliefs that I hold dear to my heart is that we must help others. I feel it is our obligation. As Thomas Jefferson said, "It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read." A great deal of my time is devoted to helping those in need. While attending law school at night, I worked for a nonprofit agency in the South Bronx during the day, helping to find employment for its poorest residents. This year, I decided to return to performing this very rewarding - though, at times, frustrating - (self-imposed) duty in Northern Manhattan. In life, more often than not, we cannot directly repay those who have done so much for us. But we can indirectly repay them by helping others and by asking that they, in turn, help others. I cannot directly repay Arthur Ashe for all of the wonderful things he did for me. Nor can I directly repay former Mayor Dinkins (pictured with me, as he accompanied me to my law school graduation). But I can repay them indirectly by helping others and asking that they, in turn, help others. (Interestingly enough, as I got older, men like Ashe and Dinkins complemented the father figure I had created.)

I have been the recipient of a top-notch education at Horace Mann (high school), Lehman College and New York Law School. The Bible tells me that to whom much is given, much is required. It also states that whatever you do unto the least of these thy brethren, you do it unto me. I believe these statements ring true regardless of one's religion, regardless if one believes in God, is an atheist or an agnostic. In essence, I believe we each have an obligation to make this world a better place.

During my formative years, I was be greatly moved by books. If I could make a reader feel just a hint, a whit, of what I felt when books were my world, then I have done much. In some small measure, I will have paid back those authors who brought happiness to my young life.

From the moment I began watching the 1974 Wimbledon final on my television set, pitting Jimmy Connors against Ken Rosewall, I fell in love with tennis. I marveled at its personalities: Jimmy Connors, Arthur Ashe, Bjorn Borg, etc. They were larger than life. Little did I know that in a few short months I would be a part of the Connors inner circle, and remain there until the end of his illustrious career.

How was I to know that Arthur Ashe would become not only my mentor, but an extremely close friend? As I mentioned earlier, I had always wanted to write a book. Maybe this is what prompted my habit of taking copious notes during and after each U.S. Open. I still have many of those early notes, though time and lack of proper care have not been too kind to them. These notes and an excellent memory conspired to produce Endeavor to Persevere. I am most proud of my book.

The work has undergone many changes over the years. But it was wasn't until this year that I decided to finally finish it. I had been shopping around my book over the last few years but was always told that the prevailing thought among publishers was that tennis books didn't sell. Well, that simply isn't true anymore. There have been many recent bestselling tennis books. Some were extremely good. Some, good. Others were poor and merely published to capitalize on the public's sudden appetite for "the glory years" of tennis.

In wanting to do such a sacred subject matter justice, I put my heart and soul into this book. I can finally take this off the bucket list. I hope you enjoy it.

Tennis Magazine Review

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Jimbo, Arthur, and a Little Nastiness 01/07/2011 - 12:56 PM

Can you imagine a time when the Wimbledon champion had his number listed in the phone book? And that when this international celebrity and abmassador of dignity won a tournament, he told the crowd to go ahead and look it up and give him a call if they felt like it?

I can't really imagine that either--think about, say, Andre Agassi, doing the same after winning the U.S. Open. But that's the way it was with Arthur Ashe. One kid from the Bronx, Doug Henderson, took him up on the offer and started a friendship with the great man.

But then this was also a time when the same kid from the Bronx, along with a high school buddy, could buy a cheap ticket to the U.S. Open at Forest Hills, walk into the clubhouse, sit in the locker room for a few minutes, and wind-up with a lifetime gig as Jimmy Connors' bodyguard/aide-de-camp whenever Jimbo was in New York. That's what happened to Henderson at the Open in 1974. He and a friend were looking out a back window of the clubhouse, watching Chris Evert practice. Behind them they heard a voice, "Mind if I squeeze in?" It was Evert's then fiancé, Connors. His coach, Pancho Segura, began calling Henderson and his friend, who are both black, "brothers." Then Segoo had an idea. "Jeembo," he said to Connors, "you get these guys and nobody ----- with you! You have no problems with the crowds." Connors agreed, and Henderson and his friend walked out with the Connors entourage onto the club's veranda, where its well-heeled and all-white members sat eating lunch. "You could hear a pin drop," Henderson says.

I can remember seeing Doug Henderson sitting next to Connors' wife, Patti, at the Open in the late 70s and early 80s; his white cap was distinctive, and it's featured prominently in one of the better-known photos of the infamous 1979 Open match between John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase. Henderson, fearing for his friend Nasty's safety in a near-riotous Armstrong Stadium, walked onto the court, along with multiple New York City policemen. He tells this story, along with the stories of his friendships with Ashe and Connors, in his new e-book, Endeavor to Persevere. (You can get it here.) If you like to watch the historical Best of 5 shows that the Tennis Channel routinely airs about the sport's roughneck 70s and 80s, you'll like these stories. As he says, it helps that Henderson, unlike half the talking heads commenting on the Tennis Channel, was actually there.

The core of the book is his co-assessment of the severely contrasting personalities of Ashe and Connors. Together they form a paradox, one that Henderson recognizes immediately. He says that his life had been changed a month before he met Connors, when he had turned on the TV and seen the Belleville Basher lighting up Centre Court and shredding the old Aussie gentleman Ken Rosewall in straight sets. For the first time, this team-sports fan realized that tennis was, as Connors always put it, "a war out there." Henderson fell in love with the sport that day. He also felt like Jimbo, a white Midwesterner, was bringing "the street" to tennis, even as the sport's best black player, Ashe, maintained a mask of studious cool. The club pastime couldn't have accepted a Muhammad Ali back then. There needed to be a Jimmy Connors before there could be a Serena Williams.

Henderson, the Bronx kid who attended prestigious Horace Mann high school, tries to bridge the gap between Connors and Ashe, with intermittent success. When Ashe first saw Henderson, he didn't know that he was the same kid who had called him up. As the new Jimbo posse (the "James Gang") walked out onto the grounds at Forest Hills, Henderson saw Ashe watching them from nearby. Ashe looked incredulous--"What is this crazy Connors kid up to now, hiring black bodyguards?" At various times, Henderson serves as a go-between, giving Connors techincal and tactical advice from Ashe. But Jimmy was a me-against-the-world guy when it came to competition, and he already knew that friendship and rivalry didn't co-exist well--his best friend on the tour, Nastase, had owned him early in his career. Later, though, when Ashe's career was over and Jimmy's was on the down slope, Henderson was moved to catch a glimpse of the two men and their wives talking and laughing together at a cocktail party. He says he'd never seen Ashe smile so much.

But this is really Henderson's story of his friendship with Connors, and his observations of the Man Who Never Gave In during his many ups and downs at the Open over the years. Henderson believes that in 1975, Connors lost the final to Manuel Orantes in part because his racquets were strung too tightly. He says that the next year, when Jimbo regained his title by beating Bjorn Borg in the final, Henderson learned what it means "to come off the mat." In 1977, he watched as his man lost the final to Guillermo Vilas, then became so enraged at a photographer that the veins on his neck started to bulge. Henderson finally had to pick Connors up and hold him back from slugging the guy. In 1980, Henderson climbed up on the hood of a car in Manhattan and shouted "You can do it!" as Jimmy and his wife, Patti, cracked up.

My favorite stories come from Connors' last Open run in 1983. Jimmy and Henderson are up late watching TV in Jimmy's hotel room before the tournament starts. Connors asks him to hang around and come into the living room of the suite. Jimbo pretends to look at a piece of paper for dramatic effect, then flicks his eyes up and asks Henderson, "I can win this, right?" When Henderson enthusiastically answers yes, Connors, with some relief, says "That's what I wanted to hear." It's a touching desire for support, as well as another show of relentless positivity, from a guy who always had the reputation of a go it alone tough guy.

The night before Connors' first-round match that year, the crew goes out to see a Bette Midler concert (another funny image--Jimbo watching Bette Midler). The show goes past midnight and Henderson starts to worry. He imagines Connors losing and having to tell his mother, Gloria, that he'd been out late the night before. "I'd rather be locked in a room with Charles Manson than have that conversation," Henderson thinks. Wow, I knew Glo was tough, but . . .

There are good stories for the tennis junkie here, about Ashe, Borg, McEnroe, Vitas, Lendl, and Agassi. Naturally, my favorite stars Ilie Nastase. At the '76 Open, he played a wild and epic five-setter with Germany's Hans Pohman. The German cramped, but did it so often and with such over the top drama that Nastase finally flipped out (he was obviously stealing some of Nasty's thunder, too). The crowd booed, Pohman refused to shake Nastase's hand, Nastase spat at Pohman, the umpire refused to shake Nastase's hand, and Nastase banged his racquet against the ump's chair. Henderson walked back to the locker room with Nasty and said that he had never heard such a stream of abuse from the fans.

They get back to the locker room and, against all odds, Nastase tries to make up with Pohman. He puts out his hand, but Pohman says, "I will never shake your hand." Nastase pulls back and says the only words you would expect him to say: "---- you, Hitler."