IT’S the end of the month that the global sports media has long dubbed as “September to Remember.”
Former chess prodigy Bobby Fischer and boxer Rocky Marciano were just two sports icons who made sportswriters from all over the world coin the description for September.
Fischer became the first American to become chess world champion in September 1, September 1972. The then 29-year-old former child prodigy battled then reigning world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union to seven wins and 11 draws in a classic encounter in Reykjavik to amass the needed 12.5 total points to claim the crown in the showdown that started July 11 of the same year.
The Soviet grandmaster, incidentally, resigned via telephone call of their adjourned 21st match. Fischer, then the youngest player to complete a grandmaster norm at 15, bought home U$156,250 of the $250,000 purse. Spassky got $93,750.
Twenty years and one day later on September 2, 1992, the two best players in the world met anew in a challenge match held in Yugoslavia. Fischer, playing against United Nations sanctions on the host nation, reaffirmed his supremacy for the second time, 17.5 to 12.5 points, and got $3,650,000 of the $5 million purse.
Eugene Torre, Fischer’s close friend and Asia’s first GM, acted as the American’s second in that match.
It was also on the first day of September in 1923, when American boxer Marciano was born. He died on the same day in 1969 but not after fashioning out an immaculate 49-0 win-loss record, which only recently was broken by compatriot Floyd Mayweather Jr.
It’s not all rosy for the month though. September proved to be a sad month for the American athletes in other fronts. As Fischer was wreaking havoc in chess, the US’s 16-year gold medal run in Olympic pole vault was cut short in Munich rather controversially by East German Wolfgang Nordwig, who cleared 5.5 meters for the gold.
Eight days before the Munich competitions, the International Amateur Athletics Federation banned the use of a new model Cata-Pole. Four days before the event, the ban was lifted only to be reimposed the following day.
All the top contenders used the new poles and their performance suffered, except Nordwig.
Two Summer Olympics earlier in Rome, an amazing eight Olympics victories by the US rowing team-of-eight that started in 1920, was broken, again, by a German eight squad made up of oarsmen from Ruzenburg and Ditmarsia Kiel which beat their counterparts from Canada.
It was on September 8 though that great moments in grand slam tennis occurred. On this date in 1957, Althea Gibson became the first African-American female or male to win the US Open singles title by beating, in straight sets, four time Wimbledon champion Louise Brough, 6-3, 6-2, at Forest Hills.
On the same day in 1969, Australian Rod Laver became the only player to complete back-to-back Grand Slam conquest by besting compatriot Tony Roche, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2. It was Laver’s 11th Grand Slam triumph counting his Wimbledon victories in 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1969; US Open in 1962 and 1969; Australian Open in 1962 and 1969; and French Open in 1962 and 1969.
Another Australian, Margaret Court, entered her name in tennis post-war history by winning a record fifth US Open singles crown in 1973, topping compatriot Evonne Goolagong, 7-6, 5-7, 6-2, in the final also at Forest Hills. Court also won in 1962, 1965, 1969 and 1970.
Sixteen-year-old Tracey Austin became the youngest ever winner of the US Open when in 1979, she upended her idol Chris Evert in two sets. 6-4, 6-3 in their championship duel.