Revisiting the U.S. Open’s Super Saturday 40 Years Later

Jon Wertheim recounts one of the most extraordinary days in tennis history in an adapted excerpt from his book ‘Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days that Changed Sports and Culture Forever.’

Navratilova defeated Chris Evert to capture the 1984 U.S. Open. / Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated

Sept. 8, 1984.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Super Saturday, arguably the most extraordinary day in tennis history, a U.S. Open session spanning more than 12 hours and nearly 1,000 points. This account is adapted from Glory Days: The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days that Changed Sports and Culture Forever by L. Jon Wertheim

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You can blame Martina Navratilova. She made such fast work of Chris Evert in the 1983 U.S. Open women’s final, winning 6–1, 6–3, that CBS was forced to fill its broadcast window with replays and second-rate programming. 

And the following year, CBS was not going to risk another Saturday afternoon of television dreck. Not on this valuable weekend after Labor Day. Not with the next day’s NFL game broadcast to promote.

So executives seized on a new idea for the network’s tennis coverage. Instead of playing both the men’s semifinal matches on a Friday, the tournament—taking its orders from the television gods paying all that money for coverage—would sandwich the women’s final in between the two men’s semifinals and create one generously stuffed Saturday session. If a match, even two, were stinkers, there would still be plenty to fill the air.

In theory, anyway, it sounded good. And optimism was unbridled when play kicked off on Saturday, Sept. 8, 1984. With summer finally bleeding into fall and cloudless skies overhead, fans settled in. 

The session started at 11:00 a.m. with a bonus warmup act of a match from the Men’s Legends division, pitting Australia’s John Newcombe against Stan Smith, a former Wimbledon champion who had lent his name and likeness to an Adidas shoe. The minimalist footwear had sold surprisingly well, perhaps especially so given Smith’s unassuming personality. So much so, Smith’s own son, Ramsey, was a teenager when informed his father of a coincidence, “Dad, you share your name with a guy whose name is on a shoe!” 

As the match between Newcombe and Smith went longer than expected, it was nearly 1 p.m. when Ivan Lendl and Pat Cash, a 19-year-old Aussie, came on court for their first semifinal. Lendl, emboldened by his defeat of John McEnroe at the French Open in June, was the clear favorite. But he and Cash split the first two sets, and the New York fans grew restless, to say nothing of the two players in the women’s locker room, next on the bill.

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, the women’s finalists, sat a few feet from each other. By this point, Navratilova had beaten Evert 12 straight times and hadn’t lost a match to anyone since January. Still, they had grown closer, not more distant, on account of the rivalry. This would mark their 61st match, and their head-to-head record was, remarkably, tied, 30–30. Navratilova was only half-kidding when she suggested that they never play again, so that way neither could claim superiority over the other.

How did these combatants while away the time in the locker room before squaring off in one of the weightiest matches of their careers? They shared jokes and then—the player dining having run out of pasta—shared a bagel Navratoliva had stuck in her bag.

A few weeks earlier, Cash had played disastrously in the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Tennis was an exhibition sport, and Cash admitted that he lost on purpose—tanked, in the tennis locution—so he could stick around, use his free tickets for other events and meet girls. When a young Swede, Stefan Edberg, won the men’s gold and an even younger German, Steffi Graf, won the women’s event, Cash was at Whisky a Go Go or some such.

But on this afternoon in New York, Cash was sensational, attacking the net and executing crisp volleys. Lendl, though, had a response for every question. After staving off match point, he prevailed in a dramatic insta-classic, 3–6, 6–3, 6–4, 6–7, 7–6.

It was after 4:00 p.m. when Evert and Navratilova finally took to the court. If they were both annoyed, having to wait around for their match—a major final—until the men were done, it did not show in their play. In, possibly, the most compelling of their dozens of matches, Evert won the first set 6–4. That in itself was a breakthrough, and the crowd roared its approval. Evert executed a fist pump, a wildly self-aggrandizing gesture by her standards.

While the crowd was, perhaps, simply supporting an underdog, Navratilova interpreted it differently. Here was another reminder that she was “other,” that she would never be totally accepted. Later, Navratilova would recall the match as “one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through, all those people wanting me to lose.”

She funneled this hurt into her play. Dictating rallies with her power and athleticism—overcoming the fans who, sensing her displeasure, began cheering her errors—she won the second set 6–4. In the third set, Evert’s play suggested this time you’re really going to have to beat me. Navratilova obliged and won 4–6, 6–4, 6–4. For Evert, a day soaked in hope ended bitterly. “It’s just not enough to play a good match against her anymore,” Evert sighed. For Navratilova, the day marked her sixth straight major singles title. And, still, it felt somehow incomplete.

After an abbreviated trophy presentation ceremony, it was 7:28 p.m. when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors took the court. “Ridiculous,” McEnroe muttered about the start time as he walked on. If the McEnroe-Connors rivalry did not conjure the warmth of the Evert-Navratilova rivalry, it often caused both men to summon their best tennis.

Which they did on this night. 

Connors fell to McEnroe in five sets at the 1984 U.S. Open. / Jacqueline Duvoisin /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

Though Connors was more than six years older than McEnroe and had just turned 32 a few days earlier, he looked just as fresh as his opponent for the first three hours. McEnroe won point after point with his sidewinding lefty serving and artistry at the net. But Connors, too, won point after point with his defense and backhand, a flat two-hander that sent passing shots whistling past McEnroe.

Finally, after they had split the first four sets, it was Connors who blinked. Early in the fifth set, his level dropped and McEnroe pounced. It was 11:14 p.m. when McEnroe hit his last sharply angled lefty serve to put away Connors, 6–4, 4–6, 7–5, 4–6, 6–3. By then, every match on the Saturday docket had gone to a decisive set and fans had been treated—some might say, subjected—to more than 12 hours of tennis encompassing 16 sets, 165 games and 979 points. CBS was like the farmer who prayed for rain; then got a flood.

The following day, McEnroe, showing fine powers of recovery, beat Lendl in the final, pushing his match record on the year to 66–2, almost as absurdly good as Navratilova’s 61–1. But the talk still centered on what, instantly, was christened Super Saturday. CBS even announced, triumphantly, that it was the longest continuous coverage of a sporting event in American television history.

But it would end up being something much more: the high-water mark for tennis in the United States. The tennis boom that started in the late ’70s had reached its height on Super Saturday.  

Though only 25 years old, McEnroe would never win another major singles title. (He would also never again face Connors in a big match.) Soon enough, his genius would revert to the tortured variety, and other players would surpass him. Navratilova, too, would lose in December’s Australian Open, forestalling a Grand Slam, all four majors in a calendar year—tennis’s holy grail. And she would even lose to Evert the next time they played. 

Super Saturday marked one of the last official days of summer. Symbolically, it was for an entire sport as well.

There would be other great days at the U.S. Open, of course. But by 2001, largely to take advantage of the Williams sisters’ popularity, the women’s final was moved to Saturday primetime. And as the sport got more physical, players, rightly, lobbied for a full day between the semis and finals.

The U.S. Open chock-a-block Saturday died. But it only added to the mythology and nostalgia for that session 40 years ago this week …. It stands as the greatest—the superest—day the sport ever will know.