Don Budge, a lanky, redheaded Californian, called time in the first game of an early round match in the Australian national tennis championship. To the astonishment of 5,000 spectators in mid-January 1938, he started to escort his young and nervous Australian opponent, Everod Ballieu, off the grass court in Adelaide. "What's the big idea?" Ballieu whispered haltingly, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"Don't look now," Budge said, "but your fly is open."
After the youngster ducked under the stands and finished dressing, he returned to face Budge, the reigning British and United States national singles champion. As expected, Budge, 22, the world's No. 1 ranked amateur player, further buttoned up the young man, as well as those who followed, on his way to winning the Australian title on Jan. 29, 1938, 80 years ago this month. That win was the first step in his goal to win all four major tennis championships that year. He had hatched that plan the previous fall while reading a tennis record book on the front porch of his parents' home in Oakland, Calif.
Budge discovered that no one had ever won the four big national singles titles in the same year _ Australian, French, British and American. Why not be the first, he asked himself. He told no one of his goal except Gene Mako, his doubles partner, and that disclosure later led to the greatest irony during Budge's Grand Slam.
