About his future, Ashe is uncertain. It depends, he says, on two things: when he gets a good offer to drop tennis and start work, and when he decides to get married. He knows that before either of these events occurs, he will have to go into the Army for two years’ service. He will be an officer, having served in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at U.C.L.A. for four years. “I figure that if I’ve got to go, I might as well go first-class,” he says. “I’ll probably go in after I graduate next June. I don’t know what they’ll do with me in the Army. I could wind up In Vietnam, or maybe they’ll be generous enough to let me keep playing in tournaments.” He is silent for a moment and then he adds, so solemnly that there is no way of knowing whether he is kidding, “I understand the Army is very cognizant of morale.”

He would like to win Wimbledon, but has no searing ambition about this. “To win that one you have to be good, plus lucky.” He would much prefer to do really well in a Davis Cup Challenge Round for the United States. He has no plans to tum professional, mainly because he thinks he is far too lazy to stand the constant, grinding pressure of the dog-eat-dog pro circuit. And he claims, with great sincerity, that his real objective is to become a weekend tennis player. He believes that the job which will enable him to achieve this desirable state will involve selling “either products or ideas.”

Despite the recurring on-court thoughts about Bella, Ashe has no firm ideas about the identity, or even the color, of the girl he will marry. “I have absolutely no prejudice,” he smiles. “I take out colored girls and white girls. I just like girls. I had a Japanese girl-friend in my first year in college, and she nearly killed me with kindness. I don’t intend to stay in tennis alter I do marry, though. I guess I’d take my wife along on one tour around the world, just so she could see It all. But then I’d get out. I see too many lonely guys touring around while their wives and families are at home. If l had a white wife, I know I wouldn’t be too popular in some American towns. But in Los Angeles I don’t think we’d have too much trouble. And I guess I wouldn’t live anywhere else now — I’m hooked.”

After 22 years of being a Negro, Ashe knows that it would be naive to expect people to see him as a human being first, a colored man second. Like it or not, he has to live out a certain role. “Even when I’m among pleasant white people, they’re usually bending over backward to be too nice,” he observes. '‘They want to keep making sure that I’m feeling good, just because I’m Negro, and that bugs me. Then there are the Negroes who keep giving me African-type advice: ‘Don’t trust the white man’ and ‘It’s O.K. to date white girls, but never think about marrying one.’ That bugs me, too.”

He sums up his philosophy: “It’s my life, and a hundred years from now nobody will know or care about It. I’m going to live it my own way, with as much tolerance as I can, getting as much enjoyment out of it as I can. My approach is to do anything I please, as long as I don’t hurt anyone along the way.”

For Arthur Ashe so far it is an approach which has worked out very well indeed.