The 1975 US Open tennis championships was played on the new Har‐Tru courts, at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. From the outset, Arthur Ashe predicted, "This tournament is going to be full of upsets. In the end, it will come down to 4 guys - (Guillermo) Vilas, (Bjorn) Borg, (Ilie) Nastase and (Manuel) Orantes." Manuel Orantes won. On the claycourt surface, Manuel Orantes held the second highest wins of 501 from 650 matches played.
Besides playing on the slower green clay‐like surface, Neil Amdur reported in 1975, "The tournament already has set one record, with $309,000 in prize money. As of last Friday (back in August 1975), the advance ticket sales had reached $594,000, a 50% increase over last year (1974) and well above the $367,500 total take for the first Open 7 years ago (in 1968)."
In 1975, the US Open became the first Grand Slam to introduce night matches as well as "the 12‐point tiebreaker will be used this time, a switch from the 9‐point, sudden‐death scoring system. Sudden death was dropped as a sanctioned system by the International Lawn Tennis Federation after players had complained that too much money was at stake to be decided by so few points."
In 2012, Manuel Orantes was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He stated, "I dreamed to win a Grand Slam, and I won the US Open, which I remember, as Stan (Smith) said, the second week three matches I played against Ilie Nastase, Guillermo Vilas, and Jimmy Connors. Best three matches in my life." The semifinal match at the 1975 US Open between Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas was repeated 18 years later at the 1993 French Open in the women's quarterfinals between Gabriela Sabatini and Mary Joe Fernandez.
Guillermo Vilas was leading Manuel Orantes by two sets to one and was 5-0 up in the fourth set with 5 match points. In what described as "one of the most dramatic comebacks in tennis history", Manuel Orantes won 7 games in a row to force a fifth set then won the match in 3 hours and 44 minutes. Douglas Perry recounted, "At 5-0 in the fourth, fans began to rush from the stadium in hopes of getting out without any parking-lot gridlock (match started around 9:00pm).
"That was when the 26-year-old Spaniard summoned the cosmic mysteries of claycourt tennis and began blasting lightning bolts from his fingertips. At 5-1, Vilas had two match points on his own serve. He stepped up to the line, cool and calm, while Orantes' hangdog look hung down to his saggy-socked ankles. But then came a stiff-armed backhand winner down the line, and the rout was on. Orantes broke, held - and then broke again." In the deciding set, "Vilas' confidence had burst, but the Argentine grinder refused to give up. Neither did Orantes. With the remaining New York fans bucking and screaming, Orantes held onto the momentum and the match."
'United Press International' reported at the time, "Manuel Orantes had not gotten to bed until 3 in the morning after defeating Guillermo Vilas under the lights because a broken bathtub fixture in his hotel kept him awake but still said he had slept soundly for 8 hours. Jimmy Connors had defeated Orantes 6 times in 7 previous meetings on all surfaces but Orantes had studied Connors' style long and well. He employed the tactics used by Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon to deny Connors the opportunity to use his power by slow balling him to death, never letting him attain his rhythm, and either passing Connors or lobbing him with exquisite precision."
Steve Flink reported in 2016, "When historians weigh in on the greatest days ever celebrated at the US Open, the discussion among these experts almost always starts and ends with Sept. 8, 1984. But nine years and two days earlier, there was another spellbinding day of tennis at Forest Hills that belongs high on the US Open list of gems.
"After Chris Evert had defeated Evonne Goolagong in that high-quality, three-set women's singles final, the Spaniard Manuel Orantes played Guillermo Vilas of Argentina for the right to meet Jimmy Connors in the final. This match would start on the evening of September 6 but conclude in the wee small hours of September 7. It was a tremendous battle of left-handers, with Vilas displaying his heavy topspin and Orantes countering with more traditional, flatter strokes. For those of us who were there, for longtime observers of the tournament, for people with a keen sense of history, the 'Super Saturday' package of the two men's semifinals and the women's final in 1975 was one of the most memorable days ever at the US Open."
In 1975, the US Open became the first Grand Slam to introduce night matches as well as "the 12‐point tiebreaker will be used this time, a switch from the 9‐point, sudden‐death scoring system. Sudden death was dropped as a sanctioned system by the International Lawn Tennis Federation after players had complained that too much money was at stake to be decided by so few points."
In 2012, Manuel Orantes was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He stated, "I dreamed to win a Grand Slam, and I won the US Open, which I remember, as Stan (Smith) said, the second week three matches I played against Ilie Nastase, Guillermo Vilas, and Jimmy Connors. Best three matches in my life." The semifinal match at the 1975 US Open between Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas was repeated 18 years later at the 1993 French Open in the women's quarterfinals between Gabriela Sabatini and Mary Joe Fernandez.
Guillermo Vilas was leading Manuel Orantes by two sets to one and was 5-0 up in the fourth set with 5 match points. In what described as "one of the most dramatic comebacks in tennis history", Manuel Orantes won 7 games in a row to force a fifth set then won the match in 3 hours and 44 minutes. Douglas Perry recounted, "At 5-0 in the fourth, fans began to rush from the stadium in hopes of getting out without any parking-lot gridlock (match started around 9:00pm).
"That was when the 26-year-old Spaniard summoned the cosmic mysteries of claycourt tennis and began blasting lightning bolts from his fingertips. At 5-1, Vilas had two match points on his own serve. He stepped up to the line, cool and calm, while Orantes' hangdog look hung down to his saggy-socked ankles. But then came a stiff-armed backhand winner down the line, and the rout was on. Orantes broke, held - and then broke again." In the deciding set, "Vilas' confidence had burst, but the Argentine grinder refused to give up. Neither did Orantes. With the remaining New York fans bucking and screaming, Orantes held onto the momentum and the match."
'United Press International' reported at the time, "Manuel Orantes had not gotten to bed until 3 in the morning after defeating Guillermo Vilas under the lights because a broken bathtub fixture in his hotel kept him awake but still said he had slept soundly for 8 hours. Jimmy Connors had defeated Orantes 6 times in 7 previous meetings on all surfaces but Orantes had studied Connors' style long and well. He employed the tactics used by Arthur Ashe at Wimbledon to deny Connors the opportunity to use his power by slow balling him to death, never letting him attain his rhythm, and either passing Connors or lobbing him with exquisite precision."
Steve Flink reported in 2016, "When historians weigh in on the greatest days ever celebrated at the US Open, the discussion among these experts almost always starts and ends with Sept. 8, 1984. But nine years and two days earlier, there was another spellbinding day of tennis at Forest Hills that belongs high on the US Open list of gems.
"After Chris Evert had defeated Evonne Goolagong in that high-quality, three-set women's singles final, the Spaniard Manuel Orantes played Guillermo Vilas of Argentina for the right to meet Jimmy Connors in the final. This match would start on the evening of September 6 but conclude in the wee small hours of September 7. It was a tremendous battle of left-handers, with Vilas displaying his heavy topspin and Orantes countering with more traditional, flatter strokes. For those of us who were there, for longtime observers of the tournament, for people with a keen sense of history, the 'Super Saturday' package of the two men's semifinals and the women's final in 1975 was one of the most memorable days ever at the US Open."
