Doreen Gonzales article

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In the closet

Didn't Vijay Amritraj used to place his newly strung sticks in the closet for six months, let them sit, and then after they were cured, play with them?

Vijay did a lot of strange things. He played with tremendous feel. He actually won the Huggy Bears one year playing as an ex-Pro with Don Johnson in 1999. He also often acted as one of our auctioneers for the Calcutta. Don't know about the closet thing, but it wouldn't surprise me.

don

[GeoffWilliams]

Ice and time heals all wounds... His face showed the pain he went through, gaunt, and deep set eyes. I saw him play at the Oakland Colosseum, in the mid sixties, 45 yrs ago or so, with Maria Bueno, and others. Everyone wore all white. The ball seemed to be moving very fast to me, but I was young. The balls were white. The racquets were wood. I could not imagine how they learned to play so well. The lights were so bright on the court.

Didn't Vijay Amritraj used to place his newly strung sticks in the closet for six months, let them sit, and then after they were cured, play with them?

[uspta990770809]

Another story of the two Panchos

Pancho played my tournament in 1988. I had met him almost 25 years before when he had played an exhibition at Griffith Park with Charlie Pasarell (way before their famous match). He gave me my first real tennis prize, a racket from the SCTA for winning a "depth contest" that day. Must have been 1965 or 66. I played with the Gonzales autograph Spalding racket for a few years after that. So it was a great thrill for me to meet him as the TD!

He had gotten his brother-in-law, Andre, to ask a teamate, John to be Pancho's partner in the pro-am part of the draw. They sold for $92,500 as I recall in the Calcutta. They got a bye, but in their first match, they had to play a local club champ, Charlie Crusen, who had played for Harvard and Jorge Lozano, top 5 in the world at the time (dbls). The match was close because Pancho was nursing a really bad arthritic shoulder and could barely serve 50 or maybe 60 MPH (literally). It seems like it was more like 50. They struggled, but won the match in three. It got a terrible writeup in New York Magazine and that would be the end of press at the tournament. (Imagine the gall of a local club amateur player trying to beat Gonzales and his partner! But that was what the truest spirit of the Huggy Bears was all about.) Their next match was against Davis Cup doctor, George Fareed(yeah, Andre's team) and Tomas Smid. They were the tournament defending champions. And there was big money on the match. There was a total of $1,400,000 in the Calcutta and these matches alone were worth $7,500 to the player and $37,500 to the owners, as had been the match they had played already that day. (It was a screwy prize money schedule that encouraged a lot of high bidding in the calcutta. After the guaranteed prize money was paid out in the first two rounds, the rest of the Calcutta pool was split 2:1 between the owners and players. There was probably some letter stock thrown in to sweeten the deal as well. The year before Fareed and Smid had won over $300,000 of which they got a third.) And when people are betting that kind of money on you, there is a different kind of pressure. The match was a round of 16 on Friday, with a relatively easy quarters for the winner on Saturday which turned out to be against the tournament sponsor and founder, Tony Forstmann and Rick Leach, who eked out a third set tie-break win against Tom Gullikson and Tony's brother Ted as it got dark Friday night (my main concern at the time was the two kids lost on jetskis in the bay... I had everyone looking for them, but with strict orders not to do anything to interrupt that wonderful display of sibling rivalry Tony and Ted were putting on!)

Anyway, with that as a backdrop, Thursday night was a big party night with a player's party and better than half of the players out of the tournament and it being another 4 days before the Open started. I was exhausted at this point and mostly done with all the difficult tasks as TD. The rest of the schedule was pretty set as long as it didn't rain. I was staying in the local motel and Pancho was in a room just at the bottom of my stairs. I turned in relatively early, and there is Pancho at the bottom of the stairs going back to his room all by himself with a huge bag of ice on his shoulder trying to do everything he could to get ready for his match the next day. I saw him play just a year or two later and his shoulder had improved and he could serve maybe in the 80s or 90s, but it was not to be this week, even with JohnnyMac as his doubles partner. They won the first set 6-2, but went down 7-5, 6-3 to the much younger Fareed and Smid. They should have had some bisques, but we didn't start using them before the final until two years later. We did use them in the final though and Pancho Segura and my pupil, Paul Annacone, beat Fareed and Smid to win the "ProAm" section of the draw and then upset "ExPro" Anand Amritraj (who was still winning doubles matches on the main tour) and Wally Masur with the help of 10 bisques. I was able to give Pancho Segura the biggest paycheck of his career and, to this day, I think Segura's performance at 68 has to be one of the all time great competitive accomplishments in all sport, certainly in tennis.

But I will never forget the stoic resolve of Pancho Gonzales to give it everything he had at 58 years old in a backyard event. There were so many people who would have loved to have him around that night at one of their parties and we probably could have gotten him some pretty snazzy housing if he had wanted it, but there he was all alone in his motel room with an icebag, trying to get ready for his match the next day. After reading Doreen's articles here, I understand a little better where that resolve came from.

Don Brosseau
Huggy Bears TD, 1985 to 2004

[John Yandell]

Yeah when you see where this guy came from and what he went thru, it really is like a legend. No wonder he could be so tough, and was intimidating to opponents. Look what he had to do to stand up to his dad and pursue his dream. More to come...

[gzhpcu]

As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I was a kid, I used to go to the LA tennis club with my Dad and see Pancho Gonazales and Pancho Segura playing... quite an experience!

[GeoffWilliams]

It's like reading a story. I'd like to write a piece about the Berkeley tennis club, with all its history/anecdotes. The train used to turn around behind the tennis courts, up to recent times.

[chuck62]

Pancho

I think he may have copied Kramer. The forehand and serve look alot like Kramers. I think ultimately he played a similar game only with more grace and finesse than his Southern Cal rival. I wonder if anyone ever clocked the Pancho serve. How many mphs did those guys lose by having to keep one foot on the ground ? In any event, thanks for posting this book. Its a very inspiring story.

[GeoffWilliams]

I never realized, that Gonzales father hung him up by his thumbs in the garage for three hours. You'd be arrested for that today! Quite a history lesson there. And how did Gonzales reach such a high level of play without practice partners and top level tournaments as a junior? Thanks Doreen, for that little piece of insight.

I've met Jack Cramer, and he said, smiling and looking down at the ground, with a wry expression on his face, regarding, his own tournament, which I had played many years in Hayward: "You always moved so well." Until I gained 50lbs, that is! Thanks for that comment, Jack. I appreciated it, even in my ballooned up whale mode.