| xe Dick Gonzales is world’s top tennis ace >&

-Rosewall finds
the going tough

By LESTER RODNEY

NEW YORK

The best tennis player in the world is not an Austra-

lian at all.

He is 28-year-old Richard Gonzales, an

American out of Los Angeles who packs a muscular ok
Pounds on a 6 foot 3 inch frame and hits a serve whic

has been measured at 113 miles per hour.

& professional, has been for
Seven years, which is why you
haven’t read about him win-
ning tournaments at Wimble-
don and Forest Hills and Davis
Cup matches for the USA,
Which could stand some Davis

Up victories.

How good Gonzales is is
Something currently being dis-
Covered by the latest amateur
hero to succumb to the lure
Of the play for pay dollars,
Ken Rosewall, the crisp little
tactician who won the U.S.

ationals and spearheaded
Australia’s romping defense of
the Davis Cup.

: Was discovered before
him by another Australian
Davis Cup hero, Frank Sedg-
man, and last year by Tony

Tabert, America’s best ama-
teur and architect of the lone
Yankee Davis Cup victory in
the past seven years of try-
mg. Gonzales decimated these
tWo so fearsomely that he de-
Stroyed them as professional

©X office attractions.

A long line of U.S. amateur
champions have “turned hon-
est,” as some cynics about
amateur expense accounts put
'.. Tilden, Richards, Vines,
Perry, Riggs, Kramer, Budge,
all preceded Gonzales in the
Move to cash in solidly on

t was once the sport of
Kings and noblemen. But Dick,
at 21, was the youngest by
far, and the only one who
had not first built up a long
8nd solid reputation,

When Dick Gonzales was 12
Years old his Mexican-born
father gave him a “tennis
Tacquet,”

“It cost 51 cents,” Dick re-
oe “I remember I saw it in
he store window, a kind of
Y racquet actually.”

°Y or real, it was the first
howe racquet Dick had ever
ed in his hands, The average
Young man who becomes a
champ ‘in this exacting sport
8 well on the way by 13,
with years of intensive les-
ns and play in boys’ tourn-
*YS shaping his game.

Onzales came from a typi-
far, rough Mexican-American
the in L. A., which means
ig Was no money to spare
3 r Such luxuries as sports
patipment. It was not, he
ecalls, until his high school
“ays at 14 when he was show-

te

Ng interest in all around ath-

letic ability, that he picked up

a real racquet and started hit-
ting some on the school court.
“J never took a lesson,” le
says, “I got interested in the
game, liked the feel of it, and
began watching and practic-
Da played on the Los An-
gees public courts and made
i headway.
pe 17, he eieted in the
U.S. Navy. When he came out
he took up tennis with serl-
ous intensity as he sensed his
ability to learn to beat ae
well trained and carefully
pointed products from whom
he was learning.

*

It wasn’t easy for a Mexi-
can-American lad named Gon-
zales, with always the darkest
skin in the locker room, in
the clubhouses and on the
soe is one of the “social
sports,” lagging well behind
the mass popular game in
breaking down discrimination
and introducing real sports
democracy. It has a blue
blood” tradition. It wasn't
until 1950, when Althea Gib-
son broke in, that the first
Negro was allowed to play in
the sacrosanct confines of For-
est Hills, the scene of the big-
gest American tournament.

And while there has been
improvement, it is still not
truly a democratic sport be-
cause its system of tourna-
ments through which players
develop is woven Ser gU eR
fabric of clubs and social life
around the game. This does
not. exactly encourage sae
Negro youngsters to try fol-
lowing Miss Gibson. - - as
pecially since many of we
essential tourneys are he

south.
oe recently as eight years
ago I heard a good yarns
Jewish tennis player angrily
tell how he was “discouraged
in a silky way by being even
inferior quarters and no invi-
tation to a pre-tourney dance,

Francisco Segura of ous
dor, one of the pro troupe ang
quite possibly the second bes
tennis player in the world to-
day, was blatantly ae
ated against in one Florida
tourney and given the same
nasty lack of real hospitality.
This, he later said, helped ae
termine him turning pro pee
in 1947 before reaching ss
peak as an amateur in the He
tourneys and Davis Cup Play

Gonzales is -

* Tony Trabert (above), winner of

SNS Se

19 of 22 amateur

tournaments, found Gonzales too hot to handle when

he tried his luck at the pro game.

He was swept off the

courts and out of the big money in one year.

—in which he probably could
have singlehandedly made his
little country a factor to reck-
on with in the past five years.

*

Gonzales encountered no
open cases of discrimination
in his brief amateur career,
but there were overtones. He
was scolded by some of the
palpitating blue bloods for be-
ing seen casually playing in
old sweat clothes on a public
court with a friend. He was
once barred from a tourney
for “not conforming” to some
fol-de-rol procedures.

I remember one match in
ithe Nationals in which a Gon-
zales fan shouted enthusiastic-
ally from the stands “C’mon
Pancho!’’, at a crucial moment,
The umpire almost fell out of
his high chair, tuxedo buttons
came near popping all over
the place and even.a ballboy,
one of ‘those well bred young
men who scamper like mad
to scoop up a ball and stand
frozen back to court, unfroze
and gaped . incredulously.
“C’mon!” Indeed! Ebbets Field
at Forest Hills!

A word about “Pancho,”
since we mentioned it. The
man’s name happens to be
Richard and he was called
Dick until making the sports
pages. It may seem meaning-
less and hardly worth a fuss,
but the “Pancho” hung on him
by the press (on Segura too)
is actually racial in character,
part of the subtile, conscious
and unconscious (on the part
of some who use it) arsenal of
Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Mak-
ing Richard into Pancho is
surely a form of “keeping the
Mexican in his place,” like the
Chico for Latin-American ball-
players Carresquel and Fern-

andez.
*

Gonzales reached his short
amateur career in the 1949
Nationals. He made his way
into the finals with his tre-
mendous power and the be-
ginning of the control and

deftness which now make him
a player you have to put with
the giant for comparison pur-
poses. But his opponent was
Ted Schroeder, the world’s
amateur of the moment, a
man at his peak after years of
topnotch experience.

Many a tennis finale is a
drab anticlimatic letdown. Not
this one. Gonzales had lots
of incentive, including the
knowledge that a victory
would put him in line for a
possible professional offer: (“I
turned pro because I needed
the money and had a family
to support,” he said later. He
meant not only his parents
but his young bride. The Rich-
ard Gonzales’ are now the
happy parents of three boys.)

In an amazing first set which
produced some of the most
sparkling, exciting tennis in
Forrest Hills history, Schroed-
er finally won out 18-16, which
you would call the equivalent
of a 24 inning baseball game
considering 6-4 as the basis
and each set as an inning.

When Ted also won the sec-
ond set 6-2, some spectators
left for home, feeling it was
all over and that the first set
would give them tennis con-
versation for a long time.
Among other things, Schroed-
er, a superbly conditioned
Scrapper, had’ the reputation
of never losing a_ five-set
match.

Well, Gonzales won the third
set 6-1. He won the fourth
set 6-2. He won the final set
6-4 to climax the greatest up-
hill victory in the history of
the Nationals. :

* ‘

Three months later he sign-
ed a juicy professional con-
tract with former champion
Bobby Riggs handing him the
pen. Riggs had been trounc-
ed the year before in the pros
by Jack Kramer, and appar-
ently adopting the motto “if
you can’t beat them, promote
them,” turned promoter and
signed Gonzales to meet
Kramer in a 123-match tour.

‘Ken

Kramer was a great player
at his absolute peak, a merci-
lessly perfect hitter with years
of amateur triumphs and the
accelerated development of
pro play under his belt. Young
Gonzales was not ready for
this kind of competition.
Though in flashes he played
fantastic tennis as he beat
Kramer, the over-all result of
the tour found Kramer mow-
ing him down 96-27.

Kramer in turn became the
top pro promoter, which he
still is, and Gonzales seemed
forgotten as Jack took on and
defeated Frank Sedgman of
Australia while Segura knock-
ed off Aussie Davis Cupper

MacGregor with no
trouble. :

Gonzales and a few other
pros meanwhile played around
the world, hitting South Am-
erica extensively, India and
other parts of Asia. As his
game gradually matured, sharp
control, experience and tactics
married his unmatched power
and Gonzales really bloomed.

Too good now for the vet-
eran Kramer, whose back was
bothering him, he was match-
ed instead in round robin
fashion with Sedgman and
Segura. He blasted the mer-
cury footed Aussie with ease,
and handled Segura convine-
ingly.

Then last year Kramer land-
ed Tony Trabert, winner of 19
of the 22 amateur tourneys he
had entered, victor over young
Aussie heroes Hoad and Rose-
wall in every big tourney,
though upset in the Davis Cup
when he had a slightly ailing
shoulder.

*

Trabert would show if Gon-
zales was now really as good
as they said. He did. Play-
ing fine tennis, he was swept
off the courts as mercilessly
as Kramer had once handled
Gonzales. The difference was
that Trabert was no 21-year-
old Johnny-come-lately but a
fully developed amateur champ
with year of top notch vic-
torious play behind him.

As Gonzales’ magnificently
controlled big game swept
Trabert, at least temporarily,
out of the box office draw
class, Segura, the 34-year-old
Ecuadorian, continued his per-
ennial role of humbling the
number. two new pro, in this
case Aussie Rex Hartwig, a
Davis Cup team member.

And now Rosewall, This 22-
year-old Aussie took a quali-
tative leap -past his bigger
Davis Cup teammate Hoad this
year, and is playing fine ten-
nis against Gonzales in their
opening matches, though trail-
ing.

But promoter Kramer, who
knows just how great a ten-
nis star the fully ripe Richard
Gonzales has become is virtu-
ally resigned to having Rose-

‘wall trounced as was Trabert.

Next year — Hoad. The
Aussies have enough in the
line of young player superior-
ity over the U.S. to continue
giving their top man to the
pros and still maintaining

their Davis Cup supremacy.
FEBRUARY 8, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 15