rogerfederer26
Rookie
Seles at head of class
She’s among 4 to enter Hall of Fame
By Bud Collins
Globe Correspondent / July 11, 2009
Email| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + NEWPORT, R.I. -
Grown to nearly 6 feet, no longer the aggressive - yet ever gracious - adversary, Monica Seles appears at the International Tennis Hall of Fame this afternoon to take her rightful place alongside the game’s immortals.
Rounding out the Hall’s Class of 2009 are the smooth Spanish shotmaker Andres Gimeno and contributors Donald Dell and the late Dr. Robert “Whirlwind’’ Johnson. Their induction precedes semifinals clashes of the Campbell’s Hall of Fame Championships at The Casino, the lone grass-court stopover on the US pro circuit.
That tiny face in the Seles exhibit is a mouse sketched on a yellow tennis ball by Monica’s father, Karolj, a cartoonist. “He started me in tennis, at 7, and he made it fun for me. If I didn’t have fun there was no sense in playing. The faces on the balls were part of it, like Tom and Jerry. I was the cat giving them whacks.’’
And such whacks they were. Battering, double-barreled, powerhouse smacks. Two hands were better than one for Monica, a lefty who slugged like a switch-hitter - both hands going both ways. Few have done it, and none as productively as she, rising to No. 1 as a teenager. By the time she was 18, Monica held seven major singles titles. Nobody else has gone so far so fast.
It took a while to reach the ninth, her last. Shortly after beating Steffi Graf in the 1993 Australian Open final, Monica was felled by the infamous knifing in Hamburg. We didn’t see her again for two years, when she reappeared spectacularly to win the Canadian Open, then lost a tight US Open final to Graf.
She was never quite the same, but an all-time great nonetheless. I thought she would have been the greatest.
Thoughts of the stabbing come and go, she said. “It unfortunately changed my career. When I decided to come back, I had to realize it was out of my control. It was up to me to take control. That’s when I decided to play again and return to the sport I loved. I didn’t want it to be taken away.’’
A marvelous memory for me was her first French final, 1990. Graf led, 6-2, in the first set tiebreaker only to be overwhelmed in a 6-point rush as 16-year-old Monica became the greenest champ in Paris, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4. Her majors collection was underway. Though seemingly off balance and out of position, she was perfectly coordinated, moaning and murdering tennis balls just as she had as an elementary schooler. By then, papa’s cartooned faces were retired, out of her destructive reach.
While Monica is the youngest French Open champ, good-humored Gimeno, a lanky Barcelonan, is the oldest. It was the highlight of his exceptional three-stage career, during most of which he and colleagues were largely out of sight. First there was amateurism, playing handsomely as a Spanish Davis Cupper, then signing on as a pro tourist in 1960. The pros, gypsies on one-night stands, attracted little attention. But when opens dawned in 1968, Andres was still formidable, returned to Davis Cup, and at age 34 ruled France in 1972.
He’s no stranger to the Casino court. Gimeno, along with such Hall of Famers-to-be as Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and Pancho Gonzalez, were guinea pigs for the resident honcho, Jimmy Van Alen, who brought the outlaws to Newport in 1965-67 to test his revolutionary scoring methods. They were the tiebreaker pioneers. “Strange but it worked,’’ Andres said with a smile.
Dell, who played the Casino, but as an amateur with a No. 4 US ranking, and Johnson, who would never have been allowed to because he was black, were also revolutionaries.
Dell, the winning US Davis Cup captain in 1968-69, was a strong factor in founding the ATP, the male players union, becoming the first player-agent. Among his clients: Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, Charlie Pasarell. Dell arranged a tour of war-time Vietnam for them to play exhibitions for US troops. He was a commentator for PBS when that network launched regular coverage of tennis.
Known as “Whirlwind’’ for his football-carrying prowess in college, Dr. Johnson, a Lynchburg, Va., physician who died in 1971, founded the ATA (American Tennis Association) to nurture tournament play for blacks, unwelcome in US Tennis Association circles. He tutored promising players on his backyard court, among them Althea Gibson and Ashe. With his backing, and lobbying for a fair opportunity for blacks, Althea hurdled the color bar in 1950, eventually scoring the first majors for blacks (French in 1956, Wimbledon and US in 1957-58 ). Arthur followed with the US in 1968, Wimbledon in 1975.
Who knows? Without Johnson’s distinguished leadership, those two and the Sisters Williams might never have made it. He was a welcome whirlwind indeed.
International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Monica Seles, center, poses with presenters and former tennis players, Betsy McCormack, left, and Mary Joe Fernandez, right, as she holds her plaque during ceremonies in Newport, R.I. Saturday, July 11, 2009.
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____________________
Congratulations Monica!
She’s among 4 to enter Hall of Fame
By Bud Collins
Globe Correspondent / July 11, 2009
Email| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + NEWPORT, R.I. -
Grown to nearly 6 feet, no longer the aggressive - yet ever gracious - adversary, Monica Seles appears at the International Tennis Hall of Fame this afternoon to take her rightful place alongside the game’s immortals.
Rounding out the Hall’s Class of 2009 are the smooth Spanish shotmaker Andres Gimeno and contributors Donald Dell and the late Dr. Robert “Whirlwind’’ Johnson. Their induction precedes semifinals clashes of the Campbell’s Hall of Fame Championships at The Casino, the lone grass-court stopover on the US pro circuit.
That tiny face in the Seles exhibit is a mouse sketched on a yellow tennis ball by Monica’s father, Karolj, a cartoonist. “He started me in tennis, at 7, and he made it fun for me. If I didn’t have fun there was no sense in playing. The faces on the balls were part of it, like Tom and Jerry. I was the cat giving them whacks.’’
And such whacks they were. Battering, double-barreled, powerhouse smacks. Two hands were better than one for Monica, a lefty who slugged like a switch-hitter - both hands going both ways. Few have done it, and none as productively as she, rising to No. 1 as a teenager. By the time she was 18, Monica held seven major singles titles. Nobody else has gone so far so fast.
It took a while to reach the ninth, her last. Shortly after beating Steffi Graf in the 1993 Australian Open final, Monica was felled by the infamous knifing in Hamburg. We didn’t see her again for two years, when she reappeared spectacularly to win the Canadian Open, then lost a tight US Open final to Graf.
She was never quite the same, but an all-time great nonetheless. I thought she would have been the greatest.
Thoughts of the stabbing come and go, she said. “It unfortunately changed my career. When I decided to come back, I had to realize it was out of my control. It was up to me to take control. That’s when I decided to play again and return to the sport I loved. I didn’t want it to be taken away.’’
A marvelous memory for me was her first French final, 1990. Graf led, 6-2, in the first set tiebreaker only to be overwhelmed in a 6-point rush as 16-year-old Monica became the greenest champ in Paris, 7-6 (8-6), 6-4. Her majors collection was underway. Though seemingly off balance and out of position, she was perfectly coordinated, moaning and murdering tennis balls just as she had as an elementary schooler. By then, papa’s cartooned faces were retired, out of her destructive reach.
While Monica is the youngest French Open champ, good-humored Gimeno, a lanky Barcelonan, is the oldest. It was the highlight of his exceptional three-stage career, during most of which he and colleagues were largely out of sight. First there was amateurism, playing handsomely as a Spanish Davis Cupper, then signing on as a pro tourist in 1960. The pros, gypsies on one-night stands, attracted little attention. But when opens dawned in 1968, Andres was still formidable, returned to Davis Cup, and at age 34 ruled France in 1972.
He’s no stranger to the Casino court. Gimeno, along with such Hall of Famers-to-be as Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and Pancho Gonzalez, were guinea pigs for the resident honcho, Jimmy Van Alen, who brought the outlaws to Newport in 1965-67 to test his revolutionary scoring methods. They were the tiebreaker pioneers. “Strange but it worked,’’ Andres said with a smile.
Dell, who played the Casino, but as an amateur with a No. 4 US ranking, and Johnson, who would never have been allowed to because he was black, were also revolutionaries.
Dell, the winning US Davis Cup captain in 1968-69, was a strong factor in founding the ATP, the male players union, becoming the first player-agent. Among his clients: Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, Charlie Pasarell. Dell arranged a tour of war-time Vietnam for them to play exhibitions for US troops. He was a commentator for PBS when that network launched regular coverage of tennis.
Known as “Whirlwind’’ for his football-carrying prowess in college, Dr. Johnson, a Lynchburg, Va., physician who died in 1971, founded the ATA (American Tennis Association) to nurture tournament play for blacks, unwelcome in US Tennis Association circles. He tutored promising players on his backyard court, among them Althea Gibson and Ashe. With his backing, and lobbying for a fair opportunity for blacks, Althea hurdled the color bar in 1950, eventually scoring the first majors for blacks (French in 1956, Wimbledon and US in 1957-58 ). Arthur followed with the US in 1968, Wimbledon in 1975.
Who knows? Without Johnson’s distinguished leadership, those two and the Sisters Williams might never have made it. He was a welcome whirlwind indeed.
International Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Monica Seles, center, poses with presenters and former tennis players, Betsy McCormack, left, and Mary Joe Fernandez, right, as she holds her plaque during ceremonies in Newport, R.I. Saturday, July 11, 2009.
Previous 5 of 200 Next
____________________
Congratulations Monica!
