Pancho Gonzales or Richard Gonzalez, (May 9, 1928 – July 3, 1995) was the World No. 1 tennis playerr for an unequalled 8 years in the 1950s and early 1960s. During that period, he played as a professional. Completely self-taught, he was also a successful amateur player in the late-1940s, twice winning the United States Championships. The tempestuous Gonzales is still widely considered to be one of the all-time great tennis players. Prior to the Open era, he was considered by many observers to be the greatest player in the history of the game. A 1999 Sports Illustrated article about the magazine's 20 "favorite athletes" of the 20th century said about Gonzales (their number 15 pick): "If earth was on the line in a tennis match, the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez." The noted tennis commentator Bud Collins echoed this in an August 2006 article for MSNBC.com: "If I had to choose someone to play for my life, it would be Pancho Gonzalez." Amateur Pancho Gonzales was given a 51-cent racquet by his mother when he was 12 years old and taught himself to play by watching other players on the public courts at nearby Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Once he discovered tennis, he lost interest in school and began a troubled adolescence in which he was occasionally pursued by truant officers and policemen. He was befriended by the owner of the tennis shop at Exposition Park and sometimes slept there. Because of his spotty school attendance and occasional minor brushes with the law, he was ostracized by the exclusively white, and predominantly upper-class, tennis establishment of 1940s Los Angeles, which was headquartered at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and which actively trained other top players such as the youthful Jack Kramer. Eventually he was arrested for burglary at age 15 and spent a year in detention. He then joined the Navy just as World War II was ending and served for two years, finally receiving a bad-conduct discharge in 1947. According to his autobiography, Pancho Gonzales stood 6'3" (1.91 meters) and weighed 183 pounds (83 kg) by the time he was 19 years old. Other sources generally credit him as being an inch or two shorter but in any case he would enjoy a clear advantage in height over a number of his most prominent rivals, particularly Pancho Segura, Ken Rosewall, and Rod Laver, all of whom were at least 5 or 6 inches shorter. Tony Trabert, who was badly beaten by Gonzales on their 101-match tour and who disliked him intensely, nevertheless once told the Los Angeles Times: "Gonzales is the greatest natural athlete tennis has ever known. The way he can move that 6-foot-3-inch frame of his around the court is almost unbelievable. He's just like a big cat.... Pancho's reflexes and reactions are God-given talents. He can be moving in one direction and in the split second it takes him to see that the ball is hit to his weak side, he's able to throw his physical mechanism in reverse and get to the ball in time to reach it with his tennis racquet." The flamboyant Gussie Moran, who briefly toured with the Gonzales group, said that watching Gonzales was like seeing "a god patrolling his personal heaven." In spite of his lack of playing time while in the Navy, and as a mostly unknown 19-year-old in 1947, Pancho Gonzales achieved a national ranking of number 17 by playing primarily on the West Coast. He did, however, go East that year to play in the United States Championships at Forest Hills. He surprised the British Davis Cup-player Derek Barton, then lost a five-set match to the number-3 seed, Gardnar Mulloy. Following that, in the last major tournament of the year, the Pacific Southwest, played at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, he beat three internationally known names, Jaroslav Drobny, Bob Falkenburg, and Frank Parker, before losing in the finals to Ted Schroeder. The following year, 1948, Perry T. Jones, the head of the Southern California Tennis Association, and the most powerful man in California tennis, relented in his opposition to Pancho Gonzales and sponsored his trip East to play in the major tournaments. The top-ranked American player, Ted Schroeder, decided at the last moment not to play in the United States Championships and Gonzales was seeded number 8 in the tournament. To the surprise of most observers, he won it fairly easily by a straight-set victory over the South African Eric Sturgess in the finals with his powerful serve-and-volley game. His persona at the time was strikingly different from what it would become in future years. American Lawn Tennis wrote that "the crowd cheered a handsome, dark-skinned Mexican-American youngster who smiled boyishly each time he captured a hard-fought point, kissed the ball prayerfully before a crucial serve, and was human enough to show nervousness as he powered his way to the most coveted crown in the world." This was Gonzales's only major tournament victory of the year, but it was enough to let him finish the year ranked as the number one American player. The following year, 1949, Pancho Gonzales did badly at Wimbledon and was derided for his performance by some of the press. A British sportswriter called him a "cheese champion" and, because of his name, his doubles partner of the time, Frank Parker, began to call him "Gorgonzales", after Gorgonzola, the Italian cheese. This was eventually shortened to "Gorgo", the nickname by which he was later known by his colleagues on the professional tour. (Jack Kramer, in his autobiography, says that it was Jim Burchard, the tennis writer for the New York World-Telegram who first called him a "cheese champ".)" In 1949, Pancho Gonzales returned to the American championships and, once again to the surprise of many observers, repeated his victory of the previous year. Ted Schroeder, the number-1 seed, had beaten Gonzales 8 times in 9 matches during their careers and was heavily favored — the single time Gonzales had beaten Schroeder, he was playing with a nose that had been broken the day before by his doubles partner's tennis racquet during a misplayed point at the net. In a tremendous final that has been called the 11th greatest match of all time", Gonzales lost a 1-hour and 15-minute first set 16-18 but finally managed to prevail in the 5th set. Once again he finished the year as the number-one ranked U.S. amateur. Pancho Gonzales also won both his singles matches in the Davis Cup finals against Australia. Having beaten Schroeder at Forest Hills, he was clearly the best amateur in the world. Bobby Riggs and Jack Kramer, who had been counting on signing Schroeder to play Kramer on the professional tour, were then forced to reluctantly sign Gonzales instead. Professional Kramer Pancho Gonzales was badly beaten in his first year on the professional tour, 96 matches to 27, by the reigning king of professional tennis, Jack Kramer. During this time, Gonzales's personality apparently changed from that of a friendly, happy-go-lucky youngster to the hard-bitten loner he became known as for the rest of his life. According to Kramer in his 1979 autobiography, "The worst thing that ever happened to Gonzales was winning Forest Hills in 1949.... At a time when Gorgo wasn't mature as a player he was pitted against Kramer, an established pro at his peak." Moreover, says Kramer, "Pancho had no idea how to live or take care of himself. He was a hamburger-and-hot-dog guy to start with and had no concept of diet in training.... On the court Gorgo would swig Cokes through a match.... Also Gorgo was a pretty heavy cigarette smoker. He had terrible sleeping habits made even worse by the reality of a tour." Kramer won 22 of the first 26 matches and 42 of the first 50. Gonzales improved enough to win 15 of the remaining 32 but it was too late. Bobby Riggs, the tour promoter, told Pancho Gonzales that he was now "dead meat": Kramer would need a new challenger for the next tour. As compensation, however, Gonzales had made $75,000 in his losing efforts. Kramer also said that "his nature had changed completely. He became difficult and arrogant. Losing had changed him. When he got his next chance, he understood that you either win or you're out of a job." He was now "a loner," said Ted Schroeder, "and always the unhappiest man in town."
From 1951 to 1953 Pancho Gonzales was in semi-retirement. He bought the tennis shop at Exposition Park and ran that while playing in short tours and occasional professional tournaments throughout the world. In spite of his infrequent play (because first Riggs, then Kramer, as promoters of the pro tour, didn't want him as the headliner of their tours), he had nevertheless raised his game to a higher level than before and once again was winning most of his matches. Precise records of this time are difficult to locate but Gonzales asserts in his autobiography that after the decisive loss to Kramer in their 1949-1950 tour he then beat his old antagonist 11 times in their next 16 matches. In the Southern Hemisphere summer of 1950-1951 Gonzales toured Australia and New Zealand with Dinny Pails, Frank Parker, and Don Budge. In December of 1950 Pails won the short tour in New Zealand but in January and February of 1951 Gonzales won a second and longer tour in Australia. Though Gonzales also won Wembley (where Kramer was not entered) in the fall of 1951, it is probable that both Kramer and Segura were marginally better players that year. In 1952, however, Pancho Gonzales reached the top level of the pros. In 1952 he entered 5 tournaments and captured 4: the Philadelphia Inquirer Masters tournament, where he beat both Segura and Kramer twice in a double round-robin event ; Scarborough, where he defeated Budge and Segura; Wembley, by again beating Segura and Kramer; Berlin, where Segura and Budge lost again to the American; he was also a finalist in the United States Professional Championships ("U.S. Pro") against Segura. In all, Gonzales beat Segura 5 matches out of 6 and Kramer three times in three matches. This was the first year that "Big Pancho" (Gonzales) dominated "Little Pancho" (Segura) in their head-to-head matches, and thereafter his superiority over Segura never wavered through their long careers. Although the Professional Lawn Tennis Association issued rankings at the end of 1952 in which they called Segura the World Pro No. 1, with Gonzales 2nd, the PLTA rankings were notoriously quirky — the year before, for instance, when Kramer had beaten Segura 64 matches to 28 (or 58-27 according to Kramer) in their championship tour, they had nevertheless ranked Segura as the World No. 1 player. A strong case can therefore be made that Pancho Gonzales was actually the World Pro No. 1 player for 1952 or, at the least, shared that position with Segura. At a professional event in 1951 the forehand drives of a number of players were electronically measured. Kramer was particularly known for his fine forehand, but Gonzales was recorded as hitting the fastest one, 112.88 mph, followed by Kramer at 107.8 and Welby Van Horn at 104. Since it was generally assumed at the time that Pancho Segura's two-handed forehand was the hardest in tennis, it is possible that he was not present at that event. In 1953 Pancho Gonzales, drawn aside from the big pro tour by Kramer (by now also a promoter), featuring Frank Sedgman, a 7-time Grand Slam singles winner, Pancho Segura, Ken McGregor (the 1952 Australian Open champion) and ... Kramer himself, regressed because he hasn't met a very great player for 12 months between Wembley 1952 and Wembley 1953. Therefore in Wembley and two days after in Paris, Pancho was severely crushed by Frank Sedgman, the future winner of these tournaments. In late 1953, Kramer, then a temporarily retired player (due to his back troubles), signed Gonzales (a 7-year contract) to play in a 1954 USA tour featuring also Pancho Segura, Frank Sedgman and Don Budge (the latter being replaced in March 1954 by Carl Earn for the last weeks of the tour). In the subsequent matches Pancho Gonzales beat Segura 30-21 and Sedgman by the same score (Budge beat Gonzales only once in Los Angeles). After this tour Gonzales won the U.S. Pro where all the best, except Pails, were present. Then the American played in a Far East tour (September-October 1954) very slightly dominated by Segura where Kramer made his come-back in singles after a 14-month retirement. Then Gonzales had a new success : he swept an Australian tour in November-December 1954 by beating Sedgman, 16 matches to 9, McGregor 15-0, and Segura, 4–2. Even though Pancho was beaten by Pails in the last competition of the year, the Australian Pro, Gonzales had clearly established himself as the top player in the world in 1954. Dominance Pancho Gonzales was now the dominant player in the men's game for about the next eight years, beating such tennis greats as Sedgman, Tony Trabert, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Mal Anderson, and Ashley Cooper on a regular basis. Forty years after his matches with Gonzales, Trabert told interviewer Joe McCauley "that Gonzales' serve was the telling factor on their tour — it was so good that it earned him many cheap points. Trabert felt that, while he had the better groundstrokes, he could not match Pancho's big, fluent service." In that period, Pancho Gonzales won the United States Professional Championship eight times and the Wembley professional title in London four times, plus beating, in head-to-head tours, all of the best amateurs who turned pro, which included every Wimbledon champion for 10 years in a row. During this time Gonzales was known for his fiery will to win, his cannonball serve, and his all-conquering net game, a combination so potent that the rules on the professional tour were briefly changed in the 1950s to prohibit him from advancing to the net immediately after serving. Under the new rules, the returned serve had to bounce before the server could make his own first shot, thereby keeping Gonzales from playing his usual serve-and-volley game. Pancho Gonzales won even so, and the rules were changed back. So great was his ability to raise his game to the highest possible level, particularly in the fifth set of long matches, that Allen Fox has said that he never once saw Gonzales lose service when serving for the set or the match. Trabert and Rosewall In late 1955 and early 1956 Pancho Gonzales beat the athletic Tony Trabert by 74 matches to 27, a series made more compelling by the fact that the two players disliked each other intensely. At the end of 1956 Kramer signed Ken Rosewall to play another long series against Gonzales. In early 1957 Gonzales flew to Australia for the first 10 matches against Rosewall in his native country. Gonzales had developed a "half-dollar"-size cyst on the palm on his right hand and there was speculation in the newspapers that his tennis career might be over. Kramer's personal physician began to treat it with injections, and it gradually began to shrink. It was still painful, however, when Gonzales beat Rosewall in their initial match and eventually won their brief Australian tour 7 matches to 3, with Rosewall beating Pancho Gonzales in a tournament whose results did not count towards the series total. By the time the tour opened in New York in late February the cyst had shrunk considerably and Gonzales went on to beat Rosewall by a final score of 50 matches to 26. Kramer has written that he was so worried that Rosewall would offer no competition to Gonzales and would thereby destroy the financial success of the tour that, for the only time in his career as a player or promoter, he asked Gonzales while in Australia to "carry" Rosewall in return for having his share of the gross receipts raised from 20 percent to 25 percent. Gonzales reluctantly agreed. After 4 matches, with Gonzales ahead 3 to 1, Pancho Gonzales came to Kramer to say that "I can't play when I'm thinking about trying to carry the kid. I can't concentrate. It just bothers me too much." By this time, however, it was apparent that Rosewall would be fully competitive with Gonzales, so Kramer told Gonzales to return to his normal game — and that he could keep his additional 5 percent. Later that year Gonzales sued in California superior court to have his 7-year contract with Kramer declared invalid. As proof of his claim, Gonzales cited being paid 25 percent of the gate instead of the stipulated 20 percent. Judge Leon T. David found Gonzales's reasoning implausible and ruled in favor of Kramer. Gonzales remained bound to Kramer by contract until 1960." Hoad The most difficult challenge that Pancho Gonzales faced during those years came from Lew Hoad, the very powerful young Australian who had won five Grand Slam titles as an amateur. In the 1958 tour, Gonzales and Hoad played head-to-head 87 times. Hoad won 18 of the first 27 matches and it appeared that he was about to displace Gonzales as the best in the world. Gonzales, however, revamped and improved his backhand during the course of these first matches, just as Bill Tilden had had to do in 1920 in order to become the best in the world, and then won 42 of the next 60 matches to maintain his superiority by a margin of 51 to 36. Much of Gonzales's competitive fire during these years derived from the anger he felt at being paid much less than the players he was regularly beating. In 1955, for instance, he was paid $15,000 while his touring opponent, the recently turned professional Tony Trabert, had a contract for $80,000. He had an often bitter adversarial relationship with most of the other players and generally travelled and lived by himself, showing up only in time to play his match, then moving on alone to the next town. Gonzales and Jack Kramer, the long-time promoter of the tour, were also bitter enemies dating to the days when Kramer had first beaten the youthful Pancho Gonzales on his initial tour. Now they fought incessantly about money, while Kramer openly rooted for the other players to beat Gonzales. As much as he disliked Gonzales, however, Kramer knew that Gonzales was the star attraction of the touring professionals and that without him there would be no tour at all. Regarding the tour, Kramer writes that "even though [Gonzales] was usually the top name, he would almost never help promote. The players could have tolerated his personal disagreeableness, but this refusal to help the group irritated them the most. Frankly, the majority disliked Gonzales intensely. Sedgman almost came to blows with Gonzales once. Trabert and Gorgo hated each other. The only player he ever tried to get along with was Lew Hoad."
Life on the tour was not easy. "One night," Pancho Gonzales recalled later, "I sprained an ankle badly. The next night in another town I was hurting. I told Jack I couldn't play. He said to me, 'Kid, we always play.' Jack had a doctor shoot me up with novocaine, and we played. That's just the way it was. The size of the crowd didn't matter. They'd paid to see us play." The rigors were not only physical ones. In the 1963 United States Professional Championship, which were held that year at the hallowed Forest Hills courts, Gonzales both dismayed and infuriated his colleagues by being the only player who was paid for his participation. Having learned by bitter experience about the exigencies of the pro tour, Gonzales had demanded, and received, $5,000 in advance for his appearance in the tournament. An out-of-shape, semi-retired Pancho Gonzales was beaten in the first round. Ken Rosewall eventually beat Rod Laver in the finals but neither of them collected a penny: the promoter had failed to meet his costs and couldn't pay any of the players. Open tennis Most of Gonzales's career as a professional fell before the start of the Open era of tennis in 1968, and he was therefore ineligible to compete at the Grand Slam events between 1949 (when he turned pro) and 1967. As has been observed about other great players such as Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzales almost certainly would have won a number of additional Grand Slam titles had he been permitted to compete in those tournaments during that 18-year period. Jack Kramer, for instance, has speculated in an article about the theoretical champions of Forest Hills and Wimbledon that Pancho Gonzales would have won an additional 11 titles in those two tournaments alone. The first major Open tournament was the French Championships in May of 1968, when Gonzales had just turned 40. In spite of the fact that he had been semi-retired for a number of years and that the tournament was held on slow clay courts that penalize serve-and-volley players, Gonzales beat the 1967 defending champion Roy Emerson in the quarterfinals. He then lost in the semi-finals to Rod Laver. Pancho Gonzales lost in the third round of Wimbledon but later beat the second-seeded Tony Roche in the fourth round of the United States Open before losing an epic match to Holland's Tom Okker. One of the greatest matches ever played In 1969, however, it was Gonzales's turn to prevail in the longest match ever played till that time, one so long and arduous that it resulted in the advent of tie break scoring. As a 41-year-old at Wimbledon, Gonzales met the fine young amateur Charlie Pasarell and beat him in a 5-set match that lasted five hours and 12 minutes and took 2 days to complete. In the fifth set, Pancho Gonzales won all seven match points that Pasarell had against him, twice coming back from 0-40 deficits. The final score was an improbable 22-24, 1–6, 16-14, 6–3, 11-9. Gonzales went on to the fourth round, where he was beaten in four sets by Arthur Ashe. The match with Pasarell, however, is still remembered as one of the highlights in the history of tennis and has been called one of "The Ten Greatest Matches of the Open Era" in the November/December 2003 issue of Tennis Magazine. But it was not this match alone which gave Gonzales the reputation, among the top players, of being the greatest long-match player in the history of tennis. Final professional years Later that year, Pancho Gonzales won the Howard Hughes Open in Las Vegas and the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles, beating, among others, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Stan Smith (twice), Cliff Richie, and Arthur Ashe. He was the top American money-winner for 1969 with $46,288. If the touring professionals had been included in the United States rankings, it is likely he would have been ranked number 1 in the country, just as he had been two decades earlier in 1948 and 1949. He could also beat the clear number-one player in the world, Rod Laver, on an occasional basis. In their most famous meeting, a $10,000 winner-take-all match before 15,000 in Madison Square Garden in February 1970, the 41-year-old Gonzales beat Laver in five sets. Pancho Gonzales continued to play in the occasional tournament and became the oldest player to have ever won a professional tournament, winning the Des Moines Open over 24-year-old Georges Goven when he was three months shy of his 44th birthday. In spite of the fact that he was still known as a serve-and-volley player, in 1971, when he was 43 and Jimmy Connors 19, he beat the great young baseliner by playing him from the baseline at the Pacific Southwest Open. Roy Emerson, the fine Australian player who won a dozen Grand Slam titles during the 1960s as an amateur when most of the best players in the world were professionals, turned pro in 1968 at the age of 32, having won the French Open the year before. Pancho Gonzales, 8 years older, immediately beat him in the quarter-finals of the French championships. In the following years, Gonzales beat Emerson another 11 times, apparently losing very few matches to him. In the Champions Classic of 1970 in Miami, Florida, however, Emerson did beat Gonzales in straight sets, 6–2, 6–3, 6–2. Another great Australian player was Ken Rosewall, who won 8 Grand Slam titles during his long career, first as an amateur, then as a professional in the early years of Open tennis. Pancho Gonzales played 160 matches against Rosewall, winning 101 and losing 59. Personal and family life González's parents, Manuel Antonio González and Carmen Alire, migrated from the Mexican state of Chihuahua to the U.S. in the early 1900s. González was born in Los Angeles, the eldest of seven children. Kramer writes that "Gorgo was not the poor Mexican-American that people assumed. He didn't come from a wealthy family, but from a stable middle-class background, probably a lot like mine. He had a great mother and there was always a warm feeling of family loyalty. If anything, he might have been spoiled as a kid. It's a shame he suffered discrimination because of his Mexican heritage." Pancho Gonzales had a long scar across his left cheek that, according to his autobiography, some members of the mass media of the 1940s attributed to his being a Mexican-American pachuco and hence involved in knife fights. This was one more slur that embittered González towards the media in general. The scar was actually the result of a prosaic street accident in 1935 when he was 7 years old: pushing a scooter too fast, he ran into a passing car and had his cheek gashed open by its door handle. He spent two weeks in the hospital as a result. Gonzales was referred to as "Richard" by his friends and family. He reportedly disliked the nickname "Pancho", as it was a common derogatory term used against Mexican Americans at the time. In the Hispanic community, the nickname "Pancho" is traditionally only given to individuals whose given name is "Francisco". Although his surname was properly spelled "González", during most of his playing career he was known as "Gonzales". It was only towards the end of his life that the proper spelling began to be used. Kramer, however, writes that one of González's wives, Madelyn Darrow, "decided to change his name. Madalyn discovered in the Castillian upper-crust society, the fancy Gonzales families spelled their name with a z at the end to differentiate from the hoi polloi (sic) Gonzales. So it was Gonzalez for a time, and even now you will occasionally see that spelling pop up. I don't think Pancho gave a damn one way or the other." However, that theory is unlikely, as Gonzalez is actually a much more common spelling of that name than Gonzales. In his ghost-written 1959 autobiography, "Gonzales" is used throughout. For decades González had made $75,000 a year from an endorsement contract with Spalding for racquets and balls but was unable to get along with the company personnel. Finally, in 1981, after nearly 30 years, Spalding refused to renew the contract. Pancho Gonzales had also been the tennis director and tournament director at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip for 16 years, another lucrative job. In 1985 he was fired after refusing to give private lessons to the wife of his boss. As S. L. Price wrote about González in a 2002 Sports Illustrated article, "There was no more perfect match than Pancho and Vegas: both dark and disreputable, both hard and mean and impossible to ignore."
Kramer says that "Gonzales never seemed to get along with his various wives, although this never stopped him from getting married.... Segura once said, 'You know, the nicest thing Gorgo ever says to his wives is "Shut up." González died in penury and almost friendless, estranged from his ex-wives and children except for Rita and their son, Skylar, and daughter, Jeanna Lynn. Andre Agassi paid for his funeral. Place among the all-time great tennis players For about 35 years from around 1920 to 1955, Bill Tilden was generally considered the greatest player of all time. From the mid-1950s to about 1970, many people thought that Pancho Gonzales had claimed that title. Since then, champions of the Open era such as Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Pete Sampras, and Roger Federer have been considered by many of their contemporaries to be greater players than either Tilden or Gonzales. Some people connected with the game consider Pancho Gonzales to be the best male player in tennis history, primarily because he was the World No. 1 tennis player for probably 8 years — the status of a few of the earlier years is still unclear. He was possibly the No.1 in 1952, but then was probably the World No. 1 for 7 consecutive years, 1954 through 1960. In the article World number one male tennis player rankings Bill Tilden with Rod Laver are the next closest to Gonzales with 7 No. 1 ratings, followed by Pete Sampras and Ken Rosewall with 6 each. Pancho Segura, who played, and frequently beat, all of the great players from the 1930s through the 1960s has said that he believes that Pancho Gonzales was the best player of all time. Other tennis greats such as Lew Hoad, and Allen Fox have agreed with this assessment. In a 1972 article about an imaginary tournament between the all-time greats, Gene Scott had the fourth-seeded Gonzales upsetting Bill Tilden in the semi-finals and then using his serve to destroy Rod Laver in the finals. Bud Collins, the editor of the massive Total Tennis, The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia, is guarded. He writes on page 673 that Gonzales was "probably as good as anyone who ever played the game, if not better." On page 693, however, he writes that Rod Laver would "be known as possibly the greatest player ever." And on page 749 he calls Bill Tilden "perhaps the greatest player of them all." In 2005 a tennis historian who visited the International Tennis Hall of Fame interviewed several great Australian players who had toured against Gonzales. Who, they were asked, was the best player they had ever played against?Mal Anderson named Pancho Gonzales, who "was very difficult since if you did get ahead, he had a way to upset you, and he could exploit your weaknesses fast. Though over the hill, he beat Rod [Laver] until Rod lifted his game." He added, "Lew Hoad, in his day was scary, though Gonzales was best day in and day out." Ashley Cooper also named Gonzales, whom "I never beat on the tour. But I did beat him a couple of times on clay where his serve wasn’t as good." Gonzales's frequent opponent Frank Sedgman said, "I played against probably the greatest of all time, Jack Kramer. He could put his serve on a dime and had a great first volley. The second best was Pancho Gonzales. I played him a lot — a great competitor — a great athlete.” Jack Kramer, on the other hand, who became a world-class player in 1940 and then beat Gonzales badly in the latter's first year as a professional, has stated that he believes that although Pancho Gonzales was better than either Laver or Sampras he was not as good as either Ellsworth Vines or Don Budge. Kramer, who had a long and frequently bitter relationship with Gonzales, rates him only as one of the four players who are second to Budge and Vines in his estimation. Kramer also, perhaps surprisingly, writes that Bobby Riggs would have beaten Gonzales on a regular basis. Early in 1986 Inside Tennis, a magazine edited in Northern California, devoted parts of four issues to a lengthy article called "Tournament of the Century", an imaginary tournament to determine the greatest of all time. They asked 37 tennis notables such as Kramer, Budge, Perry, and Riggs and observers such as Bud Collins to list the 10 greatest players in order. Twenty-five players in all were named by the 37 experts in their lists of the 10 best. The magazine then ranked them in descending order by total number of points assigned. The top eight players in overall points, with their number of first-place votes, were: Rod Laver (9), John McEnroe (3), Don Budge (4), Jack Kramer (5), Bjorn Borg (6), Pancho Gonzales (1), Bill Tilden (6), and Lew Hoad (1). Pancho Gonzales was ranked the sixth-best player, with only Allan Fox casting a vote for him as the greatest of all time. Gonzales's views of other players as of 1995 * Pete Sampras: "I rate him potentially with anybody, including Lew Hoad." All quotations are from a New York Times article of 12 March 1995. Pancho Gonzales died four months later of cancer in Las Vegas. Gonzales was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport, Rhode Island in 1968. In his 1979 autobiography Kramer considered the best ever to have been either Don Budge (for consistent play) or Ellsworth Vines (at the height of his game). The next four best were, chronologically, Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, and Pancho Gonzales. After these six came the "second echelon" of Rod Laverr, Lew Hoad,Ken Rosewall, Gottfried von Cramm, Ted Schroeder, Jack Crawford, Pancho Segura, Frank Sedgman, Tony Trabert, John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Bjorn Borg, and Jimmy Connors. He felt unable to rank Henri Cochet and Rene Lacoste accurately but felt they were among the very best. Pancho Gonzales Grand Slam Tournament wins: United States Championships: Wimbledon:Men's Doubles champion - 1949 French Championships: Pancho Gonzales Professional World Singles Tournament wins: Wembley, England United States Professional Championship (also called World Professional Championship when held at Cleveland) U. S. Professional Indoor Championship French Professional Championship World Professional Championship (held at Cleveland)Singles champion - 1964 Pancho Gonzales Professional Tour Results: Gonzales won 7 major pro tours (see Tennis male players statistics) in 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1961, more than anyone else before the open era.
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