When I was 14 years old, my father owned the garden supply store next to the famous grass courts in Newport. RI. called the Newport Casino, and now known as the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
It was a mini-Wimbledon, the site of the early U.S. Open competitions, the first Virginia Slims Tournament, and a venue for most of the great players of the 1950s and 60s. One morning my dad told me the manager was looking for someone to warm up the champion Ricardo (“Pancho”) González, for an exhibition game, and that he had volunteered my services. I was both excited and more than a bit nervous.
At six foot three inches, 185 pounds, González was an imposing figure. Even more intimidating was his fierce stare and a vertical scar on his cheek, and well-deserved reputation for being short-tempered. He also had cannonball serve, clocked at 112 miles per hour, the fastest serve in tennis back in those days of wooden rackets and catgut strings. Gonzalez won his first major tournament in 1949 in Forest Hills and, over the course of the next 20 years, managed to beat all the major players of his era, as well as several of the next generation.
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