As Tom Goes By:
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At Golden Gate Park in 1928, age 6, with my mother. |
In the late 1920's, when I was about eight, I tagged along with my parents one day to Golden Gate Park, curious to watch them play tennis. Even as a boy, I was awed by the layout. Twenty-three courts, with men and women all over the place dashing about in their long skirts and long pants, with rackets in their hands, batting a ball back and forth. Hardly any kids. This puzzled me because it didn't look like a difficult game.
I found a ball, borrowed a racket, and started banging it around on a far court, getting the feel of the thing. Felt good! So I got in a new habit after school of going out to the courts and just kind of hanging out, knocking the ball back and forth with my buddies. One of these boys I still enjoy hitting with seventy years later. That would be Ted Myers. He went on to become a noted physician, who turned his skills after retirement to improving medical care conditions in the third world.
Back to the past. Every now and then I'd pester my mother for a game. "Not yet, dear," she'd tell me. "You're not good enough." Finally she did agree to play me one set, and she whopped me 6-2. Now; little boys are kind of macho. That was way back in 1930, but I'll never forget that score!
So I became hooked on tennis--on learning it, perfecting it, with the idea of besting my mother at a challenge match. That was my early goal. I started playing at Mission Playground, a quicker walk from home than the park, and soon became their tennis champion. There'd be various citywide championships for children and I'd play in them, too, and win.
My dad loved tennis, but was never good at it that I could see. He challenged a ten-year-old boy once, and in trying to scramble to get to a ball, he tore a ligament in his knee which crippled him. He never recovered sufficiently to play tennis again. Sad to confess, I was the boy.
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The historic Golden Gate Park tennis court complex. |
So I started seeking out more agile, better players, boys older than I, at Golden Gate Park. At age eleven, when I was at Lowell High School and captain of the tennis team, I won my first significant tournament. It was at a municipal playground in the Richmond District, out around Twenty-fifth Avenue, a city championship in four junior age groups sponsored by the San Francisco Cal-Bulletin newspaper.
I was elated to win Class 1, for age eleven and under. (I still have the trophy, a precious possession.) This made me an instant "established player," and I was invited along with the other San Francisco winners to journey sixteen miles down the Peninsula to Washington Park in Burlingame, to compete against the best junior players of San Mateo County.
Our team, San Francisco, won, and my appetite was whetted for more. I remember my first significant loss, to Jack Joost, perennial winner of the fifteens and under (which all went down the drain when he turned sixteen). My first "big" win was over Larry Dee, when he was the second- or third-ranked junior player in the U.S.
I soon realized that to become more consistent I needed some tennis lessons. But there wasn't money to spare for such frivolities. It was the Depression, remember. My father had been put on half-pay and my mother had gone back to college so she could get a teaching degree and help support our little household. We had to move to a cheaper apartment, out on Alpine Terrace.
Solution? I became a ballboy in exchange for lessons at the California Tennis Club. The pro was Howard Kinsey, then nationally ranked number four in singles. Howard was pretty heavy and didn't like to lean over to pick up balls. I was happy to do that for him, Although I took a few lessons from him, I mostly learned by watching notable players who'd drop by--Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, and such.
My most inspiring models were Donald Budge and Frank Kovacs. (Little did I dream that less than ten years later Don and I would become good friends, playing buddies, and dinner companions, just the two of us, once a week or so.) Whatever Don or Frank hit in a certain way that I liked, be it backhand, volley, or serve, I would copy it. Like as not, it worked for me only a short while, and then out it went.
The pattern of play that prevailed then was western grips with the hand wrapped well around the racket. Backhands were weak in those days, but Budge and Kovacs had beautiful ones.
So did some of the juniors I played against. My own backhand had serious structural limits, so I began noticing players in my age group whose backhands had nice easy rhythm, and I asked who had taught it to them. To a man (and woman; one of them was Pat Canning, later Todd) they'd all learned the backhand from George Hudson, pro at the Berkeley Tennis Club.
I decided George was the coach for me, and then I found out what he charged for lessons-five dollars an hour. A lot of money in those days. He wouldn't go for the ballboy barter I'd used with Howard Kinsey, so I went to my parents for help.
"I have a weakness in my game," I told them. "I'm going to need some money to take some backhand lessons that I think will help me get over the stumbling block that's keeping me from getting ahead."
And Mother found the money--six lessons for thirty dollars. I found George to be good-natured, very talkative, a bit irrepressible. He wanted to make over my whole game, but I insisted "No, George, only the backhand." I had to keep reminding him not to tinker with my serve, forehand, or volley--"Just the backhand, George."
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By the summer of 1937, I had my backhand. |
We got the stroke down by the end of that summer of 1937. I was sixteen. I won the state junior championships and also the Pacific Coast Championships, for boys eighteen and under. Thanks to those backhand lessons, I was on my way, and started traveling away from San Francisco for competition.
There was a Pacific Northwest circuit then, marvelous summertime venues at posh clubs in Portland, Seattle, Tacoma, Victoria, and Vancouver. Posh clubs, yes, but far from posh accommodations. My first year in Vancouver, three of us boys rented one room with one bed. We tossed a coin for who would get the springs, (me), who the mattress, with the third man out sleeping on the floor.
The Northwest was my first testing of non-hard courts. Portland and Tacoma had clay, and Seattle's surface was asphalt like at home, but the Canadian ones were on grass. My first match on grass was nearly a disaster. Running for a ball, I slipped and slid into the net post, wrapping myself around it. No big deal. I was young and pliable.
Junior tournaments were held simultaneously with regular men's and women's play. Young players from Southern California would be there in force, such as Bob Falkenburg, later to become a lifelong friend, and Gertrude Moran, who would reinvent herself in years to come as "Gorgeous Gussie" of lace panty fame.
At the Vancouver Lawn Tennis Club in 1939, I had my first exposure to Australian Davis Cuppers John Bromwich and Harry Hopman. How smooth they were with their killer instincts! From that time on, whatever my age, I always wanted the best practice I could get. The camaraderie of tennis I also liked very much. Kind of made up for my lack of real brothers and sisters.
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Margaret Osborne: my Cal Club turkey tournament partner. |
I was never much for girls when I was growing up. Not until Margaret Osborne (later duPont) came into my life. She and her mother were San Franciscans who would come out to Golden Gate Park to watch us juniors play. By my fifteenth year, I had become a player of some regard and was good practice for any woman who might come along the pike.
Margaret was four years older than I, and already winning national championships, so when she invited me to be her partner for a handicap tournament at the Cal Club, I eagerly accepted.
It was a turkey tournament, and they handicapped the hell out of us. We were love 40 at the start of every game, meaning we had to win three points in each game before we could even begin scoring. Well, we won, and was my mother surprised when I came home carrying a huge turkey, for she knew I hated the stuff. She and dad ate well that Thanksgiving, though.
In those days, after school and on weekends, I practically lived at Golden Gate Park and in the pool hall at its Stanyan Street entrance. If I had a match at nine in the morning, and another in the afternoon, rather than go home and come back I'd just hang around and shoot pool. I was good at it. If someone came in and had no one to play with, the pool hall would fix him up with the "house man," who was, on occasion, me. Double or nothing if he wanted. I earned more money for the pool hall than I lost. Enough to keep me in tennis rackets until a year later, when I started getting them for nothing.
Fred Earl, a well-known coach from Modesto Junior College, dropped by the park one day. He watched me play awhile and commented, "Gosh, you boys are hitting the ball awful hard for it to stay in."
"Don't worry coach," I assured him. "Someday, all those balls will go in."
Some thirty years later, I visited Fred in a hospital. He was in his seventies by then, waiting to have a shoulder replaced, and was looking forward to getting it repaired so he could start competing in his eighties. He reminded me of our conversation so long ago. I was deeply inspired by him.
At seventeen, going on eighteen, I could give a lot of the players in the men's division a good tussle. I remember going to my first National Clay Courts in River Forest, Illinois. I took the train from San Francisco/Oakland to Chicago. The night before we were to get in I picked up a Chicago paper, turned to the sports section, and found to my dismay that I was to play the opening match with none other than the reigning number-one U.S. player, Bobby Riggs.
My survival in the tournament was not a likely thing, so when I arrived I hoped to find someone--anyone!--to at least hit with. The Wilson people had arranged accommodations for me, and a beat-up car which I used to drive to River Forest. The car had a tendency to slip out of gear. I also wasn't too sure of the way I followed some railway tracks but found, to my horror, that they led down into a tunnel where the paving ran out. I backed out before a streetcar came in, and, quite shaken, continued on.
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I played Alice Marble and in my mind won her title. |
Finally arriving at the club, I inquired around for someone to play and low and behold Alice Marble invited me to play a set. And I won it! I realized, of course, that it was just practice for her--that she wasn't fully extending herself. But in my mind, I had played her for her own title--Women's Champion of the United States. She was a couple of years older than me, very tolerant and good-natured.
My match with Bobby was, as expected, lost. But he was the first (and only ever) person to say anything nice about my unique "inside-out" forehand. "Now, that's a good shot!" he shouted across the net as we played our match. Coming from such a personage as him, those words were music to my ears.
Part of the players' tactics of the time was leaning on the linesmen. I was well aware of this at seventeen and knew that Bobby was a master at it. At another tournament that summer, having lost in the first or second round, I served as a linesman at a Bobby Riggs match.
I do believe that kids my age who are experienced with tennis make the best linesmen of all because they understand the game and can watch the flight of the ball before it lands. And, being young, kids have very good eyesight. They focus on the spot where the ball is about to land, at just the right moment.
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I never liked losing and I still don't. |
I was calling the "long line" and Riggs hit one down it. "Out!" I shouted. Riggs looked hard at me, obviously thinking it was in. At the change of courts, he came over and said "Tom!" (I didn't know he remembered my name.) "How could you call that ball out?" He said it as if I'd made the worst mistake in the world. But being from Golden Gate Park, I wasn't afraid of him and cooly replied "But Bobby, it was out!" And he let it go at that.
I don't like losing. Never have. (Not even now, in my eighties.) Every time I lose I believe I should have played better. But win or lose, I would like to think I was always known as a good competitor. I might growl because I lost, but underneath the waters ran smoothly.
Early on, I discovered that temper for a tennis player is a good thing. You should have a temper. You should be emotionally into your sport, or you won't do your best. When your temper is working, your adrenaline pumps and you have more energy and determination, and become a better competitor.
When I was young, the madder I got, the harder I worked and the more I concentrated. Everything else would be shoved out of my mind except the score, the ball, and what my opponent was likely to do. Temper is a very good tool to have working for you--but there are players who let their tempers get hot and they just come apart at the seams, It's all right to lose your temper, but don't lose your control!
Next: World War II and Wimbledon!
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As Tom Goes By |
Tom Brown |
| Want to read the whole story of life in the days of big time amateur tennis? Order Tom Brown's book, As Tom Goes By. A native San Francisco who grew up at Golden Gate Park, Tom went on to win at Wimbledon in both the men's and mixed doubles. | ||
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A native San Francisco who grew up playing at legendary Golden Gate Park, Tom Brown won the first post war Wimbledon doubles title in 1946 with Jack Kramer. He won the mixed doubles that year as well. Later, he was a singles runner up to Big Jake at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals at Forrest Hills. A successful San Francisco attorney, Tom continued his amazing competitive career at events around the world, with a longevity matched by virtually no other seniors player, including numerous number one world rankings. |
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