Remembering Tennis Ace Jack Kramer by Frank Deford

Without any second thoughts, I would say that Jack Kramer was the single most significant figure in the history of his game - tennis.

He died Saturday at the age of 88. He was a player, a champion, an innovator, a promoter, an executive, a labor leader. On top of that, the most popular tennis racket ever sold was named for him - the Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph, which virtually dominated the business, selling 30 million from 1947 until wooden rackets went out of fashion. And finally, because everything in tennis just seemed to stick to Kramer for about 40 years, he can also be credited with causing the creation of women's professional tennis. Well, sort of. More on that in a minute

Friends called him Big Jake. The "Jake" wasn't an offshoot of "Jack," but came from cards, where jacks are called "jakes.” From an early age, Kramer was a gambler; the hustler was part of him. He was born in Las Vegas in 1921. His father was a railroad man. Young Kramer certainly didn't come from privilege. He was one of that generation or two of California kids - Vines, Budge, Wills, Marble, Riggs, Schroeder, King - who came off the public courts to dominate tennis in the world. In fact, American tennis has never been the same since that well dried up.

Kramer would surely have been a champion before he won the U.S. Nationals (forerunner of the Open) in 1946 - and then Wimbledon and the Nationals again in '47 - but he lost many of his best years serving in the Pacific in the Coast Guard during World War II.

When he did return after the war, he changed the major strategy of the sport by winning with what was called "the big game" - consistent, overpowering serve and volley. Then, in those disgraceful years of "shamateurism," when players stayed amateur to compete in the major tournaments by taking money under the table, Kramer turned pro. He whipped Bobby Riggs on his debut tour, then Pancho Gonzales and Frank Sedgman. After that, in his mid-30s, with no fields left to conquer, he stopped playing, but by then he was already running the pro tour he dominated. He was tennis' major impresario for two decades.

In 1972, after tennis had finally become an honest professional game, Kramer became the first executive director of the player's union, the Association of Tennis Professionals. The following year, when the ATP had a dispute with Wimbledon, Kramer - who was beloved in England, an announcer at Wimbledon for the BBC - became the prime villain. When the ATP boycotted, Kramer lost his BBC role and became a Wimbledon outcast. The ATP, meanwhile, grew and prospered.

Kramer was, ultimately, a businessman. He hired "Gorgeous Gussy" Moran, she of the scandalous lace panties, to serve as part of a warm-up match on one of his tours, but that was more for her beauty than her strokes. Generally, Big Jake simply didn't believe that "the dames" sold at the box office nearly as well as "the kids," and when, in 1970, a tournament Kramer ran, the Pacific Southwest, only allotted $7,500 of the $50,000 purse to the women, Billie Jean King led a walk-out that led directly to the Virginia Slims Tour and then to the creation of the Women's Tennis Association.

When King played Riggs a couple years later in the Battle of the Sexes, she literally threatened to call the whole thing off at the eleventh hour unless ABC removed Big Jake from the broadcast booth. Kramer took his leave so the show could go on.

Kramer was a charming fellow, full of wonderful stories about the days when tennis was a gentleman's game on the surface and a lot of con and deceit underneath. He knew everyone who was alive in the game for half a century or more, and also where most of the bodies were buried. His first major appearance was in the 1939 Davis Cup Challenge, which the United States lost to Australia. Now, with Kramer's death, the only other significant athlete from the pre-war era who is still living is Bob Feller, the baseball pitcher.

RIP, Big Jake.

Npr.org

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Jack Kramer Dies At 88; Champion Ushered in Era of Pro Tennis

September 14, 2009 latimes.com

Kramer, who died Saturday at his home in L.A., won the Wimbledon singles title in 1947 and had victories in many other Grand Slam events.

He ran the L.A. men's pro tennis tournament for many years.

Bill Dwyre

Tennis legend Jack Kramer, considered by many the most influential person in the game in the last 60 years, died late Saturday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88. He had been diagnosed in mid-July with soft tissue sarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissues, said Bob Kramer, one of his sons.

Kramer won the prestigious Wimbledon title in 1947 and won U.S. Championships, the forerunner of today's U.S. Open, in '46 and '47. He also won seven other Grand Slam titles in doubles. His Wimbledon victory was a startling 45-minute breeze past Tom Brown, 6-1, 6-3, 6-2. It was his 1947 U.S. title that led to changes in a sport that had been, for the most part, hypocritical. Players competed for trophies and nothing else. At least that's what they said.

"The amateur game was phony," Kramer said years later. "Kids were all getting money under the table."

So when he took the court for the '47 U.S. final, Kramer had made a decision that would affect the sport forever, a decision that prompted Hall of Fame tennis journalist Bud Collins to say Sunday, "From a competitor to an administrator to a broadcaster, Jack Kramer was the most important figure in the history of the game.” Before that '47 U.S. final, Kramer had decided to turn pro. "It was simple," he said. "I needed the money."

A deal was in hand with a tennis promoter and needed only a top performance from Kramer in the tournament. However, that looked shaky when he lost the first two sets of a best-of-five final to Frankie Parker. He recalled that he looked into the stands to find the man with whom he had cut the deal, but all he could see was his bald head, because the man was sitting with his face in his hands.

Either inspired or petrified, Kramer won the next three sets, losing only four games on the way to the title and setting the stage for tennis' pro era to take off. Two months later, his pro tour, a night-to-night barnstorming of cities across the world, attracted a crowd of 15,411 to Madison Square Garden -- in the middle of a blizzard.

Soon the success of the pro tours, Kramer's the most prominent, put pressure on the tennis federations, whose tournaments were no longer offering fans all the best players. That pressure eventually led to the establishment of Open tennis in 1968, featuring prize money for all players.

Kramer, who had served in World War II as a Coast Guard officer on landing craft in the Pacific, suffered from an arthritic back and by 1954 was finished as a player. But the cause of other players remained a motivation for him, and by 1973 he had become executive director of the Assn. of Tennis Professionals, the predecessor of today's ATP World Tour.

In '73, Niki Pilic refused to play on Yugoslavia's Davis Cup team, and his suspension by the International Tennis Federation extended through the dates of Wimbledon that year. When Wimbledon honored that suspension and refused to let Pilic play there, Kramer led a player boycott, Wimbledon ended up with a less-than-quality field and Kramer had helped players gain even more control of their game.

"He was a huge figure in tennis," said Rod Laver, who came along a generation later and said he benefited greatly from Kramer's pioneering. "We all needed money and he helped a lot of players get some."

Kramer's antiestablishment stances occasionally cost him. The year after he won the Wimbledon title, he went to watch his close friend Ted Schroeder of San Diego play there. "The year before, a member of the royal family had handed me a trophy," Kramer said a few years ago. "But this time, I was a pro. They wouldn't even let me in the locker room."

Collins, who did many broadcasts with Kramer and said he was excellent -- "Never over-talked" -- remembered how Kramer was treated after the '73 Wimbledon boycott. "The BBC banned him," he said.

Born Aug. 1, 1921, in Las Vegas, Kramer lived his early childhood years there and learned about playing cards. He carried the nickname Jake -- a gambler's term for the jacks in the deck -- all his life. He often said he learned from those card games the value of playing the percentages, and he did so both on and off the tennis court.

Kramer became a star player almost from the moment he left Montebello High School in 1939 to play doubles for the U.S. Davis Cup team. He was a gangly 18-year-old with an aggressive serve-and-volley game that carried him to the top quickly. Between 1946 and 1953, he was considered the No. 1 player in the world, though in those days ranking systems were less organized and credible than today's computer-driven listings.

His business ventures were as sound as his approach to tennis -- make a big serve, putting your opponent on his heels, and follow it in for a winning volley. At the height of his tennis career, he was asked to endorse a racket. When Wilson Sporting Goods sent him the racket, he discarded his favorite Don Budge signature model and played for a while with this new Wilson Kramer. But he hated it and was struggling to beat his barnstorming opponent at the time, Bobby Riggs.

He sent it back to Wilson, but the firm wanted a racket with his name on it, so he told them to take his Budge racket and repaint the lamination. Kramer played with it and it became the most popular racket ever manufactured. Wilson eventually sold more than 30 million and finally renegotiated the original deal with Kramer that had him getting 2.5% of racket sales. "We just did a flat rate," he said. "I understood. I was making more money than the president of Wilson Sporting Goods."

Ever since his barnstorming days in Australia, Kramer had owned racehorses, and as recently as Labor Day weekend, he went to Del Mar to watch them. In his playing days, there were severe restrictions on taking money out of Australia, so Kramer took some of his purse winnings in racehorses.

"I remember as a kid going down to the docks in San Pedro," said Bob Kramer. "They'd be unloading the horses and dad said they were ours. I could never understand why I couldn't ride them."

For a while, the Kramer family owned and operated the Jack Kramer Tennis Club in Rolling Hills Estates. Players such as Tracy Austin and Pete Sampras grew up playing the game there. But Kramer eventually realized that tennis clubs were not as lucrative as golf courses. So he bought Los Serranos Country Club in the late 1950s and added an additional 18 holes to the Chino Hills public layout in 1962.

He had a long-standing relationship with the Pacific Southwest tennis tournament, which began at the L.A. Tennis Club in 1927 and has remained in the city under various names and sponsorships and at various sites. Kramer served as tournament director and tournament chairman, and from 1979-83 it was known as the Jack Kramer Open. Today, the annual summer event at the UCLA Tennis Center is run by Bob Kramer.

At this year's event, Jack Kramer saw his last live tennis match. He sat courtside in his wheelchair as Sampras played an exhibition against Marat Safin. "Dad loved the way Pete played," Bob Kramer said, "because it was a lot like he played." Sampras said Sunday, "He was a class act and always willing to help. I was happy to see him and say hi at the L.A. Tennis Open. This is truly a great loss for tennis."

Pam Shriver, one of the premier doubles players of all time, said, "This is like golf, when we lost Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen. He was somebody who transcends the sport and who helped build what we have today."

Kramer was always upbeat and positive. His friend and longtime doubles partner, Schroeder -- a practicing cynic -- once said that when Kramer was around, "The world was automatically a happier place."

Kramer and his wife, Gloria, who died in 2008, always called their five children "the five perfect sons."

Besides Bob, Kramer is survived by sons David, Michael, John, and Ron.

Bob Kramer said an announcement of a memorial service is forthcoming.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com <mailto:bill.dwyre@latimes.com>

Times staff writer Diane Pucin contributed to this report.

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Tennis great Jack Kramer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jack Kramer, a tennis champion in the 1940s and '50s and a promoter of the sport for more 60 years, died at his home in Los Angeles, his family said. He was 88.

Kramer died late Saturday from a soft tissue cancer that was diagnosed in July, according to his son Bob Kramer. "We'd hoped he could hang on for a few more months," Bob Kramer said. "At the end, he didn't want to go to the hospital, so the family gathered and he died at home."

Kramer won the Wimbledon men's singles title in 1947 and the men's U.S. Championships, the forerunner of the U.S. Open, in 1946 and '47. He also won seven other Grand Slam titles in doubles, all at Wimbledon or the U.S. Championships. Kramer was the No. 1 player in the world for much of the late 1940s.

He was among the most successful of the touring pros who played in arenas across the country in the early 1950s. After his retirement in 1954, due to an arthritic back, Kramer worked as a tireless promoter of the sport. He was among those who led the way for a more unified, open tennis tour.

Kramer was a founder of the Association of Tennis Professionals and served as its first executive director. In 1973, he led ATP's principled boycott of Wimbledon, which helped players gain more control of their own careers from national tennis associations.

Later he served on the Men's International professional Tennis Council, the worldwide governing board.

Since the 1950s, Kramer was heavily involved in the Los Angeles Tennis Open, serving as tournament chair, director and even referee in matches. For three years during the 1980s, the tournament was called the Jack Kramer Open.

In the days before he died, Bob Kramer said his father had been following the U.S. Open in New York.

"He was a big admirer of Roger Federer, who played with a single-handed backhand, like himself, and played a more classic game," Bob Kramer said. "Over the years, he was a big fan of Pete Sampras, and he thought Marat Safin was one of the most-underrated players."

The last tennis match he saw in person was on July 27, when he went to UCLA for the tournament that once bore his name. Kramer owned more than 100 race horses over the years and made two trips to Del Mar race track this season to watch his horses run.

Kramer's wife, Gloria, died in 2008. Along with Bob, he is survived by four other sons, David, John, Michael, and Ron, and by nine grandchildren.

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TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

Jack Kramer

Jack Kramer, who died on September 12 aged 88, won the Wimbledon men's singles title in 1947 before going on to achieve almost equal prominence in the game as a promoter, administrator and television commentator.

The player hailed as a hero when he won the title in 1947 later became a villain in the eyes of much of the British public and the media when he was a leader of the boycott which led to more than 70 male tennis players walking out on the Championships after the draw had already been made for the 1973 tournament.

Although it led to a breach which was never fully repaired, in later years, he returned to Wimbledon as a visitor; and there is no doubt that Kramer was an important figure in the emergence of the game of professional tennis that we know today.

The son of a railway worker, John Albert ("Jack") Kramer was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 1 1921, but the family soon moved to the Los Angeles area, where Jack became addicted to lawn tennis. As he grew physically so too did the impact of his tennis, and in 1939, when he was chosen to partner Joe Hunt in the United States team against Australia, he became the youngest player to compete in the Davis Cup final - a record which stood for 29 years before it was lowered to 17 by Australia's John Alexander.

During the Second World War, which wiped out any form of major international competition, Kramer served in the US Coast Guard and won the US National Doubles three times (he was to win it again in 1947) plus a host of other domestic doubles and mixed doubles titles; on five occasions in that period he was ranked in the top 10 in the United States.

It was immediately after the war, however, that Kramer first came to prominence in both singles and doubles. His ground strokes were powerful, and he displayed an eagerness to get to the net quickly behind his serve, especially on grass and cement courts.

The style of play by this dashing, handsome right-hander would certainly have suited the game just as well today, and there are many who believe that but for a blistered hand he would probably have won Wimbledon in 1946.

In the first three rounds of the tournament he dropped only six games. Then he became afflicted with the blisters - particularly painful for someone with his large grip wielding a 16 oz racket - and he was clearly impeded as he was beaten by the big left-handed serving of Jaroslav Drobny, then competing as a Czechoslovak.

Yet it was still an epic contest between two of the finest players of their day, with Drobny eventually beating Kramer, the second seed, 2-6, 17-15, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 - a total of 67 games. Kramer then returned to America, where he underlined his ability once more by winning the US National Championship (now the US Open) for the loss of only one set.

Three months later he and Ted Schroeder, who was to win Wimbledon in 1949, led the United States' renewed campaign for the Davis Cup. Between them they completely overpowered the best Australia had to offer in the forms of Adrian Quist and Dinny Pails in the singles, and Quist with John Bromwich in the doubles, to bring the trophy back from Melbourne.

By the time Wimbledon came around again in 1947, Kramer was overwhelmingly the favourite, and round by round he proceeded to demonstrate why. Although he lost one set to Pails in the semi-finals, he dropped only two games in the other three sets.

In the final, against his fellow-American Tom Brown, he triumphed 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 in a mere 48 minutes. He had lost only 37 games in seven matches. He was also the first man to take the singles' title wearing shorts rather than the traditional white flannels.

It was no surprise when, later that day, Kramer turned professional. There had been suggestions that he would do so in 1946, had he won Wimbledon that year. Before announcing the decision, however, he and Schroeder made sure of retaining the Davis Cup, and Kramer retained the US National Singles title - though not without a scare. His professional contract depended upon him still being the American champion, and he lost the first two sets of the final against Frankie Parker before turning the match round 4-6, 2-6, 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.

Having turned professional, Kramer did not take long to take the spotlight away from Bobby Riggs. Their whistle-stop tour of the United States opened in New York on a December evening when a blizzard had brought much of the city to a standstill, but more than 15,000 spectators struggled to Madison Square Garden. Riggs won that contest, but Kramer won the tour 69-20 and a year later he finished 96-27 ahead against Pancho Gonzales when Riggs had stopped playing to become the tour's promoter.

In 1952, when an arthritic back was beginning to cause him difficulties, Kramer took over as promoter of the professional tour, a role he sustained for more than a decade. Meanwhile, he was farsighted enough to realise that for the game to prosper in the long term Open tennis would have to be accepted; and it was Kramer who devised the format on which much of the men's tour today is based.

Kramer designed what was called the Grand Prix - a series of major men's tournaments leading to a Masters' Championships for the leading eight players in the points table at the end of the year. In 1972, at the request of several American players, he was also instrumental in forming the Association of Tennis Professionals, which swiftly led him into a less happy stage of his career.

Kramer, who by now was also firmly established as the major colour commentator for BBC Television at Wimbledon, alongside Dan Maskell, was the executive director of the ATP; so he was in the thick of the argument when the International Tennis Federation decided to ban Niki Pilic from Wimbledon for allegedly refusing to play for Yugoslavia in the Davis Cup after supposedly having agreed to do so. There were calls for a boycott, leading to frantic meetings as the players flexed their new-found "industrial" muscle. Headlines calling on Kramer to resign appeared in some newspapers. In an editorial, the London Evening Standard fulminated: "Now we have seen the unacceptable face of sport - the face of Jack Kramer. It is time to go home, Mr. Kramer. Leave us to enjoy the game the way we like it. Clean."

When the seven members of the ATP Board met four days before Wimbledon was due to begin, needing a majority to lift the boycott, there was stalemate. The voting was 3-3. Cliff Drysdale, the president, abstained. Kramer was one of three - all Americans - who voted for the boycott to stay in place.

Inevitably, he was forced to stand down as a BBC commentator. On a personal level, the affair ended his lifelong friendship with Maskell, a man who never bore a grudge against anyone but was unable to come to terms with what he saw as Kramer's bid to sabotage Wimbledon.

Kramer remained on the ATP Board until 1975 and for two years from 1980 was a member of the Men's Professional Tennis Council, while continuing his television work, mainly in North America. In later years he spent more time watching from the sidelines, rather than being directly involved, and enjoyed playing golf on the many courses in California, two of which he owned.

It is said that he played his last game of tennis 15 years ago when - following a hip replacement - he was beaten by one of his grandchildren.

Jack Kramer's wife, Gloria, died in 2008. He is survived by five sons.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/6190140/Jack-Kramer.html