Jack Kramer, Champion, Promoter and Powerful Force in Tennis, Is Dead
Rigth picture: (Circa 1952)
Rigth picture: (Circa 1952)
Jack Kramer during a trip to Havana, Cuba leading a menage of top tennis professionals, including Frank Segman, Pancho Gonzalez and Pancho Segura. Our group of young promissing players were given a "tennis clinic" by the best players in the world.
PLP is the first boy to the left, sadly in our group some have passed away, my long time doubles partner Adolfito Mi~noso and Raulito Karman. I am sure that up in heaven, Jack Kramer will ask them both to play a good game of doubles.
RIP my departed friends from those wonderful times in our youth, playing good hard tennis back home.
PLP
Jack Kramer, the Wimbledon and two-time United States singles champion whose promotion of the professional tennis tour in the 1950s led the way toward the sport’s Open era, died Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 88.
Kramer in 2003 with two of his signature Wilson rackets. His rackets sold millions.
The cause was cancer, his son Robert said.
Known for his “big game,” a serve-and-volley attack complemented by a stinging forehand that presaged the modern attacking style, Kramer emerged as a brilliant amateur player in the years after World War II.
He won the 1946 and 1947 men’s singles titles at the United States Nationals at Forest Hills, Queens, the forerunner to the United States Open, and he captured the Wimbledon singles title in 1947. He won the United States men’s doubles championship four times and the mixed doubles once. He won the Wimbledon men’s doubles twice, and he played on Davis Cup teams that defeated Australia in 1946 and ’47.
Kramer showcased the professional game as a player and a promoter before the arrival of the Open era in 1968, when pros were finally allowed to compete for prize money in tournaments previously open only to amateurs.
“We would not have the U.S. Open as we know it today if Kramer hadn’t set the groundwork for it,” Gordon Smith, the United States Tennis Association’s executive director, said Sunday in a statement as the Open neared its conclusion.
Kramer turned pro with a memorable match against Bobby Riggs, the defending pro champion, at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 26, 1947, before a crowd of 15,114 that trudged through a 26-inch blizzard. Kramer lost to Riggs in four sets but succeeded him as champion by decisively beating him in a series of one-night events across the country in 1948. He retained his championship by defeating Pancho Gonzalez, Pancho Segura and Frank Sedgman, respectively, on tours in the three seasons after that.
“Jack set me a great example,” Gonzalez once said. “He showed me the value of the killer instinct, and I learned to develop mine. He drove me to improve my game.”
Ted Schroeder, Kramer’s partner for two United States doubles championships, told The Associated Press in 2002: “He put more continuing pressure on an opponent than any other player I ever saw or played against. That goes all the way back to Bill Tilden.”
Kramer took over as promoter of the pro tour in 1952 and expanded it into an international operation, the players taking a portable court with them. In a 12-day period in 1957, Kramer’s entourage made 11 appearances in eight cities, from South Africa to the Philippines.
Kramer offered lucrative contracts to stars like Gonzalez and Segura and the Australians Sedgman, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall in raids that incurred the wrath of officials of amateur tennis. Kramer, in turn, viewed those who ruled the amateur game as more concerned with maintaining their power than enhancing the sport and felt they were corrupted by undercover payments to players.
Kramer competed on his pro tour into the 1950s, when injuries forced his retirement, but he continued to run it until 1962. He was named to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1968, and a panel of tennis experts voted him as the fifth-best player ever in 1969.
After the arrival of Open-era tennis, a concept he had long advocated, Kramer devised the men’s Grand Prix, which made its debut in 1970. It endured for two decades as a series of tournaments leading to the Masters Championship and a bonus pool of earnings for a host of leading players.
In 1972, Kramer helped found the Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s players union, and he became its first executive director. The organization’s boycott of Wimbledon in 1973 over issues of player independence spurred the movement that freed players from the control of national tennis associations.
Wilson Sporting Goods sold millions of Jack Kramer-autographed wooden rackets, with Kramer receiving a percentage of the sales revenue. He was a longtime commentator for American network broadcasts and for the BBC at Grand Slam events.
John Albert Kramer was born Aug. 1, 1921, in Las Vegas, the son of a brakeman for the Union Pacific Railroad. He learned to play tennis in the Los Angeles area as a teenager when his family moved there. His idol was Ellsworth Vines, a former United States Nationals and Wimbledon champion, whom he played against in workouts.
“I copied Ellsworth Vines’s forehand,” Kramer told Tennis magazine in 1973. “He had a classic stroke, and it really caught my fancy. It was a great, big circular-motion thing.”
“Strategically, though, I adopted a different approach to the forehand,” Kramer said. “I started shooting for one big forehand down the line and then following it in. We found that if you hit one fairly good shot deep and went to the net, the other fellow was going to have to make a placement or lose the point. That produced what I call the power game.”
Kramer attended the University of Southern California and Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., but his student days were brief. As he told The Saturday Evening Post in 1960, “I was so busy flying around the country picking up money in amateur tournaments that I didn’t have time to study.”
Tall and handsome, Kramer was a glamorous, youthful figure on the tennis scene when he teamed with Schroeder to win the United States Nationals doubles title in 1940. Both were only 19, the youngest pair to win the event, and they captured it again in 1941.
After service as a Coast Guard officer in World War II, Kramer defeated Tom Brown, a fellow Californian, for the 1946 United States Nationals singles title, then beat him again in the 1947 Wimbledon final, a 45-minute match in which he lost only six games. Kramer defeated Frank Parker in the 1947 Nationals singles final after losing the first two sets.
By the mid-1950s, Kramer had become a hugely influential figure as promoter of the pro tour, plucking the top amateurs for his entourage.
“In no other sport has one man wielded anything comparable to the complete power that Kramer came to have in professional tennis,” Herbert Warren Wind wrote in The New Yorker in 1962.
Kramer in 2003 with two of his signature Wilson rackets. His rackets sold millions.
The cause was cancer, his son Robert said.
Known for his “big game,” a serve-and-volley attack complemented by a stinging forehand that presaged the modern attacking style, Kramer emerged as a brilliant amateur player in the years after World War II.
He won the 1946 and 1947 men’s singles titles at the United States Nationals at Forest Hills, Queens, the forerunner to the United States Open, and he captured the Wimbledon singles title in 1947. He won the United States men’s doubles championship four times and the mixed doubles once. He won the Wimbledon men’s doubles twice, and he played on Davis Cup teams that defeated Australia in 1946 and ’47.
Kramer showcased the professional game as a player and a promoter before the arrival of the Open era in 1968, when pros were finally allowed to compete for prize money in tournaments previously open only to amateurs.
“We would not have the U.S. Open as we know it today if Kramer hadn’t set the groundwork for it,” Gordon Smith, the United States Tennis Association’s executive director, said Sunday in a statement as the Open neared its conclusion.
Kramer turned pro with a memorable match against Bobby Riggs, the defending pro champion, at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 26, 1947, before a crowd of 15,114 that trudged through a 26-inch blizzard. Kramer lost to Riggs in four sets but succeeded him as champion by decisively beating him in a series of one-night events across the country in 1948. He retained his championship by defeating Pancho Gonzalez, Pancho Segura and Frank Sedgman, respectively, on tours in the three seasons after that.
“Jack set me a great example,” Gonzalez once said. “He showed me the value of the killer instinct, and I learned to develop mine. He drove me to improve my game.”
Ted Schroeder, Kramer’s partner for two United States doubles championships, told The Associated Press in 2002: “He put more continuing pressure on an opponent than any other player I ever saw or played against. That goes all the way back to Bill Tilden.”
Kramer took over as promoter of the pro tour in 1952 and expanded it into an international operation, the players taking a portable court with them. In a 12-day period in 1957, Kramer’s entourage made 11 appearances in eight cities, from South Africa to the Philippines.
Kramer offered lucrative contracts to stars like Gonzalez and Segura and the Australians Sedgman, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall in raids that incurred the wrath of officials of amateur tennis. Kramer, in turn, viewed those who ruled the amateur game as more concerned with maintaining their power than enhancing the sport and felt they were corrupted by undercover payments to players.
Kramer competed on his pro tour into the 1950s, when injuries forced his retirement, but he continued to run it until 1962. He was named to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1968, and a panel of tennis experts voted him as the fifth-best player ever in 1969.
After the arrival of Open-era tennis, a concept he had long advocated, Kramer devised the men’s Grand Prix, which made its debut in 1970. It endured for two decades as a series of tournaments leading to the Masters Championship and a bonus pool of earnings for a host of leading players.
In 1972, Kramer helped found the Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s players union, and he became its first executive director. The organization’s boycott of Wimbledon in 1973 over issues of player independence spurred the movement that freed players from the control of national tennis associations.
Wilson Sporting Goods sold millions of Jack Kramer-autographed wooden rackets, with Kramer receiving a percentage of the sales revenue. He was a longtime commentator for American network broadcasts and for the BBC at Grand Slam events.
John Albert Kramer was born Aug. 1, 1921, in Las Vegas, the son of a brakeman for the Union Pacific Railroad. He learned to play tennis in the Los Angeles area as a teenager when his family moved there. His idol was Ellsworth Vines, a former United States Nationals and Wimbledon champion, whom he played against in workouts.
“I copied Ellsworth Vines’s forehand,” Kramer told Tennis magazine in 1973. “He had a classic stroke, and it really caught my fancy. It was a great, big circular-motion thing.”
“Strategically, though, I adopted a different approach to the forehand,” Kramer said. “I started shooting for one big forehand down the line and then following it in. We found that if you hit one fairly good shot deep and went to the net, the other fellow was going to have to make a placement or lose the point. That produced what I call the power game.”
Kramer attended the University of Southern California and Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., but his student days were brief. As he told The Saturday Evening Post in 1960, “I was so busy flying around the country picking up money in amateur tournaments that I didn’t have time to study.”
Tall and handsome, Kramer was a glamorous, youthful figure on the tennis scene when he teamed with Schroeder to win the United States Nationals doubles title in 1940. Both were only 19, the youngest pair to win the event, and they captured it again in 1941.
After service as a Coast Guard officer in World War II, Kramer defeated Tom Brown, a fellow Californian, for the 1946 United States Nationals singles title, then beat him again in the 1947 Wimbledon final, a 45-minute match in which he lost only six games. Kramer defeated Frank Parker in the 1947 Nationals singles final after losing the first two sets.
By the mid-1950s, Kramer had become a hugely influential figure as promoter of the pro tour, plucking the top amateurs for his entourage.
“In no other sport has one man wielded anything comparable to the complete power that Kramer came to have in professional tennis,” Herbert Warren Wind wrote in The New Yorker in 1962.
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