Stan Smith...on the serve

[gzhpcu]

I went go high school in L.A. wth the Lutz brothers at St. John Vianney. Thanks to them, the school won the Camino Real championships. Bob Lutz became Stan's doubles partner. Though I was already playing tennis, I didn't try to make the team. I was certainly not in their league....

[gzhpcu]

Stan....

[don_budge]

Doubles...?

Any video clips of them playing the lost art of doubles, Phil?

Great pics btw! Love the white izod shirts!

[gzhpcu]

Unfortunately no.... but I did find this....
http://www.ina.fr/video/CAF95051528/...-smith.fr.html

[bottle]

Pretty impressive all the way around-- the pictures, the clip, Steve's call, Stan Smith's return of the call. Now if Steve can just get a similar return of call from Robin Soderling's father. The phone rate can't be that high for Sweden to Sweden!

[tennis_chiro]

real class

I just got off the phone with Stan, tennis_chiro. It turns out we were members of the same fraternity in college...good old Beta Theta Pi. What a nice guy...soft spoken and really down to earth. He really floored me in this respect...plus the fact that he called me back in the first place. Here I am in Sweden, out in the woods, watching the French Open on a Monday morning and my wife called me to tell me that someone was on the phone for me. I answered and there was this extremely nice, quiet voice saying, “Hi "don_budge", this is Stan Smith calling.” I was speechless...for a moment.

You were dead right, Don...he would not come out and say that he would be number one in the world in todays game but he certainly made it clear he did not feel he would fall out of the top ten. I believe that you are dead wrong about his level of athleticism, though. Rafter used a Prince racquet...it only made Rafter "appear" to be a much better athlete...not that he wasn't a great athlete either. This guy, Stan Smith that is, dominated tennis in an era when the level of play was extremely high. Kramer ranked him in the top twenty of all time. So much for the discussion of him breaking into the top hundred today. Some of this athleticism you refer to may be more attributed to “other” factors other than modern training and equipment.

We discussed the racquets and string issues and the change in playing styles. We talked a little bit about Laver, Borg, Nastase and the Australians. I mentioned to him the only time that I saw him play in person was in the 1984 US Open against John Newcombe...whom he defeated in three sets in the veteran singles. He is maybe the most modest man I have ever spoken too...just like Mr. Budge. He spoke so quietly...he chuckled as I sort of tried to provoke him to say he would of been every bit as competitive for the top spot in tennis as he was back then. He thought it was very cool that I posted his video on TennisPlayer.

At the end of our conversation he said something very similar to what you wrote...he said "it's a question we will never know the answer to." He is a true classic, in the traditional sense of the word.

I'm not the least bit surprised he would demonstrate that much class and courtesy.
don

PS We need to start a forum where we get old-timers (even new-timers) to be on line at an appointed time for interviews and questions that bloggers like us could participate in. I think Gene Malin does something like that with on-line radio. I have lost the link. Some appointed time each week when we get someone to be available to field questions. There's probably a lot like that out there already and I don't know about it, but I think there definitely would be an audience.

[chuck62]

Stan ranks right up there

Don B,

A nice bit of journalism. Surely Stan with the modern equipment would be able to compete very well today. He had size, speed, a superior strategy, and could consistently hit the sweet spot with those little wooden racquets. Case in point, there is one bridge players i.e. a guy with an old school game playing in a more modern era who was able to compete well and still does: "Stefan Edberg edged Marat Safin 7-6(5), 2-6, 10-8 (Champions Tie-Breaker) Sunday to win the $120,000 The Residences at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman Legends Championships". This proves that these serve and volley guys would have done very well in today's game. Its not that the attacking game wouldn't work its just that today's top players (other than Federer) have never tried it.

[gzhpcu]

Stan was always the gentleman. Anybody remember the famous Davis cup tie match in Romania which Stan won against Tiriac, the vampire from Transylvania? With the linesmen giving bad calls against Stan, who, however kept his cool and won?

Here is a writeup: http://www.americatoday.com/sports/tennis/

In 1972, the United States again played Romania in a Davis Cup final, this time in Bucharest. It was one of the most controversial Davis Cup ties of all time. Tiriac was determined to win the coveted Cup by any means, fair or foul. The matches were played on the American’s worst surface, a slow clay court, before a partisan crowd of screaming Romanians and corrupt line judges. Arthur Ashe remarked that the “cheating by local officials reached an abysmal low.”

[don_budge]

One more thing...

I just remembered one more thing from my conversation with Stan. I asked him how he thought the players of today would fare using the equipment of yesterday.

His comment was..."they would have to be clean strikers of the ball." I wonder how clean they would be striking it with 70 square inches of wood instead of the 90 plus of graphite they are used to nowadays.

Just a thought.