Jack Kramer

Tennis Player

• Born: August 1, 1921
• Birthplace: Las Vegas, Nevada
• Died: September 12, 2009
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Sport: Tennis

Early Life

The son of a Union Pacific railroad engineer, John Albert Kramer was born on August 1, 1921, in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a child, Jack actively played many sports—baseball, football, and basketball. He did not, however, play tennis. In fact, he thought he might make a career in Major League Baseball.

A football injury caused Jack to eventually take up tennis. One afternoon, Jack cracked his ribs and broke his nose in a scrimmage. Jack’s parents were distressed and sought to persuade him to take up a safer sport. Although Jack was convinced that tennis was not a strong man’s game, he eventually tried the sport when he was fourteen.

By then, his parents had moved to San Bernardino, California, so Jack joined the Southern California Tennis Association’s junior development program. He trained under director Perry Jones, a man who was influential in the development of many tennis champions. Every day, Jack took a ninety-minute streetcar ride to Beverly Hills for a tennis lesson with Jones. There, he met an automotive engineer and tennis enthusiast named Clifton Roche, who also proved to be instrumental in the boy’s career.

The Road to Excellence

For years, Roche had been devising a geometrical theory of tennis. From him, Jack learned a theory of angles that increased his chances of gaining and holding superior court position. This theory consisted of the mathematical soundness of hitting the ball at certain angles. As a result, placement soon won out over power in Jack’s game. For example, by placing the ball into the far corner he could swing an opponent wide off the court, shortening the angle of return. Later known as “percentage tennis,” this theory of play included the tactics of hitting every forehand approach shot down the line, serving at three-quarter speed to the backhand, and coasting on the opponent’s delivery until the opportunity came for the break. Jack’s use of angles made him nearly unbeatable.

Jack’s tennis game made such swift progress during his early teenage years that by 1935, when he was fourteen, he won the national boys’ singles title. He won the national interscholastic championship when he was seventeen. Later that same year, Jack tried for the U.S. National Championship men’s title at Forest Hills, in Queens, New York. However, the night before he played, he ate some hot, spicy food that upset his stomach and interfered with the next day’s performance. Nevertheless, he played well enough to be invited to try out for the 1939 U.S. Davis Cup team.

The Emerging Champion

By then, Jack was number fifteen in the national rankings. He had earned a reputation for playing a nerveless game of controlled aggression. His big serve, combined with his big volley, became known as the “big game.” That year, he was chosen as a Davis Cup player against Australia. At seventeen years of age, he was then the youngest ever to play in the renowned event.

Jack played tennis for three more years before joining the Coast Guard in 1942. During that time, he won twelve doubles championships in fifteen tournaments, toured South America, and won the U.S. National Championship doubles at home. Before entering the service, the energetic young man won ten straight singles crowns and nearly became America’s best tennis player. Just before the nationals, however, he succumbed to appendicitis and missed the chance to win.

World War II interrupted Jack’s tennis career for two years. Then, barely out of uniform, Jack was so impatient to get back to the game that, at Wimbledon, he wrecked an uncalloused hand on new tennis rackets and lost his match. Characteristically, he turned such a defeat to an advantage, remarking later that whenever he was in a difficult situation, he simply recalled the pain and frustration he had felt at the time and recognized that things were not as bad as they had been at the Wimbledon defeat. After Wimbledon, however, Jack went on to win nearly everything: the U.S. National Championship singles at Forest Hills twice, the U.S. doubles four times, the Wimbledon doubles twice, and the Davis Cup.

Continuing the Story

With no serious challenges left to beat, Jack decided to turn professional. By then, he had achieved everything he could as an amateur. He was also tired of eking out a living relying on his job with a meat-packing company for a meager $60 a week. So Jack made the big switch to the pros, where he continued to dominate the tennis tournaments of his time—not just as the star attraction but in a new role as well: as promoter.

In this new guise, Jack found a unique way to hold the public’s interest—by breaking up championship Davis Cup teams to form his own tour of handpicked opponents. He achieved this by simply offering the champions a guaranteed minimum and a percentage of total receipts—an offer no one could refuse. Eventually, he built up a team of superb young pros and began to tour with all of them in a kind of round-robin tournament. Thus, Jack originated a different type of professional tour.

Jack dabbled in other enterprises as well. He bought real estate, stocks, racehorses, and an oil well. His best-known ventures were his sporting goods and sportswear businesses. People from coast to coast wore sports shirts that carried his name and logo. Jack’s income soared to more than $200,000 a year.

Eventually, Jack left the promotion tour to an association of the players, as he felt his presence might lessen the harmony between the pros and amateurs. He became a tennis commentator on the television networks. He then turned his attention to speaking out against the problems of amateur tennis and appealed for open tournaments. He helped broaden the professional base with these open tournaments. When open tennis was finally introduced in 1968, he had done more than anyone to popularize it.

Summary

Jack Kramer’s records include only two U.S. and one Wimbledon singles titles. Nevertheless, he ranks as one of tennis’s all-time stars. As a player, Jack revolutionized tennis. He popularized the terms “big game,” “attack,” and “percentage tennis.” His theory of modern tennis changed the face of the game forever. When he switched from player to promoter, he helped the game evolve to a whole new dimension.

Bibliography

Collins, Bud. Total Tennis: The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia. Toronto: Sport Media, 2003.

Kramer, Jack, and Frank Deford. The Game: My Forty Years in Tennis. London: Deutsch, 1981.

Parsons, John. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Tennis: The Definitive Illustrated Guide to World Tennis. London: Carlton, 2006.

Phillips, Caryl. The Right Set: A Tennis Anthology. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.