Jack Kramer

Jack Kramer

Jack Kramer (L) with Namatjira and Frank Sedgman (R)
Full name	John Albert Kramer
Nickname(s)	Jake
Country	United States of America
Residence	{{{residence}}}
Date of birth	August 1, 1921(1921-08-01)
Place of birth	Las Vegas, Nevada
Date of death	September 12, 2009 (aged 88)
Place of death	Bel Air, Calif.
College	Rollins College
Retired	1954
Plays	Right-handed; one-handed backhand

John Albert Kramer (August 1, 1921 - September 12, 2009) was an American tennis player of the 1940s. A World Number 1 player for a number of years, he is a possible candidate for the title of the greatest tennis player of all time. He was also, for many years, the leading promoter of the professional tennis tours and a relentless advocate for the establishment of Open Tennis between amateur and professional players. When the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was founded in 1972, he was the first Executive Director, and in that role was the leader of an ATP boycott of Wimbledon in 1973. Tall and slim, he was the first world-class player to play a consistent serve-and-volley game, in which he came to the net behind all of his serves, including the second serve. He was particularly known for his powerful serve and forehand, as well as his ability to play "percentage tennis", which he learned from Cliff Roche at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, to maximize his efforts on certain points and in certain games during the course of a match that increased his chances of winning.

Personal life

Kramer was the son of a blue-collar railroad worker for the Union Pacific railroad. As a boy he was a fine all-round athlete, particularly in basketball and tennis. When he was 13, the family moved to San Bernardino, California, and after seeing Ellsworth Vines, then the world's best player, play a match Kramer decided to concentrate on tennis. Later in his life he married Gloria and they had five sons: Bob, David, John, Michael, and Ron. They lived in Bel Air, California. He invested in the Professional Tennis Tour, two golf courses, and race horses. Starting in 1948, the Jack Kramer Autograph tennis racket from Wilson Sporting Goods became the most popular selling racket of all time, over 35 years.

Career

Within a year he was playing junior tournaments and taking lessons from legendary teaching professional, Dick Skeen. Because of his obvious ability and his family's lack of money, he came under the guidance of Perry T. Jones. at the Los Angeles Tennis Club (LATC). Jones was the President and the Southern California Tennis Association. Kramer traveled many hours each day from his home in Montebello, California, to play tennis at the LATC and the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. He played against such great players as Ellsworth Vines and Bill Tilden. He was the National Boys' Champion in 1936, and the winner of the 1938 National Juniors Interscholastics. He competed occasionally in men's tournaments on grass courts in the East. He won matches against nationally ranked men such as Elwood Cooke. He also played with high school teammate, George Richards, who later was nationally ranked.

During World War II, Kramer served in the United States Coast Guard, but continued to win prizes in the United States, since the war had effectively put an end to international tennis^[1]. In his 1979 autobiography, The Game: My 40 Years in Tennis, Kramer calls Helen Wills Moody the best women's tennis player that he ever saw. He wrote that when he was "the national boys' champion, fifteen years old," he played a match against her. "She was the champion of the world at the time -- she won seven Forest Hills and eight Wimbledons.... I beat her, but Helen played a good game."

This is how he ranked the best possessors of tennis shots ever in The Game (as of 1979):

• First Serve: Ellsworth Vines had the finest serve, along with Pancho Gonzales
• Second Serve: John Newcombe by far
• Backhand: Donald Budge and Ken Rosewall were the best
• Return Of Serve: Don Budge the best
• Forehand Volley: Wilmer Allison and Budge Patty.
• Backhand Volley: Close among Don Budge, Frank Sedgman, and Ken Rosewall, with Sedgman having the edge
• Overhead: Ted Schroeder, the best
• Lob: Bobby Riggs, of course.
• Half-Volley: Pancho Gonzales and Ken Rosewall
• Forehand: Pancho Segura and Ellsworth Vines

Kramer's serve and forehand were equal to the best in the game, but he would not talk about his own strokes.

Kramer attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and he played on the tennis team there for at least the 1941 and 1942 seasons.

Kramer retired from competitive tennis permanently in 1954 due to arthritic back problems. He worked for the BBC as a commentator on the Wimbledon Championships during the 1960s, a role in which he was very popular because of his intimate off-court knowledge of most of the players. However, he was dropped by the BBC in 1973^[2] because of his role in the boycott of the championships by professional players.

Death

Jack Kramer died from a soft tissue cancer on September 12, 2009 at his home in Bel Air, California.^[3]

Awards and honors

Kramer was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1968. The Los Angeles Tennis Open was known for several years during the 1980s as the "Jack Kramer Open" -- the only World Tennis Tour event to be named for a player.

Grand Slam record

Wimbledon

• Singles champion: 1947
• Men's Doubles champion: 1946, 1947

U.S. Championships

• Singles champion: 1946, 1947
• Singles runner-up: 1943
• Men's Doubles champion: 1940, 1941, 1943, 1947
• Mixed Doubles champion: 1941
• Mixed Doubles runner-up: 1940

Davis Cup record

• Champion: 1946, 1947
• Runner-up: 1939

Grand Slam singles finals: 4 (3 titles, 1 runner-up)

Outcome	Year	Championship	Surface	Opponent in the final	Score in the final
Runner-up	1943	U.S. Championships (1)	Grass	Joseph Hunt	6–3, 6–8, 10–8, 6–0
Winner	1946	U.S. Championships (2)	Grass	Tom Brown	9–7, 6–3, 6–0
Winner	1947	Wimbledon	Grass	Tom Brown	6–1, 6–3, 6–2
Winner	1947	U.S. Championships (3)	Grass	Frank Parker	4–6, 2–6, 6–1, 6–0, 6–3

Sources

Tennis portal

• The Game, My 40 Years in Tennis (1979), Jack Kramer with Frank Deford (ISBN 0-399-12336-9)

External links

• Tennis great Jack Kramer dies at 88
• Tennis Hall of Fame profile
• Excerpts from The Game
• Jack Kramer - Daily Telegraph obituary
• Michael Gray, Jack Kramer: Wimbledon and US tennis champion - and a promoter with a decisive influence on the modern game, The Guardian, 13 September 2009
• Steve Flink, Jack Kramer: Tennis player who won Wimbledon and went on to lead the men's game into the professional era, The Independent, 15 September 2009