My Story: A Champion’s Memoirs

By William T. Tilden

William T. Tilden II was an American tennis player and is often considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Tilden was the World No. 1 player for six years from 1920 through 1925. He won 15 Major singles titles including ten Grand Slam events, one World Hard Court Championships and four Pro Slam tournaments. He was the first American to win Wimbledon in 1920.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839747076

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MY STORY

A CHAMPION’S MEMOIRS

BY

WILLIAM T. TILDEN, 2ND

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

Foreword 7

Book One—ALL COURT 8

1. Just Me 8

Fallen Arches 10

2. Early Influences 13

The Comet 13

3. Little Bill 18

Trophy Tussle 21

4. Dick and Vinnie 23

5. The Foreign Stars 28

Itchy and Zenzo 30

6. End of an Era 36

Dead Faints 37

Doubles Trouble 39

7. Enter the French 45

My Nemesis 51

Bantering Basque 53

8 Amateur Finale 58

Screen Struck 63

9. I Turn Pro 66

Recent Pros 70

10. The Current Crop 75

Today’s Amateurs 79

11. The Ladies 83

Feudin’ and Fightin’ 86

Alice Marble 96

12. Colleges and Kids 100

About Teaching 102

13. Strategy and Ethics 106

Courting Victory 108

Umpiring 109

Fair Play 111

14. Pro-Amateur 115

Raising a Racket 118

Gravy Train 119

Gold Rush 124

15. The Tennis Cycle 127

The Changing Scene 128

Pro Prophecies 130

The Cycle 131

Book Two—LOVE SET 134

16. Princes and Presidents 134

Dignitaries 140

17. Songbirds 142

Divers Divas 146

Tenors and Baritones 151

18. Hollywood Friends 155

Coaching the Stars 159

19. Stage and Sport 165

Sports Heroes 167

20. I Take Down My Hair 170

Profile 173

21. This One’s on Me 178

22. Last Chapter 184

The Road Back 186

APPENDIX 189

I Select 189

EDITOR’S NOTE 193

PHOTOGRAPHS 195

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 213

DEDICATION

TO

WILLIAM M. JOHNSTON

(Little Bill)

IN EVERLASTING

ADMIRATION

Foreword

LIFE is like a spring day. Clouds and sunshine alternately fill the restless skies, one succeeding the other with disconcerting abruptness. Sometimes it seems as if there will be no break in either, but the end of both always comes. Just now I am under cloud, but I know that somewhere ahead shines the sun. Fighting toward it, already I glimpse a beam tinting the gloom and I take hope. For all through my career I have loved the brightness, and I long for it again.

One definite philosophy has guided me in my tennis career, and even amid present trials I cling to it. My conviction is that the champion of today owes much to the champion of yesterday, and even more to the champion of tomorrow.

Only youth can keep lit the torch of greatness. And so I have tried to help as many young players as possible along the road to success. I am glad to say that many fine men and women of today once were numbered among the kids I taught and worked with, and many of them are my good friends still.

Youth always provided the inspiration and incentive that kept me in the game. Each rising star, from the time of Helen Wills, Helen Jacobs and Vincent Richards as kids to the newer day of my most recent protégés Noel Brown, Gertrude Moran and Arthur Anderson, has proved a factor in keeping my own tennis modern and progressive. Age comes only when understanding of youth passes. So long as one can keep the viewpoint of youth, so long as one can talk youth’s language, just so long can one hold age at bay. The boys and girls who have known and liked me all gave me something of their youth, and it is this which has carried me along for many years past the athlete’s usually allotted span.

That span has been full and eventful, and of it I write on the pages which follow. I have met the world’s greatest. I have also known the shame and bitterness of humiliation, but I still have faith in men and their future, even my own. I know the path ahead; I want to walk now. I only hope that the chance is given me.

WILLIAM T. TILDEN 2ND

November, 1947

Hollywood

Book One—ALL COURT

1. Just Me

I AM a tennis player. I make this bold statement in the face of determined and violent opinion to the contrary that began in 1899 with my brother Herbert, who was thirteen at the time and I six, and has continued right down to date. I have remained on the affirmative side of the argument during the entire period, although there have been occasions when grave doubts shook me. In fact, between the ages of twelve and twenty I gave up the game, on the average, about once a week. As for the negative side, it has been vociferously and violently stated by the press and officials of the United States Lawn Tennis Association during the entire period—and for short but bitter moments, off and on, by various individuals, mostly players I had just beaten.

Even yet, once in a while, I beat somebody and the old argument starts again. And still I reply in ringing tones: I am a tennis player!

I base this statement on length of service more than any other one thing. I think I am the only surviving fossil in the game. My stubbornness and undying love for tennis have carried me, boy, man and fossil, over 750,000 miles and to all parts of the world; and even now, at the sere and yellow age of fifty-four, I am not even discussing retiring.

Retiring! Hell, I’m not even recapped yet, only a little worn in the tread. I’d love to run out that mileage to a good round million!

It is really all my brother Herbert’s fault. He was seven years older than I and a swell little tennis shark. He owned a racket named Pim, after the great star. It weighed 15½ ounces, had a tremendous handle worthy of an axe—and I coveted it with all my six-year-old soul. One day Father gave him a new Hackett and Alexander which Herb at once took to the courts with him, leaving my adored Pim lying undefended on the bed. The chance was too good. I snitched it. Let me admit the truth. I swiped it without a qualm of conscience, and grabbing my one soiled, corroded and definitely dead tennis ball, I strode forth upon the graveled driveway of our summer home at Onteora Club in New York. Thus did I take my first step into the game that in later years was to provide me with the most exciting moments, the greatest disappointments and the strongest influences of my life, as well as bring me my most treasured possession, the friendship of many of the world’s most celebrated men and women in many fields.

Our home at Onteora was one of those houses that has the front door at the back and a long porch along the front where the view is. The driveway, large, level, and with a nice shale surface, provided an excellent court. The side of the house was a wonderful backboard for practice.

I dropped my ancient tennis ball and hit what I fondly imagined to be a perfect replica of my brother’s forehand drive. By the grace of heaven I struck the ball, slightly off center, it is true, but with fair power. Zing! The ball flew through the air. My tennis career started.

Ah! What a beautiful shot, I thought. I failed to note that with fatal accuracy the ball was speeding directly at the window of my father’s den. In fact, not only at but through the window sped said ball, scattering a wealth of shattered window pane over my father as he lay enjoying his afternoon siesta. There followed a moment of awful hush, somewhat like that which just precedes an earthquake or the breaking of a monsoon. I looked helplessly around for a way of escape, but the driveway was wide, with no visible shelter.

Junior! My father’s no monkey business voice, used only in moments of crisis, reached me through the window. Come here!

I came, he saw and he conquered. My tennis career almost ended at the start. It took me a full month and a brilliant alliance with Mother, to once more reach the driveway and the side of the house with a racket in my hand. Against that much battered wall in the next few years I learned the groundwork of what has been termed by some kind critics my stinging forehand, but which many times seemed to me better spelled with a k.

I was not a particularly nice child. Is that unusual? Probably few children between the ages of six and twelve are. I must have had fairly good manners because Mother and Father did their darndest to make a gentleman out of me; as they did, successfully, out of Herb. The result was that I grew up with a distinctly Philadelphia quality of speech and manner that earned me the reputation of being high-hat. I’m afraid this was chiefly due to the fact that Mother insisted I speak English, not one hundred per cent American slang. However, I managed to make up for that in later years by increasing my vocabulary in the directions most needed. If you doubt this—ask almost any U.S.L.T.A. umpire.

Just to set the record straight, let me state plainly that upon February 10, 1893, unto William T. and Salina Hey Tilden was born a male child, yclept by them William T., Jr. Without knowing it, they had just played an awfully dirty trick on the tennis world in general and the U.S.L.T.A. in particular.

By what strange process of nature a successful Philadelphia merchant in wool and hair, leader in local reform politics and long a revolutionary spirit in educational reforms, and a brilliant woman of great artistic attainments, a pianist of absolutely first rank, and a cultured gentlewoman of one of Philadelphia’s old families, should have had a child who turned out to be a champion tennis player, I cannot attempt to explain. Incidentally, I refute all those stories that I am at this writing well on in my sixties, which seems to be generally accepted by most people. My mother, who was there and should know, told me the correct date of my birth and I believe her. Also, I have a birth certificate that supports her story.

My childhood was happy, sheltered and, I fear, rather that of a slightly spoiled brat. In other words, mine was the typical well-to-do Philadelphia family life of the late 90’s. I detested school and avoided it by virtue of private tutors until the junior year of high school. I was no wonder boy in athletics, but I did have a game sense. That is, I played all games naturally well and, except for tennis, none outstandingly.

I must have been pretty hot on the courts as a kid because I won the 15-and-under Junior Boys Championship at Onteora Club in 1901 at the age of seven. In the tournament were two lads who afterward became famous players and whom I still count among my friends: Dean Mathey, former Intercollegiate Doubles Champion from Princeton University, and the 1947 Captain of the Davis Cup team, Alrick H. Man, Jr. I have a little pewter cup at home marked Onteora Club, Boys Singles, 1901, of which I am inordinately proud. I show it off whenever possible and my victim looks at it, then at me, and has great difficulty in not asking me, How often have you had your face lifted? The cup probably accounts for the idea that I am two years older than Methuselah’s mother.

Although pretty much of a kid wonder so far as tennis went, in the opinion of my brother Herbert I was a complete discredit to the family in everything else. I didn’t agree with his views but I guess I was prejudiced. Between the age of fifteen and the time I left college during my senior year, at the age of twenty-one, I lost my mother, father and brother. Tennis, along with almost everything else in life, lost flavor and I tossed them all into the discard.

I was rather at loose ends when quite by accident I took my first step along the path of developing an intelligent tennis game. I agreed to go back and help coach the team at Germantown Academy, the school from which I had been graduated a few years before. No, you’re quite wrong; there was no money involved. It was all completely amateur and in the spirit of the old school. I did it simply out of school loyalty and close personal friendship with the team captain; but as events turned out, I was the real beneficiary. For the school team knew no tennis and wanted eagerly to learn. They were a collective and individual question mark. Why does my forehand go out the sideline? How do you hit a service to make it bounce high (or low)? How do you hold the racket for the backhand? How?...Why?...on technique, tactics and psychology.

Often I didn’t know. I answered them with great authority, just as in later years I have learned most teachers do, with the result that the poor misguided kids believed me and I got away with it.

Still, my ignorance annoyed me and I made up my mind I’d really get to know the answers. I began to study tennis from the standpoint of geometry and physics, began to work out carefully a strategic and psychological approach to the game. Thus my first real pupil, and my most successful, was myself. I believe sincerely that my subsequent skill is directly traceable to the pains I took in learning enough to teach my old school team.

The store of knowledge thus opened to me proved inexhaustible and I am glad to say I am still learning. Meanwhile, I have been able to pass on some of it to such players as Vincent Richards, Carl Fischer, A. L. (Sandy) Wiener, Donald Strachan, Frank Hunter, Gottfried von Cramm, and many others right down to my two star protégés of the present, Arthur Anderson and Noel Brown; while among the girls whose games I have helped I count my dearest friend in tennis, Helen Hull Jacobs, as well as Gloria Butler, Gertrude Moran and the 1947 girl champion, Helen Pastall.

My years from fifteen to twenty-five showed an uneven, erratic record, at times brilliant, at times—well—lousy. In college I rated fair, but far from first-class. I was working along on my theory that one man could learn every shot known in tennis, a distinctly revolutionary idea in that day. The concept then was that every player had to be definitely a driver or clubber or volleyer, and nothing else. My brother, who was a marvelous volleyer, but whose ground strokes were practically non-existent, called me a crazy kid in about seventeen different and lurid ways. I was generally referred to as promising but erratic or by some outspoken critics as just a dub who will never get anywhere.

In 1913, largely because there was no one else available, and because by some strange chance I had played several good matches in a row, I was entered in the National Mixed Doubles Championships with the marvelous little Californian, Mary Kendall Browne.

Mary was a miraculous doubles player, so good that despite the handicap of having me for a partner she successfully won all our matches and I acquired the first of my seventy national titles. My last, the United States Pro Doubles, was won with Vincent Richards in 1945, thirty-two years later. Maybe I’m not a fossil after all!

My first real singles achievement was reaching the finals of the Pennsylvania State Championships and taking a set from R. Norris Williams II. This happened during his first year in this country, shortly after his sensational escape from the Titanic disaster.

On the strength of that set, the only one Williams had yet lost that year, the press discovered me. I was hailed as a new star of remarkable brilliance and a saviour of American tennis. God only knows why; it didn’t need to be saved. Like all the rest of the fool kids who were discovered too soon, I believed the press and developed one of the most overgrown domes you could ask for. Just five days later, with all Philadelphia set for my next meeting with Williams in the final round, I took the courts against Dr. P. B. Hawk, a steady reliable old war horse of no great ability. He put me gently but firmly into the discard, 6-4, 6-2, in the semi-final round of the Philadelphia and District Championship. The bubble was pricked, my head came down to normal size, and to all and sundry I was once more just a dub.

Fallen Arches

NOT UNTIL the First World War did I begin to master my nice collection of shots. Up to then I could not persuade them all to work together.

You see, I fought the war in the Medical Corps in Pittsburgh, Pa. I had enlisted in the Radio Signal Corps and was sent out to Carnegie Tech for training; but on arrival it was discovered I had first degree flat feet. Almost all tennis players have first degree flat feet—nothing serious, but an annoying condition caused by the pounding the feet take in sneakers. I was ordered to report to the Commanding Officer of the District, Colonel John C. W. Brookes.

Col. Brookes was an old regular Army man who knew everybody from the Secretary of War down. He was also a tennis nut of purest water. I reported at his office and stood trembling, wondering what I had done. Col. Brookes fixed me with a glare which I later discovered was a cover for a genial, sympathetic nature.

Tilden, he said grimly. I understand you are about to be rejected for flat feet.

Yes, sir, I murmured.

Well, I think I can get you transferred into the Medical Corps—that is, if you want to stay in the service!

I’d like to stay in, sir.

Very well. Report back here in two hours. That’s all.

On my return, I was ordered to report to the Medical Unit at our little hospital in Pittsburgh, and there I remained throughout the War. Unquestionably I made one of the world’s worst soldiers and never rose in any way from the ranks, but that too was partly the Colonel’s fault. He kept sending me all over the country playing tennis for the Red Cross. I feel the Colonel must be blamed if I was a poor soldier, but I know he is also responsible for my becoming a first-class tennis player. I might say that all during my stay in Pittsburgh, Col. Brookes and I successfully defended our position as champion doubles team of the services in the Pittsburgh District. Throughout 1918 I was playing tennis continuously. I would receive orders time and again to report to Col. Brookes. At first I was always scared to death but soon I learned the episode would usually go like this:

COL. Brookes: Tilden, Chicago is holding the National Clay Court Championship. They want you to play.

TILDEN: Yes, sir.

COL. BROOKES: I think I’d like you to. Here’s a ten-day pass. You leave tonight.

TILDEN: "Yes, sir!"

I remember so well reporting one morning in June, just after the story came out in the press that the U.S.L.T.A. had requested the War Department to release ten players, including myself, to compete at Newport in the National Doubles and National Singles in late August and early September. Col. Brookes had a newspaper on his desk when I came in, opened to the story.

Tilden, he said, I just read this piece. Damn good idea. If you don’t hear from the Tennis Association or direct from the War Department, report to me before time to leave. That’s all.

Weeks passed and no word came. Finally, the day before the deadline arrived and I had heard nothing, I reported at Col. Brookes’ office and asked to see him.

Sir, I said, as you ordered, I’m reporting. I’ve received no word on my release.

Huh! he grunted under his breath, damn fools! Then he glared at me. Report back in half an hour.

When I did so, he handed me a month’s leave to play at Newport. Later I learned he had telephoned the Secretary of War in Washington demanding to know why the devil the leaves of all these men hadn’t been granted, and announcing he was giving me a pass to play in the Secretary’s name, and what the hell was the Secretary going to do about it? I had my trip, and it brought our first National Doubles Championship to Vinnie Richards and me.

It was during this period that influenza first reared its dangerous head and all during the spring and summer of 1918 Col. Brookes was trying to get Washington to decide which of several hospitals in Pittsburgh the Army would take over. Delegations of officers, Colonel this, General that, or Lieutenant-Colonel somebody, would arrive to look over the situation and report. Col. Brookes always received them the same way.

He would send for me to drive his automobile, a small Dodge touring car. We would meet the delegation at the station, drive them to the Pittsburgh Athletic Club for breakfast and then, without time to rest, rush them to the tennis courts where he and I would exhaust them until they were putty in his hands. Here was I, a lowly lousy private, seldom in the company of anyone less than a Major, and scared to death all the time. I distinctly remember having one General and two Colonels in the car when I forgot the Dodge gear shift was the reverse of my own car’s, and practically put them up a tree by, backing unexpectedly. It was some years after the War when Col. J. C. W. Brookes passed away, and in his passing I lost a good friend. He was greatly loved by his men—who nonetheless referred to him, impudently but with good cause, as the Babbling Brookes.

I suffered a serious personal loss during the fall of 1918. My appendix was removed. It was at the height of the flu epidemic and I guess they were afraid of pulmonary involvements, so instead of ether, spinal anaesthesia, a kind of twilight sleep, was used. The surgeon was Pittsburgh’s most famous baby doctor, so I’m just a little uncertain whether I was a mother or merely an appendix victim.

At any rate, the Armistice found me flat on my back, three days after the operation, with no way of celebrating and nothing more cheerful to see out the window than a cemetery featuring daily funerals of flu victims. Col. Brookes hastened my discharge, and the last day of 1918 found me at home and once more a civilian.

It seems only yesterday that peace was the cry on November 11, 1918. Yet it is practically only yesterday that peace was the cry in 1945. Pray God this new peace will be more just, more honest and more lasting than the old. Between that Armistice of 1918 and the glorious V-J day of 1945 my whole career as a champion lies. It is of those years my story must tell, picturing the people I knew and the experiences that came to me, through tennis.

2. Early Influences

THE YEARS 1919 and 1920 saw my final step preparatory to assuming the rôle of World’s Champion. Still trying to consolidate my all-court game, still having my troubles with it, nevertheless I could feel that the pieces were slowly falling into place.

Throughout 1919 my progress was slow but steady. Only my friend and rival, William M. (Little Bill) Johnston, held any edge on me and this was slight. Many players pressed right on my heels, always with a chance to beat me, but only Johnston had the ability to lift his game above mine when the chips were down and the stakes were highest. That year Little Bill slammed me around in both National finals, Clay Court at Chicago and Grass Court at Forest Hills, while I licked him in the East-West matches and at Newport.

It was his merciless pounding of my backhand in the Grass Court final, so determined and consistent that my sound defensive chop finally broke under the strain, that made me realize I was still far from a complete tennis player. I had no attacking stroke off that wing with which to hold him off. I had to acquire an offensive backhand drive before I could become what Johnston was—the World’s Champion. Number two in the world was pretty good, but not good enough. It left me determined that another season would not roll around without my conquering that stroke.

At that time I was living in Providence, Rhode Island, working for J. D. E. Jones of the Equitable Life Insurance Company. My boss, himself a well-known tennis player, was the father of three boys and one girl. His second son, Arnold, became famous as National Junior Champion of the United States twice, and later as a member of the Davis Cup Team. With his father he held for many years the National Father and Son doubles title.

My job was to coach Arnold between insurance interviews or possibly hold insurance interviews between coaching Arnold; Mr. Jones never told me just which. The family had its own private court and here it was that every day all through the fall and winter of 1919-1920 I worked on my offensive backhand.

And offensive enough it was, all right, when I started in October; but there was my streak of stubbornness to contend with. There were also the earnest efforts of all my friends who would practice with me for hours, and last, but not least, a series of lickings in exhibitions at the hands of almost every good tennis player in New England; so that by May, 1920, the stroke had become offensive to my opponents. All those months I forgot I had a defensive slice and went out to hit every backhand with a flat drive. Every day held hours of discouragement when I felt I would never master the gosh-darned stroke, but in the end they paid off.

The spring of 1920 found me with a new and reliable stroke on the backhand; ready and waiting for the Davis Cup, Wimbledon, Forest Hills and Billy Johnston. I will always feel that to Mr. Jones and my Providence friends I owe my last step up the championship ladder.

The Comet

NOR IS that my sole obligation.

It is only through the players he meets that a champion is made. He owes his position to the men who preceded him, to those who are his immediate rivals, and also to those coming up in the game while he is at his peak—one of whom is destined to succeed him. I know I stand in great debt to all these.

For that reason I shall attempt to delineate the great players and intriguing personalities I have met during a long and varied career. Thus can I hope to assure fuller understanding of my record than would result from any mere recital of exploits and personal triumphs.

It seems to me I have had several distinct tennis lives. The period 1900-1920, when I was battling my way to the top, was influenced by the great champions of that day—some of whom carried over into my second stage. The latter began when as champion of the world (1920-1927) I became the target that everyone shot at, and here a new group appeared, joining the champions of yesterday. My third and last amateur period included the few years 1927 to 1930, when I slipped over the hump and started slowly downhill at the very time many new and interesting players were rising in the game. Finally came my professional career, from 1931 to date, during which I played and knew not only the professionals but also the amateurs; so that with thirty-eight years of competition behind me I can say that I have known and played almost all the great tennis men in the world.

I have the most sincere admiration for the vast majority, not only as players and sportsmen but as people. They taught me much. I