Richard Pancho Gonzales – A great tennis legend
As we go back in history along a timeline marking all the great tennis heroes of the past, right to the beginning of the Open era of tennis, we come across the great American tennis player, Richard Pancho Gonzales who is also known as Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez.
Born in the year 1928, Gonzales lived till the year 1995. He was one of the greatest tennis players over the years between the 1950s and 1960s and was the world number one for almost a decade. Gonzales learnt the game of tennis mostly on his own without the help of a professional coach and became one of the most successful amateur players around the late 1940s.
Gonzales is still considered to be a legend in the history of professional tennis. In 1999, the most popular American sports magazine, Sports Illustrated, published an article on the 20 favourite athletes of the 20th century and Gonzales was on this list. The article quoted that "If earth was on the line in a tennis match, the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez". Further enhancing the glory of this epic player, the American tennis commentator, Bud Collins spoke out in 2006 that if he had to choose someone to play tennis for his life it would be Pancho Gonzales.
Although this late American tennis star was without a doubt an amazing player, it is a tragedy that most tennis fans today are unaware of his existence. Modern tennis fans usually consider the Grand Slam champions like Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, who came after the start of the Open era in 1968, as some of the greatest players in the game of tennis. However, true tennis fans who love the game from the bottom of their hearts do not forget to name Gonzales as one of the greatest players to have gone down in the history of tennis. This is because he was world number one unequally for eight years which is a great achievement for someone who self taught the game of tennis to himself.
When the period of Grand Slams had begun in 1968, Gonzales was at the brink of his professional career and he was too old to have qualified for many professional tournaments. He did participate at the first Grand Slam that is the French Open. Being forty years old at that time, Gonzales still managed to reach the semi-finals where he lost to the Australian tennis player, Rod Laver.
Just a year after this, in 1969, Gonzales participated at Wimbledon where he played one of the most epic matches to have ever been played in history. The forty-one year old Gonzales was up against the twenty-five year old Puerto Rican player, Charlie Pasarell. The match between these two was the longest match at that time a lasted for five hours and twelve minutes. This continued to be the longest match in the history of the Open era for a long time until Wimbledon 2010, where John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut in a never-ending battle which lasted eleven hours and five minutes.
Gonzales was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in the year 1968. This is a museum located in Rhode Island, America, which highlights the classic and heroic moments in tennis leading up to the modern era. This American legend is out of the very few tennis players to have been inducted into the Hall of Fame during his career as a tennis player whereas most tennis players are inducted after their professional life.
Due to his half Mexican origin, Gonzales was often a target of racism and discrimination in the predominant white world of sport. However, when he started to play, audiences forgot all about his caste and creed and were all entranced by his game.
It is always a pleasure to look back into history and undercover great individuals and as far as tennis is concerned, its history will always remain incomplete without the mention of the great Richard Pancho Gonzales.
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