Farewell, Steggy	06/21/2009 - l:00 AM

by Pete Bodo

I'm not sure this is the right way to start a eulogy, but the bottom line is that Amy Haskew, known to most of us as Steggy, basically drove me nuts. Everyone should have someone like that in his or her life.

Our relationship began not long after I decided that I wanted to explore the possibilities of Internet-based journalism (specifically the weblog), and convinced the powers-that-be at Tennis that they ought to let me focus on that form almost exclusively. Being affiliated with Tennis and Tennis.com was a great leg up (I wish I had a dime for every brilliant, witty, talented person who started a weblog only to discover that all quality-issues aside, making your voice known isn't as easy as it ought to be. Anyway, Steggy was one of the core group of readers/comment posters who made me feel that this format had real potential.

Back then, I jumped into the comments a little more frequently than I do now, although those communications were more topical than social. But I quickly began to get a feel for my regular readers and pretty much from the start, Steggy stood out among them as one to whom I never had to explain myself  - or my interests, tastes, and prejudices. Our first personal contact occurred when she posted a recipe for venison. Knowing that she was from Houston, I sent her a game recipe of my own, which incorporated the meat of my favorite plant, prickly pear cactus (if there's a symbol of the glories of the American west, it's this hardy cactus).

It was funny; up to that time, if I had to guess I would have described Steggy as a 40-or-50 something Houstonian, a player at some nice private club where wearing white is still required. She was an intriguing personality with peripatetic interests and compendious knowledge. Over time, I learned that she was about as far from my early impression as a person could get; she smoked cigarettes like she got paid for it, slugged Coke by the gallon, and played tennis like she meant it - spraying balls all over creation while trying to get her considerable bulk around the court, shod in a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse sneakers, held together with duct-tape. Amy was a great gift to TennisWorld, but I think this site was a gift to her as well - it slowly (for she was in some ways an extremely cautious and not entirely confident person) enabled her to be. . . herself.

In some ways, though, she personified the first-wave Internet habitue; that person who appeared to invent him or herself in cyberspace. Amy's on-line persona was not only unique, it was intriguing and almost shockingly misleading (for there was nothing about the "real" Amy that was as restrained, self-controlled, epigrammatic, and, well, seemingly pulled together as her on-line identity). I think being "Steggy" in cyberspace gave Amy a little respite from her demons - and this girl knew demons - but like most of us what she really most wanted down deep was to be herself, and accepted for it.

First thing I loved about Amy: She was crazy and didn't care about nothin'. I learned that quickly enough when we met face-to-face for the first time at the Palm Springs airport. We were there for the Indian Wells tennis tournament 2006. No sooner did I get the keys to the rental car that she grabbed them from me and told me to follow her. I shrugged and did as I was told. I'm a pretty careless driver (although I've gotten over a youthful fixation on yanking up on the emergency hand-brake while the person actually driving was taking a turn at 50), but Steggy drove like the car was an out-of-control bottle rocket, and she just happened to be the one hanging on to the wheel - at least to the extent that someone could do that with an ultra-ultra-lite Marlboro in one hand, a 48-ounce Seven-Eleven coke jammed between her thighs. and some ghastly hardcore punk band blasting on the radio.

The thought, "I'm too old for this. . ."  warred with, "Hey, this is kind of fun" and guess which one won?

We stayed on the same floor at the Holiday Express hotel that week (Andrew Burton and Asad Raza, two great amigos, was also there with us), and we had a blast. By then, I had no illusion that Amy wanted to interview or even meet tennis players (The second thing I loved about Amy was that I don't think she gave an owl's hoot about the tennis players; she put her heart and soul into building the TW community). I once got her credentialed to a Champion's Tour event, and told her to interview Jim Courier. In order to make it as painless as possible for Amy, I made a point to talk to Jim about it, asking him to be patient and understanding if she seemed nervous or scared. I needn't have bothered; Amy was too shy to actually go up to Jim and say hello. He later asked me, "Whatever happened to that person who was supposed to talk to me?"

At the peak of the good times, Amy and I would talk on the phone three, four times a day; she was a 24/7 presence at the site, whether the readers knew it or not (they mostly did; Amy didn't do "anonymous" well). At times, I begged her to go easy on herself, fearing that she was going to burn out, or that she thought I expected her to pour her heart and soul into what was always a volunteer position. I tried to get her to be less emotionally invested in the site, but it did no good. In the end, it was her incredible degree of dedication and passion for the site that caused us to fall out. Amy was one of those seemingly tough but ultra-sensitive people who took everything to heart, even while pretending otherwise.

It's funny, I've wracked my brain thinking about conversations we've had or emails we've exchanged, and for some reason the moment I remember the most, and it brings a grin to my face every time I think of it, is writing her a fast, simple (pre-Twitter) email, asking, "Hey, whatcha doing?"

Seconds later came the one-line reply: "I'm sitting here wondering how much Greek food a woman can eat before she explodes."

This afternoon, I was down in the cellar here the farm and I came across a big plastic bin, containing a complete Lionel electric train set - the beautifully crafted, detailed, old-school kind, each car made of heavy steel, the powerful locomotive capable of shining a light, sounding its whistle, and emitting a robust puff of faux-steam when properly set-up. That train had arrived at my home on December 22nd a few years ago - a Christmas present for my then just-turned-four son, Luke.It was from Amy, who knew that Luke was in that Thomas the Tank Engine phase.

Many of the TWibe knew Amy by the nickname I coined, "The Hillbilly Princess." Thinking about Amy these past two day, I realize what an appropriate name that really was. Although she ended  up living in Houston, I think of her as a Tennessee girl - that state having been the home and staging area for some of the biggest personalities and most bracingly original characters in American history (if you've read your early American history, you know whereof I speak). Davy Crockett was a Tennessee boy; my late friend Jim Range - a man whose charisma, drive and integrity were completely off the charts, was also from the state (He left us prematurely as well, this winter).

I'm glad that Amy is being buried at home; she'll always be the Hillbilly Princess to me.

BTW -  I am not accepting comments on this post, and I thank all members of the TWibe who posted their thoughts at the Steggy's Call post on Friday. And here's an important note: This tragedy has been burdensome for Amy's husband, Bill Bradford - those of you who know how utterly Amy disregarded money and financial matters will understand. Anyway, while you may choose to contribute to the animal shelter identified in Amy's obituary, some of you may want to join me in contributing to help defray the funeral expenses for Bill, via Paypal. Just send what amount you choose through Paypal  to mrbill@mrbill.net.

A Moment of Silence. . .	12/05/2007 - l:25 AM

Mornin' folks.I have some sad news for all the folks in the Tribe today. Tari, one of our most faithful, good-natured, and generally beloved posters, lost her mom last night. As I understand it, this was less a shock than an inevitability. I also know that will not lessen the sorrow for Tari and her family. Please remember her in your thoughts and prayers today.

These moments always bring to mind Psalms 103:15: As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. This is a good time to remember and cherish the color and fragrance of the flower, which lives on as long as we have memories and words. We will return to regular tennis business shortly.

Oedipus Rex Rosewall	01/11/2007 - l:09 PM

You all know by now that Gloria Connors died on January 8th, at age 82, in the town where her famous son, Jimmy, was raised, Belleville, Ill. I chose the title of this post because the first, full-flower demonstration of Gloria Connors's vision and wisdom as a tennis coach was Jimmy's demolition of Ken Rosewall in the 1974 final of Wimbledon. That match was of critical importance to the tennis boom in the U.S., because it made flesh the promise of the new, populist, Open era with breathtaking timing.

Remember, the Rod Laver vs. Ken Rosewall WCT Finals final in Dallas took place in 1972 (use the Search bar for more on on the significance of that match), and it was just a year later that Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs rocked the world with the Battle of the Sexes match.  The pump was thus primed for a new, exciting era in tennis, and the first thing it spit  out was Connors vs. Rosewall at Wimbledon in '74 - a match that featured an icon of the old guard (Rosewall was an astonishing 39 years old, but silken as ever), and a brash youngster of 21 with a floppy Prince Valiant haircut, a formidable two-handed backhand, a bombastic streak as broad as his Midwestern twang, and the killer instinct of an Orca chancing upon a pod of dolphin.

Connors demolished Rosewall, 6-1,6-1,6-4 and had not a word of pity, empathy or sympathy for his venerable rival. By the end of that day, one era lay smoldering in wreckage, while another was rising like the smoke, writhing the way Jimmy ultimately would in one of his trademark, borderline obscene on-court celebrations of a point won.

It was not long before tennis was on the cover of Time magazine, backed by a blow-out cover story on Connors. And if it's a bit of a stretch to say that the new era popped from Gloria Connors's womb, it's inarguable that she had spent the 20 or so years after Jimmy's birth shaping the slightly built, obedient, and terribly keen youngster into a tennis champion for a new era - one that would shatter all the codes and conventions and transform tennis players from clean-cut, generally understated, well-mannered sportsmen who proudly embraced an ethic based on equal parts sportsmanship and camaraderie into rock stars, with all the attendant virtues and vices.

Gloria could not possibly know about that, back when it all started. But she did know, or certainly sensed, that one way to become a great tennis player was to marry a very sound, consistent game to the heart of a remorseless assassin.

That her son was pre-disposed to this role was a blessing; that somehow her theories about these things would prove to be completely in step with the march of the times was something she could not.

Anyway, there always was more mystery about the Oedipal Frankenstein Gloria created than about the game Jimmy played. Frank Deford, an icon at Sports Illustrated, produced a masterpiece of amateur psychology in his classic, 1978 profile (it remains the definitive Connors piece): Raised by Women to Conquer Men. It was a story that also helped turn the flame wars between Connors and the press into a raging conflagration that never would be extinguished.

I escaped being tarred with the same brush as most pressmen thanks to Gloria Connors. Shortly after I wrote my first Connors story - a spirited defense of Connors and a paean to his combative spirit (I believe the headline - which I didn't write - was, Jimmy Connors: Is he the Greatest, Ever?) - I got a phone call shortly after the story ran. It was from Gloria. She wanted to thank me for writing so sympathetically about her boy. It probably helped my cause that Connors was, by then, getting caught in a classic pincer move of nearly military precision: The old guard resented Connors's punk personality and complete disregard for his elders (from Rosewall to the writers themselves); younger writers (my colleagues) found him corny, aggressive and no less contemptuous of them than of their journalistic heroes, like Deford.

I remember my own first impression of Connors because it was a simple one. He played Shock and Awe tennis like I had never witnessed before; he went after his opponents - and the ball - like a drunken cowboy in a bar fight.  I was undecided about his personality, and probably more susceptible to the pack instinct that made the press corps determinedly anti-Connors. But my friend Liz Nevin, a girl I was then dating, absolutely, utterly loved Jimbo - almost as much as she would soon love Johnny Rotten. I reckon it was because neither of them gave a flying effword about anything. The Connors persona was sweetened for her by the fact that he was everything that tennis at that time still was not: outrageous, vulgar, gritty, square in that distinctly Amurican, Midwestern way that might make you think: Man, without tennis, this dude is just another bridge-painting loser in a Member's Only jacket. And she found him all the more appealing for it.

I was swayed, for sure, but if I had to pick a moment when the worm really turned, it was when Connors, refusing to apologize for some (probably) utterly mortifying act or remark that managed to offend everyone, made a comment that I am in the habit of quoting:  "I do the crime, I do the time." Has a tennis player (or anyone else, for that matter?), faced with an opportunity to explain himself and thereby set into motion the redemption narrative (nowadays, we call it damage control), ever  added defiance to his exquisitely tawdry conduct and come up with a more warped but authentic  form of integrity? Not in my time. Connors's understudy, John McEnroe, sometimes tried, and one of the things he earned in so doing, besides our compassion, was the everlasting scorn of Connors. To say Connors had flaws is an understatement. He also had Wilanders.

But I'm getting away from Gloria here.

Gloria lived for Jimmy. She tracked his every move, read everything written about him, knew his game inside out and could get him sorted out when he was going through a rough patch like no other coach could. Early on, Jimmy confided to me that whenever he felt there was something wrong with his game, he would just call Gloria. I'll  have to paraphrase him: Whatever it is, she fixes it in five minutes. In a comment at another post, Dunlop Maxply (Hank) noted that pundits never seemed to mention that Gloria Connors in her time was a very good tennis player (she was nationally ranked and, in a curious coincidence, briefly dated Chris Evert's father, Jimmy, when he was a player at Notre Dame). This probably was because the purely Oedipal narrative was far, far more seductive, it  established a good base of operations for Connors's critics, and hey - the story line wasn't just more  hooey dreamed up by some Greek playwright.

There certainly were flaws in the game Gloria implanted in Jimmy. He probably had the worst serve of any Open era icon - by far. As he hit it, his body would assume the shape of a capital "C", and you were inclined to turn away. Then there was that forehand, which Arthur Ashe attacked so mercilessly to forge his shining Warrior Moment with his shocking upset of Connors in the Wimbledon final of 1975. Jimmy's backswing was level, which made his flat forehand a very dangerous weapon. But when it was off, he almost appeared to swing high-to-low, which is suicidal. Because of his flat shot, he had trouble getting far enough under balls, especially off-speed balls, in no-man's land, and ended up smacking them into the netcord,or sailing them long for lack of arc.

Time-out for a Jimbo moment: After a particularly tough loss at Wimbledon one year, a reporter (think beer belly and mustard-stained necktie) kept badgering him about his high number of forehand errors. Jimmy finally colored - something Connors did often, for he was sensitive and somewhat insecure - and shot back, "Yeah? You want to go out and trade forehands with me?"

But say what you will about Gloria's role in the flawed game; in one department she was superb - she was the ultimate proponent of tough love, perhaps because her own life in the dreary town of East St. Louis, where Jimmy was born, was in some critical ways disappointing. She was estranged
from Jimmy's father, Jim, who worked as toll-booth manager on the Martin Luther King bridge over the Mississippi. Gloria lived modestly and trained Jimmy with the help of her own mother, Bertie Thompson (hence the plural "women" in the headline of the Deford piece). Fairly early in her life, Gloria became a realist, marbled with traces of bitterness that you would never in a million years catch her her owning up to. What other kind of person might be expected to pass on the wisdom: Do the crime and do the  time?  Gloria was a hard case.

Gloria taught Jimmy that if he didn't destroy his opponent - any and every opponent - he would be the one destroyed. That he never in his entire adult life held this against her - never uttered a word of ambivalence, regret, or self-pity, speaks volumes about his loyalty. His appreciation for what she did was never, ever undermined by grievances over what she didn't do, which, presumably, was nurture any aspect of his character other than his blood lust. Sigh. Then again, you could say he was genetically pre-disposed to having it that way.

I have my own theory on this: Connors was a sensitive, loyal, mother loving boy who absorbed the blows of reality, early and frequently, through tennis. He survived because he had a co-existing, equally deep toughness. And that sensitivity, occasionally expressed in an unexpected kind of tenderness later in Connors's life, I now realize, is what my friend Liz, a very bright woman, had detected in him.

Anyway, Gloria took Jimmy out to California to put the finishing touches on his game with the help of another hard case, a former barnstorming pro and master tactician from Equador, Pancho Segura. She and Jimmy shared an apartment in Los Angeles; I think she wanted to keep taut the Oedipal leash, and keep the sheltered, impressionable boy from losing his sense of purpose. Jimmy saw and grew envious of the lavish style in which many of his peers lived; he vowed to get some of that; he too would have a house with a pool ,in some place like Bel Air. 

Segura believed in Connors' talent from the word go, even though Connors was a mere stripling at 5-10, 150 pounds, with arms like matchsticks. "Jeemee?" Segura would drawl. "Jeemee is a keeler. A keeler." Note that Segu didn't say Jimmy was a genius. Or an artist. Or a fleet, lithe, highly focused aggressive baseliner (that would be the Tennis Dictionary definition). Just a killer. Nothing more, but nothing less, either.

The two of them, Gloria and Segu, a pair of hard cases, kept pounding away at the boy with the sledgehammer, shaping him. What they were left with when they were done was still relatively small, but intensely compacted, free of all base or soft metals. This the unleashed upon the world.

I suppose you can't do that kind of work without also transforming yourself along the way as well, and by the time Jimmy began to tear apart opponents on the pro tour - something he did with eyes gleaming and blood-stained cheeks framing his smiling lips - Gloria seemed changed, too. Eventually, she moved back to Belleville, where she spent her time helping Jimmy with his affairs and teaching local kids the game, although it could not have been with the resolve and passion she had poured into Jimmy. I would get her on the phone, but her appearance at tournaments was a rarity. The hardness inside began to manifest itself on the outside. Gloria was tight-lipped and remote; even if you knew her, talking with her made you feel that you were trespassing, and you were never quite sure she was listening to what you were saying. It seemed that she had pretty much made her mind up, about everything, some time ago - and long before most of us do.

With her slack track suits, carapace of hair, pancake make-up, and a pair of eyes that glittered like navy-blue metal buttons on a uniform, she could easily be mistaken for one of those anonymous women who sits before a slot machine in Las Vegas, abstractedly pumping one quarter after another into the slot, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, rhinestone-studded glasses on a string retainer.

It was, in fact, in Las Vegas that I collected my most enduring visual and most lasting impression of her. This was in 1975, shortly after Jimmy had beaten up on John Newcombe in the second of his infamous Heavyweight Champion of Tennis bouts (Rod Laver had been his first victim). These
exhibition matches had all the trappings and generated as much buzz as the event from which they stole the name. After counting coup on another Aussie legend, Jimmy held a small victory party in a bar in Caesar's Palace, and at one point I glanced over at the two of them. Gloria - she was much younger then, and a trim, attractive, obviously fit woman - was sitting in Jimmy's lap, gazing at him.

I suppose the look in her eyes might have been one of sheer pride. It could also have been admiration of what that thin, eager, hellbent little boy had become as a man. Perhaps it was thankfulness, for the triumph over Newcombe (with nearly half-a-million dollars at stake - a huge sum at the time) was a ticket to the Easy Street life they had never known. But in the end I thought it was just love.

And as a hard case, Gloria knew that you had to be very careful about where you looked for love, at least the kind that you could trust not to let you down.

RIP Gloria.

RIP Gloria Connors	01/09/2007 - l:44 PM

Silver King in the Golden Age	12/14/2006 - l:02 PM

I was going to write Lindsay Davenport for my blog over at ESPN, but at the last minute my buddy over there, the consummately professional Keith Hawkins, asked me if I could write about Lamar Hunt. who died early this morning in Dallas. My post should be up at ESPN soon. Meanwhile, here's a comprehensive obit that ought to give you a sense of Hunt's pervasive influence on the sporting landscape. And now for some additional thoughts on Hunt.

I got to know Lamar reasonably well over the years; he was the kind of guy who remembered your name and returned your calls. I don't think I ever saw him in anything but a perfectly fine but utterly plain dark suit, white shirt, and solid tie (no canary yellow or bright red power neck wear for this hombre!). He was borderline monk-ish, with his thinning dark hair and fastidious ways. He could have been the model for a sociology text with some high-falutin' title: The Corporate Disciple (although, as a fabulously wealthy individual, he was anything but a cog in someone else's machine), or, if the folks who came up with those titles ever wanted to leaven things with a little humor: Man Or Machine. Who Cares Anyway?

Hunt was incredibly disciplined in everything he did, and his genius, as it was reflected in tennis, was for organization. Long before "branding" became a buzzword, he had a branding vision for tennis, traveling under the name World Championship Tennis. Readers of my age may remember as vividly as I do the utterly professional, compelling broadcasts of WCT events.

Something must have made a pretty big impression for me, for I still vividly remember scenes like that of a helicopter hovering over a court somewhere in Florida (Boca Raton), the whirring blades drying off the gray Har-Tru, while Cliff Drysdale, in tighty-whitey shorts and wearing a pristine white golf glove on his right hand, patiently stood by, waiting to play the final.

WCT featured a pretty slick logo, it had a deal with - I believe - Supreme Court for uniformity at its many indoor tournaments, and at one point there was talk of the players all having to wear some kind of uniform, to emphasize the continuity and the WCT brand identity.

In short, WCT wanted to project the image that it was the only tennis tour that mattered, and unlike World Team Tennis, which came along much later, it did not aggressively challenge the Grand Slams by scheduling tournaments during the major Spring and Summer national championships (the French and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon).

Lamar's genius, as it was expressed in tennis, was his overarching vision. He was the ultimate system-maker and organizer. Looking to the model he helped create for the NFL, he wanted to move into the frontier of Open tennis with something more than vague ideas of promoting a tournament here or there. He aspired to creating a template for the pro game.

The icons and pioneers of the pro game rushed enthusiastically to embrace Hunt's vision, and that says a lot about a number of things, including Hunt's confidence in the game as a viable, professional enterprise, and the degree to which the men now positioned to create a new sport from nothing found his approach viable. New sports enterprises often have trouble luring big talent; in soccer, the North American Soccer League (started at around the same time as WCT) hoped that lavishing millions on Pele, even though it meant surrounding him with bit players, would swing the tide. But in tennis, the talent was there, ready and willing to go.

Hunt loved football, and were he not a Texan, the history of the game might have been written differently. But Texans have a natural affinity for Australians, and Hunt had deep admiration and affection for the likes of Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, and John Newcombe. When it was time to create his tour in 1968, he put together a formidable line-up of international players known as The Handsome Eight. In addition to those three icons, the group included fellow Aussie Tony Roche, South Africa's Drysdale, Dennis Ralston and Butch Buchholz of the U.S., Nikki Pilic of Yugoslavia, Pierre Barthes of France, and Roger Taylor of Great Britain.

The tour was a smash hit from the start, and WCT's annual, year-end playoff for the top qualifiers, the WCT Finals, quickly became an event that rivaled the Grand Slams in prestige and visibility. The high-water mark was the 1972 WCT Finals championship match, in which Laver and Rosewall created an epic that takes a prominent place on everyone's list of GMAT. It attracted 21 million viewers and, almost immediately, tennis was transformed from a blip to a blimp on the sports radar.

Owing to the Hunts clout and status in Dallas, the Finals also became an annual Event on the social calendar. The Finals was played in Moody Coliseum on the SMU campus, where roughly 7500 perched in seats on the almost comically steep sides of an arena that had great sight lines and a terrific atmosphere of intimacy. The feeling was electric, the lighting superb. And then there were the post-match parties. . .

*Sighs*

The WCT tour was a success from the start. So much so, that it soon split up into various groups, coded by color (there's that instinct for organization again; the color-coding remained a staple of round-robin events for years, until some genius had the bright idea to name the groups for players instead, as in the Laver or Rosewall group). These groups played mini-circuits, mostly in Europe and the U.S., and then convened again in Dallas for the Finals.

But while all this was going on, forces that feared that Hunt would corner the pro tennis market (much like his family at one point tried to corner the world silver market - let it never be said that the Hunt's don't think outside the jewelry box!) aligned against him.

The International Tennis Federation and its affiliates - the entities, like the USTA, that govern and largely control the direction of the sport, both at the amateur level  and upper echelon of the pro game - understood that a tennis league as well-run, lean and professionally administered as WCT (the tour had a commissioner in the late Mike Davies; no further comment required), operating independent of the traditional ITF-supported tournament circuit, was a long-range threat.

It didn't exactly help that the next wave of pros, led by Jimmy Connors, had nothing like the sense of loyalty shown by Laver, Rosewall, et al.

Faced with the opportunity to slip into a pre-existing WCT system or work the open market for all it was worth, increasing numbers of players chose the latter.

In this, they were abetted by managers, agents and tournament promoters who all wanted to take part in the commercial feeding frenzy known as the tennis boom. This played nicely into the hands of the ITF, to whom a de-centralized game consisting of independent operators who would pose no threat to the Grand Slam pecking order amounted to a nice preservation of the status quo.

WCT soldiered on, it lasted for a surprising 23 years - although it was a shadow of its former self for many of those final years. In the beginning, WCT was the players tour, but over time, and facing manifold opportunities for short-term gain, the players formed their union (the ATP), further relegating WCT to a role as just another opportunity provider, rather than the preferred vehicle for delivering year-round pro tennis to a worldwide audience.

In the big picture, the struggle to impose a template on the game of tennis failed. It helps explain why we have a chaotic, overcrowded, sometimes illogical calendar. In straying from the WCT model, the game essentially opted to remain a free-market enterprise, complete with the opportunity, chaos, instability, perplexity and complexity that comes with the territory. Maybe we're better off, maybe not. The only things I know for certain are that cornering the tennis market proved easily as daunting a task as cornering the silver market, and that it's kind of weird that in the saga of WCT, tennis reversed one of basic premises that we live by: from chaos comes order.

RIP, Lamar. You were a gentleman and visionary to the end.

Farewell, Gene	03/23/2006 - l:56 PM

For those of you curious to know what the late Gene Scott meant to tennis (see my post below, “A Moment of Silence”), Tennis Week(the bi-monthly newspaper he published) has created a website where friends have posted remembrances and eulogies. I posted mine earlier today.

A Moement of Silence, Please	03/22/2006 - l:58 PM

Bulletin: Gene Scott, one of the most resourceful and accomplished of men in - and out of - the tennis establishment has died at age 68, rather unexpectedly, of heart disease. If you want to see how many fingerprints a person can leave on the game, read this obituary. I knew Gene well and will post a eulogy of my own soon.

In Memoriam..	02/07/2006 - l:07 AM

Many of you TennisWorld readers have enjoyed John Feinstein’s best-selling tennis book of a few years ago, Hard Courts, or read or listened to some of his rants on a staggering array of sports issues either in The Washington Post or on National Public Radio (he’s a regular).

John and I are long-time friends, even though I disagree with him on just about everything (writing to him, I would always address the envelope, “Mr. John Feinstein, Popular Best-Selling Author and Godless Left-Wing Nut”). I always felt John was overly harsh on the young Andre Agassi (whom he hammered relentlessly) and over the years I think he became a compulsive and reflexive tennis basher. Not that tennis didn’t – doesn’t – need a good poke now and then. It's just that trashing the game became part of John's schtick.

Anyway, John recently lost his father, Martin Feinstein. This touching and refreshingly unsentimental tribute to an impact player on the American high-culture stage ran in Post recently (registration may be required, but it's free).

Condolences to John and his entire family.

A Death in the Family	06/15/2005 - l:40 PM

Out of respect for the recently deceased Edward T. “Ned” Chase, I’m going to paste in (instead of link to) the obituary that is currently up at Tennis Week’s website:

Long-time Tennis Week senior contributing writer Edward T. "Ned" Chase passed away at his home in New York on June 9th after a long illness. He was 86.

He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Ethelyn Atha Chase, two sons, Edward Thornton and Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase, who starred on Saturday Night Live and in several feature films, two daughters, Cynthia Chase-Culler and Daphne Chase Rowe, and nine grandchildren.

The 1941 graduate of Princeton University went on to teach at Stanford University and later served as a Naval lieutenant during World War II. An accomplished editor and writer, Ned Chase was a long-time contributing writer to Tennis Week, serving as an expert on analyzing the comparative accomplishments of the game's greatest players. He was also a fine player in his own right, once tackling the then Wimbledon champion Maureen Connolly on the grass courts of the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, New York, Chase won handily in straight sets.

A service will be held on Thursday, June 16th at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, East Hampton, for members of the immediate family. A memorial service will be announced shortly.

I’ll have a few words of my own to add about Ned soon, as he was the editor who bought my tennis book, The Courts of Babylon: Tales of Greed and Glory from the Harsh New World of Professional Tennis. I’ve never worked with anyone more supportive, or with a more peripatetic intellect.