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Pancho Gonzales, also spelled González (born Los
Angeles, California|Los Angeles, May 9, 1928; died
Las Vegas, July 3, 1995), was the dominant male
tennis player in the world for about a dozen
years. Nearly forgotten today, Gonzales was one of
the greatest players of all time.

For about 35 years, from about 1920 to 1955, Bill
Tilden was generally considered the greatest
player who had ever lived.  From the mid-1950s to
about 1970, many people thought that Gonzales had
claimed that title.  Since then, champions of the
Open era, first Rod Laver, then John McEnroe, and
finally Pete Sampras have been widely considered
as being better than either Tilden or Gonzales.
Even among experts, however, no overall consensus
exists.  Jack Kramer, for instance, who became a
world-class player in 1940 and beat Gonzales badly
in his first year as a professional, still
believes that the 1930s Ellsworth Vines was the
greatest player ever.  But he has also stated that
Gonzales was better than either Laver or Sampras. 
Pancho Segura, who played, and sometimes beat, all
of the great players from the 1930s through the
1960s has said flatly that Gonzales was the best
of all time.

He was born Ricardo Alonso González, but was also
known as Richard Gonzalez. His parents, Manuel
Antonio González and Carmen Alire, migrated from
Chihuahua, Mexico to the U.S. in the early 1900s. 
The eldest of 7 children, he had a troubled
adolescence and taught himself to play tennis with
no encouragement from the exclusively white, and
predominantly upper-class, tennis establishment of
1940s Los Angeles.

As an unknown 20-year-old, Gonzales unexpectedly
won the United States amateur championship at
Forest Hills in 1948.  He repeated the next year,
then turned professional.  He was badly beaten in
his first year on the professional tour by the
reigning king of professional tennis, Jack Kramer
(tennis player)|Jack Kramer, and withdrew from the
public eye.  He won some professional tournaments,
however, defeating his old nemesis Kramer in the
process, and by 1953 he was the dominant player in
the professional ranks.  

Gonzales played as a professional until the Open
era of tennis began in 1968 and was therefore
ineligible to compete at Wimbledon
Championships|Wimbledon or the US Open
(tennis)|U.S. championship again until he was 40
years old. He was completely dominant for about a
dozen years during the 50s and early 60s, beating
all opponents on a regular basis, including Frank
Sedgman, Ken Rosewall, Lew Hoad, Tony Trabert, Mal
Anderson, and Ashley Cooper. In the 12-year period
that he dominated tennis he won the United States
professional title 8 times and the English
professional title 4 times as well as beating, in
head-to-head tours, all the best amateurs who
turned pro. 

When Open tennis began, Gonzales continued to win
an occasional tournament as he aged into his 40s,
beating the best players in the world, including
Laver, Stan Smith, John Newcombe, and Jimmy
Connors, all of whom were 15 to 20 years younger. 
He is the oldest player to have ever won a
professional tournament, winning the Des Moines
Open over 24-year-old Georges Goven when he was
three months shy of his 44th birthday.

He was known for his fiery will to win, his
cannonball serve, and his all-conquering net game,
a combination so potent that the rules on the
professional tour were briefly changed in the
1950s to prohibit him from advancing to the net
immediately after serving. He won even so, and the
rules were quickly changed back. In 1971, when he
was 43 and Jimmy Connors was 19, he beat the great
young baseliner by playing from the baseline at
the Pacific Southwest Open.

Roy Emerson, the fine Australian player, won a
dozen Grand Slam titles during the 1960s when he
was an amateur and all the best players in the
world were professionals and unable to compete
against him. This has led many people today,
ignorant of the history of tennis, to rank Emerson
as one of the greatest players who ever lived. 
Emerson finally turned pro in 1968, having won the
French championship the year before.  Gonzales was
40 years old, eight years older than Emerson.  In
the 1968 French Open, he beat Emerson, the
defending champion, in the quarter-finals.  He
played Emerson another 12 times in the next five
years and beat Emerson all 12 times.  Roy Emerson,
winner of a dozen Grand Slams, nearly a decade
younger, never beat Pancho Gonzales.

Gonzales married six times (twice to actress
Madelyn Darrow), and had seven children. His last
wife, Rita, is the sister of tennis great Andre
Agassi.  Gonzales died, nearly broke and almost
friendless, in a tiny house near the Las Vegas
airport. Andre Agassi paid for his funeral.

He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall
of Fame in Newport, R.I., in 1968.

Grand Slam Tournament wins:
*US Open (tennis)|United States championships:
**singles champion - 1948, 1949
*Wimbledon championships:
**doubles champion - 1949
*French Open|French championships:
**doubles champion - 1949

==Professional World Singles Tournament wins==
*Wembley Arena|Wembley, England
**Singles, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1956
**Finalist, 1953

*United States Professional Championship
**Singles, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958,
1959, 1961
**Finalist, 1951, 1952, 1964

*French Professional Championship
**Finalist, 1953, 1956, 1961

==Tour results==
*1949-1950 Jack Kramer beat Gonzales 96 matches to
27
*1954 Gonzales beat Frank Sedgman 30-21 and Pancho
Segura 30-21 in a series of round-robin matches
*1955-1956 Gonzales beat Tony Trabert 74-27
*1957 Gonzales beat Ken Rosewall 50-26
*1958 Gonzales beat Lew Hoad 51-36
*1959 Gonzales beat Mal Anderson, Ashley Cooper,
and Hoad in round-robin matches
*1959-1960 Gonzales beat Alex Olmedo, Segura, and
Rosewall in round-robin matches
*1961 Gonzales was the major winner in a tour that
included Earl (Butch) Buchholz, Barry MacKay,
Andres Gimeno, Hoad, Olmedo, Sedgman, Trabert, and
Cooper.



*List of male tennis players