Tennis Everyone? : Bush’s Net Partners Doubling as Key Players in His Cabinet

It was Teddy Roosevelt who first ordered a White House lawn to be mowed, rolled, marked and made bully for tennis. It became a court of informal resort for senators and ambassadors, generals and judges, who became known as the Tennis Cabinet.

History, many suspect, is repeating itself within the forming Administration of President-elect George Bush.

Consider Bush’s initial nominations and reappointments: Tennis players are the huge majority. In the main, they are the vice president’s doubles partners on hard, clay and grass courts from Texas to Maine.

Another Tennis Cabinet?

And other hackers from Bush’s circle of colleagues and confidants are reported headed for high office.

Are we at the birth of another Tennis Cabinet?

“That’s exactly where we are,” concluded Bud Collins, sports vivant , columnist, raconteur, tennis historian and commentator wherever the game is played and televised. “I think the White House court will be very busy.”

And why not? “Yeah, he (Bush) is probably the best tennis player who has ever been President. There haven’t been many. Teddy Roosevelt. Ford. Carter. But ‘I think there will be a lot of Washington people working on their game,’ says celebrity tennis pro John Gardiner.

Bush is the real thing and (tennis professional) Pam Shriver speaks very highly of his game.”

Added John Gardiner, doyen of celebrity tennis teachers, owner of tennis ranches in Arizona and California and sponsor of next month’s Senator’s Cup for Washington politicians: “I think there will be a lot of Washington people working on their game.”

Nobody claims, of course, that good ground strokes suddenly have become prerequisites for government appointment.

“Tennis will not be the litmus test for employment,” maintained a spokesperson for Chase Untermeyer, Bush’s director of personnel.

No Court Interviews

Similarly, David Bates, deputy to the vice president’s chief of staff, noted that job interviews are not being conducted on the tennis court attached to Bush’s Washington residence. Nor on the court at his family home in Kennebunkport, Me. Nor at St. Alban’s School, the Swedish Embassy, the Chinese Embassy, the Washington Hilton and the indoor courts at the Washington Navy Yard where Bush regularly hits in winter.

Still, others note that tennis, a pastime that has been a definite political asset since the administrations of medieval France, has become a denominator as common as GOP registration on the resumes of those newly named to Cabinet positions.

At his maiden press conference as President-elect, Bush nominated Texas lawyer James A. Baker III as secretary of State. Baker, 58, a Princeton graduate, and Bush, 64, from Yale, have been tennis partners since a game of doubles at the Houston Country Club in 1970.

Carla Hills, 54, a lawyer, formerly of Los Angeles, who studied at Stanford, Oxford University and also Yale, has been selected by Bush to serve as his U.S. trade representative. She is an enthusiastic and expert tennis player.

Michael Boskin, 43, professor of economics and director of the Stanford Center for Economic Policy Research, has been chosen economic adviser to Bush. Boskin is an avid tennis player who won his Washington spurs with exquisite panache--by beating an economic adviser to presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

(Boskin pointed out, however, that when announcing his nomination, Bush spoke of economic credentials and teaching awards “but didn’t say anything about my tennis.”)

Vice president-elect Dan Quayle, a golfer since birth, took up tennis three years ago. Press secretary Jeff Nesbit describes his boss as “a B player who can hold his own on the court.”

Noted Mark Preston, assistant editor of Tennis magazine: “That likely means the Indiana senator hits more balls than he misses and only occasionally whacks himself with his racquet when he serves.”

Clayton K. Yeutter, 58, tapped last week to serve as secretary of agriculture, is so proud of his tennis game that it is listed in his Who’s Who biography.

Jack Kemp, former Buffalo Bills quarterback and a Bush rival in the GOP presidential primaries, has been chosen to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is a tennis player.

Robert A. Mosbacher will head the Department of Commerce. He is a tennis player.

Sen. John Tower, chosen Friday as secretary of defense, is not a tennis player, but he does play politics. “He follows the game and watches tennis a lot,” his diplomatic secretary said. “He could always learn.”

Media Speculation

And despite much media speculation concerning his Washington future, Judge William H. Webster, 64, another playing member of the Bush league, was indeed reappointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In a telephone interview, Webster, laughing, denied that job security was related to his tennis game. “I don’t think I’m first on his (Bush’s) list to call (for a game),” Webster said. “I get in when they need to fill a (doubles) fourth.”

Then there can be no truth to the Washington rumor that Webster threw several matches against the President-elect and only resumed winning once Bush had decided on his reappointment?

“I’d like to claim that was the reason he (Bush) won so much,” said Webster, head of an agency specializing in much sneakier tactics. “But the only time I have ever won on the other side of the net from him (Bush) was when I played with Marvin (Bush, son of George Bush) and Marvin made up for my deficiencies.

“I think we were playing against (Sen.) Bennett Johnston (D-La.) and I’m not sure I beat him (Bush). I think Marvin beat him. Marvin is a better player than his father.”

But not that much better.

For on the tennis court, the evaluators say, rises a George Bush in clear contradiction to the candidate whose early campaign image was that of Ivy League wimp. Any promise of kinder, gentler times, they add, certainly do not extend to Bush’s times spent on 2,800 square feet of Laykold.

Buchwald’s View

“He’s a very good player,” humor columnist Art Buchwald noted. “I think he’s a much better player than he is a vice president.”

Here are descriptions from those who have bandied Wilsons and Penns with and against Bush: Aggressive. Combative. Tough. A winner with fighter pilot’s reflexes. An assassin at the net with punch volleys and overheads his consistent weapons. A natural doubles player, athletic and honorable on line calls.

No weekend rabbit he, no flailer of orange balls with a wooden racquet only used spasmodically since high school.

As a matter of fact, the incoming 41st President of the United States plays with space-age tools; full size, composite racquets by Wilson and Yonex. His sneakers are by Autry. His game is by former Wimbledon champion John Newcombe (a partner at previous fund-raising matches and invited to the Bush inauguration) and Pam Shriver (another invitee and a campaign worker who regularly hits with Bush) with addenda by Tony Roche (the Australian tennis legend who currently coaches Ivan Lendl).

“I would venture to say that if he entered some 55 (years) or over tournaments, he would be one of the best in the country,” concluded Bates, a regular doubles partner-opponent with the President-elect. “He has quick hands, good hand-eye coordination . . . in a net exchange, he’s very hard to pass.”

For those interested in demeanor, it is said that Bush has snapped at himself for a flubbed shot but never rails at his partners. Nor gives them advice. Nor has he thrown a racquet, argued with an umpire or whacked balls at lines- persons.

For searchers of finer points, Bush hits a topspin forehand with medium wrist. The backhand is sliced or flat. He has a drop shot that in smaller counties would be arrested for loitering. Bush serves deep, with a twist, and consistently to the backhand.

If there is any weakness in the presidential game, Shriver said, it is with the backhand. Yet that, she said, could be corrected if Bush chose to harness his ambidexterity.

A Weak Backhand

“You see (on campaign commercials) Bush toss a football around left-handed on TV but he plays tennis righty,” she explained. “His backhand is so weak, though, that I’m thinking of telling him to hit his backhand lefty. In other words, hit two forehands.”

Said Bates: “I would say the President is an ‘A’ player. Among his peers in the Washington circle he is right up there, about the best. And he’s a lot of fun to play with, a lot of banter.”

The tennis education of George Herbert Walker Bush was hereditary, formal and the social legacy of all true Connecticut Yankees.

His father, Samuel Prescott Bush, played tennis for Stevens Institute of Technology and founded the first tennis club in Columbus, Ohio. Baby Bush was on the courts at home in Greenwich, Conn., when he was 6. His first teacher was Lola Stuart-Hine, a neighbor, a Molyneux model then married to a New York banker.

In his teens, Bush became the pupil of his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, now 87. In a 1985 Mother’s Day article written for the Greenwich Time newspaper, Bush recalled those tennis lessons with his brother:

Patient and Tireless

“I can hear her now: ‘You can do it. You’ll get it.’ And she would be patient and tireless and always absolutely sure we would eventually get it.

“She also tamed our arrogance. I’ll never forget years ago, saying rather innocently, I thought, ‘I was off my game.’ Mother jumped all over me. ‘You are just learning. You don’t have a game.’ ”

But Bush did develop a game, one that grew at Phillip’s Academy at Andover, Mass., and was polished in college. In Houston, in the ‘60s, as a partner in Zapata Petroleum Corp., Bush met Hugh Sweeney, an 18-year veteran of the international tennis circuit.

“He and I reached the quarterfinals of the men’s doubles in the Houston Open,” remembered Sweeney, now 60, and a Houston publisher and polo promoter. “We had the No. 2-seeded team 5-3 in the final set. Then we lost.”

To finance his 1970 political run for the Senate seat of Lloyd Bentsen--another tennis player who eventually would become a presidential opponent--Bush and Sweeney organized exhibition tennis matches.

“One of them was with John Newcombe and Tony Roche and Dan Sandifer of the Washington Redskins,” Sweeney said. “George, with Newcombe, won that match before a packed house at Wright Stadium.

“Then we did one at the Net Set Racquet Club with Bill Archer, a Republican congressman from Houston, and Roche. George played with Newcombe again and won that one, too.”

On the tennis court, Sweeney said, the professional players allow Bush little quarter. Nor do they feed him soft shots to create some semblance of competition. “He can hold his own in almost any company,” Sweeney said.

Held His Own

In Washington, Bush has more than held his own against most Capitol Hill comers. His regular opponent has been Count Wilhelm Wachtmeister, the Swedish ambassador. On a tour to China, he played and undiplomatically beat Wan Li, now chairman of the People’s Congress.

There have been Baker and Bates. Webster and Johnston. Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) and Sen. John Breaux (D-La.). Sen. Bentsen who, according to a spokesman, is a ‘B’ player who struggles against Bush. And Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady--a Reagan appointee, also tough tennis player who has retained his government post.

Commentator Collins--a doubles specialist who plays the game almost as expertly as he narrates its tournaments--has not rallied with Bush “but I hope to one day.

“I have hit with (President Gerald R.) Ford,” Collins continued. “He had two huge knee braces when he played and looked a little bit like the ‘Mummy’s Curse.’

“I did not hit with Teddy Roosevelt although there are some people who do not believe that.”

Tennis and the White House, Collins said, have been an uneven, sometimes undemocratic match. What Roosevelt had installed, his successor, William Howard Taft, wanted to destroy.

“It was Taft, a golfer, who built the Oval Office and had the tennis court torn up to make room,” he explained. “But Edith Taft wanted a place for her daughters to play tennis and entertain their beaus, so she had the present court built down the lawn aways, a clay court then but now a hard court.”

Fatal Foot Blister

On that clay court, two brothers, the sons of President Calvin Coolidge, John and Calvin Coolidge Jr., played their last singles match together.

The game ended with young Calvin nursing a foot blister. It developed into blood poisoning, from which Calvin Jr. died at the age of 16.

Collins believes that a tennis-playing President in the White House will do much to rejuvenate a game that has descended sharply from the all-community passion it was five years ago. In that time, according to Gardiner, the game has lost 5 million players, or 24% of its playing pool.

“You know, when Eisenhower was pitching and putting on the back lawn, that really helped golf,” Collins added. “Now, Carter didn’t encourage attention being paid to his tennis. Nor, I think, did Ford. But I think that Bush will openly revel in it and that has to help the game.”

In the Bush family, for three generations, it has been tennis, everyone.

Four Bush sons and a daughter grew up playing the game and Marvin Bush plays the game close to pro levels.

The future First Lady, Barbara Bush, also is a player.

“Don’t attribute this to me,” one high-level government official said. “But he (George) and Barbara both play a lot but very rarely play together.”

As with almost all husband and wife tennis, he added, a marriage without mixed doubles “just seems to work out better.”

Court proficiency, however, isn’t exactly a guaranteed way to Washington. It certainly didn’t help one man who captained his high school tennis team and also played for Swarthmore College. But Michael Dukakis may try again.

On the other hand, being a politician probably helped one man achieve at tennis.

Hamilton Jordan was White House chief of staff during the Carter Administration and a regular on the all-weather court at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (Carter, with Jordan’s help, maintained a tight list of who played on the court and when, in order to schedule his own game without bumping other players.)

Today, Jordan is executive director of the Assn. of Tennis Professionals.

RATING THE BUSH LEAGUE Nicholas Brady: The Secretary of the Treasury is a solid club player with a high “B” ranking, but a veteran whose game has been slowed by hip problems. James A. Baker: The incoming Secretary of State is considered a crafty, strong veteran on the courts and a major contender on any country club circuit. William Webster: Spies report the ongoing CIA director is very competitive on the courts, but ranks a low “B” with enthusiasm much higher than his abilities.