Tennis Great Vines Is Dead at Age 82 : Obituary: The former U.S. and Wimbledon champion had a short but brilliant career before turning to golf.

Ellsworth Vines, a legendary American tennis player who won three Grand Slam events in the early 1930s and also had a successful career as a pro golfer, died Thursday evening in La Quinta of complications of kidney disease.

Vines, 82, had suffered a heart attack in 1988 and subsequently had kidney failure that required dialysis three times a week as an outpatient.

He grew up in Pasadena, went to Pasadena High and had a brief but brilliant career in tournament tennis. He won the U.S. Nationals, now the U.S. Open, in 1931 and again in 1932, the year he also won Wimbledon. A right-hander who backed up an aggressive serve-and-volley style with fluid ground strokes, Vines was widely regarded by his peers as one of the greatest players ever.

Jack Kramer, longtime friend and one of the few considered to have reached the same level as Vines as a player, said Friday, “Perhaps the greatest compliment about Elly that I hear these days, when people talk about Pete Sampras, is that he plays like Elly did. Some of we older players aren’t sure, of course, that Sampras is quite as good yet.”

Gene Mako of Los Angeles, former U.S. Open and Wimbledon doubles champion, who grew up playing against Vines at the old Pintoresca Courts on Fair Oaks and Washington in Pasadena, said, “Elly was one of the all-time great guys. If every athlete alive in the world today were like Elly, we’d have none of the problems we do today.”

And Jackie Cooper, longtime tennis pro at La Quinta Resort, who established a Hall of Fame there for Vines in a special ceremony a few years ago, said, “He was my hero. He was the most humble champion I have ever known. With all he did, both in golf and tennis, he never thought he was a big shot.”

Fred Perry, British tennis great, once described Vines as “truly a meteoric flash across the sky of tennis.”

And Don Budge, who came after Vines and before Kramer in the line of succession of star American players, once said he was hard-pressed to name a better player than Vines.

“I’m a believer that things get better in time, but, today, I question whether the top player is as good as Vines,” Budge said. “He was the best hitter of a tennis ball I’ve ever seen. When he was on, nobody could beat him.”

Kramer once told a revealing story about Vines’ pinpoint accuracy. After Vines had completed a clay-court match, officials had to redraw the chalk lines because Vines had erased them all with his shots.

Vines left tournament tennis in 1934 to become a professional, which meant he forfeited any chance to play events such as the U.S. Nationals or Wimbledon because they were for amateurs only. Instead, Vines joined the pro tour, which amounted to worldwide barnstorming matches against such foes as Bill Tilden, Budge and Perry.

At 49, Vines was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in 1962. It probably was a surprise conclusion to an equally surprising career, one that began when his father took him along to the public tennis courts as a toddler. But Vines grew up without his father, who abandoned the family--Ellsworth had a younger brother, Ed--when Ellsworth was 7.

In an interview nearly 70 years later, Vines said his drive to succeed might have been caused by his father’s abandonment.

“Looking back on it after all these years, I think I wanted to prove to him that I could play, that I had some worth,” he said.

When Vines was 17, he had already won the California high school championship. About that time, Mercer Beasley, Midwick Country Club tennis pro, spotted him at a junior tournament and began defining Vines’ uniquely aggressive game. Beasley taught Vines to hit accurate shots by hanging a canvas over the net with holes the size of a watermelon cut out of each side and in the middle.

Said Vines: “My job was to put it through those holes.”

Vines had grown to 6 feet 2 and 160 pounds when he entered USC on a tennis and basketball scholarship, but he stayed only one year. Perry T. Jones, the chief figure of junior tennis in Southern California, persuaded Vines to concentrate on tennis.

In 1931, 19-year-old Vines was the dominant player on the summer tennis circuit. He won 13 consecutive tournaments, including the National Clay Court Championships in St. Louis, and entered the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills as the top-seeded player.

Vines faced Perry in the semifinals. He lost the first two sets, then came back to post a 4-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 victory. Vines then defeated George M. Lott Jr., in the final, 7-9, 6-3, 9-7, 7-5, for his first Grand Slam title.

In 1932, Vines made his first trip to England and stunned the tennis world by winning at Wimbledon. He won the final in 42 minutes, 6-4, 6-2, 6-0, over Henry (Bunny) Austin and finished the match with an ace down the center of the court. According to legend, the ball was hit so hard, Austin never knew on which side of him the ball landed.

Vines went on to successfully defend his U.S. Nationals title with another straight-set victory in the final, this one a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, decision over Henri Cochet, one of France’s famed Musketeers.

At 28, Vines abruptly quit tennis. He never played another competitive match and picked up the racket only for an occasional charity appearance. Instead, he thirsted for a new game and decided to try golf on the fledgling PGA tour.

Although he never won a tournament, Vines’ consistency was remarkable. In the 100 golf tournaments he played between 1940 and 1957, he finished in the top 20 in 87 of them. He had 47 top-10 finishes, placed second six times and third nine.

He had his best result in a major tournament when he reached the semifinals of the 1951 PGA Championship at Oakmont Country Club in the days that tournament was match play. Vines lost to Walter Burkemo, who was defeated by Sam Snead for the title.

A former co-owner, with Perry, of the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, Vines later was the golf pro at the now-defunct Midwick in Alhambra, at the Denver Country Club, Wilshire Country Club and Tamarisk in Rancho Mirage.

In the meantime, Vines’ tennis legacy became dulled as years passed, perhaps because, as Perry said, his career came and went so quickly.

Vines is survived by his wife, Verle, and two children, son Ellsworth Jr. and daughter Edie. Services will be held April 1 at 2 p.m. at Church of Religious Science in Palm Desert.

Times Sports Editor Bill Dwyre contributed to this story.