LESSONS SERVED

The rich, relevant, and sometimes, reactionary snapshot history of Los Angeles tennis in the 1900s, from A to Z:

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A: is for Tracy Austin, who appeared on the cover of World Tennis magazine at age 4. A child prodigy coached by Vic Braden and later Robert Lansdorp, Austin grew up in Rolling Hills and became the youngest female to win the U.S. Open at 16 years 9 months in 1979.

Lansdorp promised to quit smoking if she won the Open. Austin promptly knocked off Martina Navratilova in the semifinals and Chris Evert in the final. Austin would add the mixed doubles title at Wimbledon with her brother John in 1980 and the 1981 U.S. Open title, beating Navratilova, 7-6, in the third set.

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B: is for Billie Jean King, feminist hero as conqueror of Bobby Riggs, Fed Cup captain, and living legend, who collected a record 20 Wimbledon singles and doubles titles. She was raised in Long Beach under modest circumstances, her father worked for the Long Beach fire department. Her brother, Randy Moffitt, became a major league pitcher.

B is also for Pauline Betz and Louise Brough. Betz didn’t receive formal tennis training until she was 15, but she remembered watching Don Budge play at the Pacific Southwest tournament when she was 14 and marveled at his backhand. Coached by Eleanor “Teach” Tennant, Betz went on to win the U.S. Championships four times--including three consecutive years, 1942-1944--and won Wimbledon on her first try, in 1946.

A four-time Wimbledon champion, Brough, who learned the game on public courts near her home in Beverly Hills, also reached the finals of the U.S. Championships five times, winning in 1947. Her final Wimbledon singles title came in 1955 at age 32.

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C: is for Michael Chang, who spent his formative years in Orange County, winning the national 18s at Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1987, and sending an electric shock through the sports world by winning the French Open at 17 in 1989.

Along the way, he upset then-No. 1 Ivan Lendl in the fourth round with a combination of guts and determination and used those abilities to defeat Stefan Edberg in the final in five sets.

“He’s like that silent kid in the schoolyard you never wanted to get into a fight with because you knew he’d fight you for three days if necessary. And you’d have to kill him to win,” wrote Times columnist Jim Murray about Chang in 1989.

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D: is for Dodo Cheney, the living link to the earliest days of tennis in Los Angeles. Daughter of May Sutton Bundy and Los Angeles Tennis Club founder Thomas Bundy, Cheney amassed 301 national titles: 146 singles and 155 doubles. She won her first national title with Betz at the U.S. National Indoors in 1941.

Internationally, Cheney, 83, also made her mark, winning a Grand Slam event, the Australian Championships in 1938.

D: is also for Lindsay Davenport of Newport Beach, who won the U.S. Open in 1998 on her mother’s birthday and became No. 1 in the world shortly thereafter and added a Wimbledon singles title to her collection in July.

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E: is for Exposition Park, where the legendary Pancho Gonzalez learned how to play with a racket his mother bought for 50 cents. Gonzalez, who died in 1995, won the U.S. Championships in 1948 and 1949.

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F: is for Bob Falkenburg, who with his partner, Ted Schroeder, took four hours 45 minutes to defeat Pancho Gonzalez and Hugh Stewart, 36-34, 3-6, 4-6, 6-4, 19-17, to win the Southern California Championships at the Los Angeles Tennis Club in 1949.

Earlier that day, Schroeder easily won the singles title in 40 minutes, losing only three games to Gonzalez. That same year, Schroeder won Wimbledon in his first--and only--attempt. Falkenburg won Wimbledon the previous year, in 1948.

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G: is Steffi Graf, who had two landmark moments in Los Angeles early in her illustrious career. Tennis returned to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as a demonstration sport, and two gold-medal stars were born--a shy 15-year-old with a powerful forehand, Graf, and an equally reserved serve-and-volleyer, 18-year-old Stefan Edberg.

Three years later, Graf became No. 1 for the first time, supplanting Martina Navratilova. Graf ascended to the top spot at the Manhattan Beach tournament, defeating Chris Evert, 6-3, 6-4, in the final. “I don’t really think about it, but if it’s a nice dream, it’s going to be forever,” Graf said.

It wasn’t forever, but Graf remained No. 1 long after that day at the Manhattan Country Club. She was the top player in the world for 186 consecutive weeks, until March 10, 1991.

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H: is for Cari Hagey. Two 11-year-olds, Hagey and Colette Kavanaugh, gained a great deal of attention for playing the longest point at a junior tournament in Anaheim in 1977. The point lasted 511/2 minutes. Hagey lost the point--netting a shot--but won the three-set match in 31/2 hours.

The ball was said to have crossed the net 1,029 times, which leads to another question. Who was counting?

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I: is for Indian Wells, the small community that was pulled into the major leagues by the vision of Charlie Pasarell when Grand Champions Resort was put up in 1987. And for an encore, Pasarell will kick off the 2000s a few forehands away in Indian Wells with a new state-of-the-art complex.

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J: is for Perry T. Jones, fondly called “Last of the Victorians” and “Mr. Tennis” after he died in 1970. The autocratic czar of tennis ruled the local game with a singular voice, running the Pacific Southwest tournament and the Southern California Tennis Assn.

He inspired and antagonized Billie Jean King and Pancho Gonzalez. The 12-year-old King said she was once excluded from a group photo by Jones because she was wearing shorts instead of a tennis dress. Jones barred Gonzalez from competition because he had dropped out of school.

“It took a while to know Perry-- like, a decade if he liked you, a quarter of a century if he could tolerate you, and never if he considered you common,” Jim Murray wrote. “..... Fussy, arbitrary, demanding, he wore bow ties and tinted glasses and no day was too hot for him to appear with his collar unbuttoned or sleeves rolled up.” *

K: is for Jack Kramer, star player, pioneer, promoter and visionary. As a player, he won Wimbledon once and the U.S. Championships twice in the amateur era. He brought order to the fledgling pro tour and later became the first executive director of the ATP.

His tennis roots were at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. “The L.A. Tennis Club was like a laboratory,” he wrote in his 1979 book “The Game.”

“When I was a teenager at the L.A. Tennis Club, I could get matches against 1/8Ellsworth 3/8 Vines, 1/8Bill 3/8 Tilden, 1/8Bobby 3/8 Riggs, Gene Mako, Ted Schroeder, Jack Tidball, Frank Shields, and--often as not--the players on the UCLA and Southern Cal teams.”

K is also for Robert Kelleher, former president of the U.S. Tennis Assn., back when it was known as the U.S. Lawn Tennis Assn., from 1967-1969. The U.S. district court judge, a backer of the open tennis movement, was also captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team in the ‘60s. He was a ballboy captain at the 1930 U.S. Championships.

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L: is for Los Angeles Tennis Club, the enduring hub of Southern California tennis in the 1900s. A small group of players took an option on 51/2 acres in Hancock Park and paid $1,000 for the land, and the club was incorporated in 1920 with 50 charter members, including founder Thomas Bundy and May Sutton Bundy and her three sisters.

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M: is for Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach, which has hosted a women’s professional event since 1982. Winners through the years have ranged from Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf to Amy Frazier and Claudia Kohde-Kilsch.

Serena Williams tuned up for her Grand Slam breakthrough at the U.S. Open with a title at Manhattan Beach in August. Perhaps one of the odder occurrences came in 1988 when a light bulb injected with yellow paint hit the ground about two feet from Gabriela Sabatini, just as she was facing match point in the final against Evert. Evert won.

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N: is for night tennis, which made its debut in Los Angeles in 1927. Thomas Bundy donated a set of lights for the center court at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, and Bill Tilden and his Davis Cup teammates played an exhibition in the spring at night.

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O: is for Ojai, one of the oldest tournaments in the United States. It started in 1896 and its competitors over the years read like a list from a tennis encyclopedia--Bobby Riggs, Gene Mako, Don Budge, Louise Brough, Jack Kramer, Ted Schroeder, Maureen Connolly, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, just to name a few.

Kramer, who twice won titles as a junior, recalled playing in front of actress Shirley Temple, who was on hand with her schoolmates.

Not to be forgotten or overlooked--the traditional afternoon tea and orange juice.

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P: is for Pacific Southwest, the famous tournament in Los Angeles where tennis and Hollywood often intersected. It was at this event that struggling champion Alice Marble received career motivation from the likes of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in 1937.

Marble, during a match, overheard Gable say: “Look honey, we all like Alice. She’s a real nice person, but she doesn’t have it.”

The rest is history. Marble, who had won the U.S. Championships in 1936, won again in 1938, ’39 and ’40 and won Wimbledon in 1939.

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Q: is for Queen of the Rose Parade. May Sutton Bundy, named after her father’s schooner, was the first American to win a singles title at Wimbledon in 1905. Another of her many accomplishments: In 1908, she was the first sports celebrity to be named Queen of the Tournament of Roses in Pasadena and carried a pink umbrella on that proud occasion.

The Sutton youngsters even helped build their own tennis court when they were kids growing up in Pasadena on a 10-acre ranch. The Sutton sisters won every singles title in the Southern California Championships from 1899 to 1915.

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R: is for Bobby Riggs, the consummate tennis hustler born in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles. Known primarily for his historic battle of the sexes matches against Margaret Court and Billie Jean King--he won the first and lost the second--Riggs is also notable for placing a bet on himself in 1939.

The venue was Wimbledon and Riggs bet with London bookies on himself to win all three titles--singles, doubles and mixed doubles-- and he carried off the amazing feat, winning $108,000.

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S: is for Pete Sampras, who was not far removed from playing tennis for Palos Verdes High when legend Fred Perry spotted him and predicted greatness, saying he would win Wimbledon. Sampras said, modestly: “That’s really nice to have someone say, but come on, Fred, get a grip.”

Twelve Grand Slam titles later-- including six Wimbledon titles--Perry looked like a prophet.

S is also for Stan Smith. Ten years ago, this spot would have been occupied solely by Smith. But 10 years ago, Sampras was still one year away from winning his first Grand Slam title, the 1990 U.S. Open.

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T: is for Bill Tilden. The legendary champion was invited to play in the first Pacific Southwest tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Club in 1927 and went on to win the first singles title, defeating Frank Hunter, 6-2, 6-4, 6-2.

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U: is for UCLA, which has hosted a men’s professional event since the Los Angeles Tennis Center opened in 1984. Recent winners include Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Michael Chang.

The first major event held at the facility was the NCAA championships in ’84 and a few months later, tennis rejoined the Olympics, as a demonstration sport at UCLA.

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V: is for Ellsworth Vines, who grew up in Pasadena and could seemingly do it all. He was a serve-and-volleyer with smooth groundstrokes who won three Grand Slam events in the early ‘30s and went on to have a successful career as a pro golfer.

He developed his shot-making accuracy by hanging a canvas over the net with holes the size of a watermelon cut out of each side and in the middle.

Vines died at age 82 in 1994.

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W: is for Venus and Serena Williams, who seem ready to transform the sport. When they were growing up in Compton, their father, Richard, declared his daughters would be champions and that his youngest child, Serena, would be the best.

The verdict? Venus is No. 3 in the world and Serena is No. 4. But Serena won the first Grand Slam singles title in the family, defeating Martina Hingis to win the U.S. Open in September.

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X: is for Francis X. Shields, Davis Cup star and grandfather of actress Brooke Shields. Shields won the deciding match against Australia in the Davis Cup semifinals in 1934, as the United States rallied from a 2-0 deficit.

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Y: is for Pat Yeomans, who won the U.S. junior girls’ championship in 1935. She was the daughter of the late Bill Henry, former Times sports editor. Yeomans, Jack Kramer and Joe Bixler made a presentation--an ultimately persuasive one--to the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the inclusion of tennis as a demonstration sport in the 1984 Olympics.

A few years later, Yeomans came up with the idea of holding a youth vs. experience match involving senior players against youngsters from Southern California. In 1991, one of those matches featured 10-year-old Venus Williams against Dodo Cheney, 74. Williams won, 6-1, 6-0.

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Z: is for Valerie Ziegenfuss, one of the nine players who started the breakaway women’s tour in 1970 by signing $1 contracts. The other eight players were Billie Jean King, Nancy Richey, Judy Dalton, Kerry Melville, Rosie Casals, Julie Heldman, Kristy Pigeon and Peaches Bartkowicz.

Ziegenfuss, who was ranked in the top 10 in the United States four times, was a top local junior, winning the Southern California Tennis Assn. girls’ 18-and-under title in 1967.