Match Made in Tennis Heaven

This Christmas story began when Jack Kramer and Ted Schroeder, budding tennis champions, met on a court as 13-year-olds.

Nearly 68 years later, it’s a rare day that these old friends don’t talk on the telephone at least once, sharing memories, a passion for life and a mutual desire to improve junior tennis in the United States with a plan they’re urging the USTA to adopt.

They were born two weeks apart in the summer of 1921, played as rivals and doubles partners, and will each celebrate a 59th wedding anniversary in February, Kramer to his wife Gloria, Schroeder to his wife Ann.

“We all just celebrated a huge event -- two whole years without Jack breaking something,” Schroeder said Monday from his home in La Jolla.

Schroeder said it jokingly, but he was worried about his friend two years ago around Christmas when Kramer was seriously hurt on the golf course he owns while showing one of his grandsons, Michael, then 10, how to drive a cart.

“We started down a little hill to go over a bridge and he panicked a bit and didn’t turn,” Kramer said from his office at Los Serranos Country Club in Chino Hills. “The cart hit the corner of the bridge and I flew out and ended up face down in a little creek. It scares me every once in a while when I drive by there.”

A few golfers on a nearby hole saw the accident and rescued Kramer, who wrecked his right kneecap and fractured a leg.

“He darn near drowned,” Schroeder said.

“I spent New Year’s Day with him, from 8 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock that night, up at the UCLA Medical Center. We bet on every ballgame all day long.”

Kramer gave his buddy another scare five months later when he busted the same leg, taking a misstep while hailing a cab after a dinner preceding another grandson’s graduation from Texas Christian University.

“He spent a week in the hospital in Fort Worth, then was flat on his back until October,” Schroeder said.

In a concession to age, aches and three hip operations, Kramer hasn’t played golf or tennis in seven years.

“I can’t run or play anymore, but I can walk,” he said.

Schroeder still gets out on the golf course by his home, but a bad knee and arthritic back keep his rounds down to nine holes.

Kramer, whose name appeared on 30 million Wilson tennis rackets, is arguably the most influential man in tennis history, making his impact on the game as a player, promoter, co-founder of the ATP and commentator. He won Wimbledon in 1947, the U.S. title in 1946 and ‘47, and was on winning Davis Cup teams in 1939, ’46 and ‘47, the last two with Schroeder as his partner.

“He put more continuing pressure on an opponent than any other player I ever saw or played against,” said Schroeder, who first met Kramer at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. “That goes all the way back to Bill Tilden.”

Kramer was the best player in the world, amateur and pro, from 1946 until he quit in 1953. He could handle Don Budge, Bobby Riggs, Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Sedgman, all the top players at the time. What he couldn’t handle, or wouldn’t tolerate, were the rules that kept him and other pros out of the Grand Slam tournaments.

“If I had been playing at Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals and the others, I might have won 20-25 events over those years,” Kramer said.

Instead, Kramer promoted tours that laid the groundwork for the era of open tennis that began in 1968.

“I’m very proud of forcing the people who ran the sport to turn to the logic of open tennis, which made the Grand Slams and all the associations around the world wealthy,” Kramer said. “My tour, and getting all the top players to turn pro, weakened the amateur game, but the amateur game was phony. The kids were getting money but it was under the table and it wasn’t enough.”

Schroeder won the U.S. title in 1942, Wimbledon in 1949 and played for U.S. Davis Cup teams from 1946 to 1951, compiling an 11-3 record.

“We revolutionized the game in Melbourne in ‘46,” Schroeder said. “Nobody’d seen serve-and-volleyers before. It took the Australians until ’51 to catch up to us.”

Talk to Kramer and Schroeder and it’s clear that they share more than memories and interests. What they have between them is a deep mutual respect that has endured throughout their lives.

“Two things about Jack Kramer,” Schroeder said. “No. 1, he’s one of the few people I know who have never changed one iota since I first met him. No. 2, the world could be falling down upon my head and Kramer is one of only two people I know in this world -- the other is a friend in Australia -- where when you are around them the world is automatically a happy place again.”

Says Kramer: “Ted is practically the only honest man I’ve ever met. His word is good, he follows through on everything he’s ever done.”