Pancho Gonzales

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Pancho Gonzales bigraphy, stories - American tennis player

Pancho Gonzales : biography

May 9, 1928 – July 3, 1995

Ricardo Alonso González (May 9, 1928 – July 3, 1995), also known as Richard Gonzales, and usually as Pancho Gonzales, was an American tennis player. He was the World No. 1 tennis player for an all time record eight years from 1954 to 1960. He won 17 Major singles titles including 15 Pro Slams and 2 Grand Slams.

Largely self-taught, Gonzales was a successful amateur player in the late-1940s, twice winning the United States Championships. He is still widely considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game. A 1999 Sports Illustrated article about the magazine’s 20 "favorite athletes" of the 20th century said about Gonzales (their number 15 pick): "If earth was on the line in a tennis match, the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzalez." The American tennis commentator Bud Collins echoed this in an August 2006 article for MSNBC.com: "If I had to choose someone to play for my life, it would be Pancho Gonzales."

Personal and family life

González’s parents, Manuel Antonio González and Carmen Alire Alonso, migrated from the Mexican state of Chihuahua to the U.S. in the early 1900s. González was born in 1928, the eldest of seven children. Kramer writes that "Gorgo was not the poor Mexican-American that people assumed. He didn’t come from a wealthy family, but from a stable middle-class background, probably a lot like mine. He had a great mother and there was always a warm feeling of family loyalty. If anything, he might have been spoiled as a kid. It’s a shame he suffered discrimination because of his Mexican heritage". However, according to other sources, Gonzales’s father worked as a house-painter and he, along with his six siblings, were raised in a working-class neighborhood. In his autobiography, González states, "We had few luxuries at our house. Food wasn’t abundant but it was simple and filling, and we never went hungry. Our clothes were just clothes – inexpensive but clean."

González had a long scar across his left cheek that, according to his autobiography, some members of the mass media of the 1940s attributed to his being a Mexican-American pachuco and hence involved in knife fights. This was one more slur that embittered González towards the media in general. The scar was actually the result of a prosaic street accident in 1935 when he was seven years old: pushing a scooter too fast, he ran into a passing car and had his cheek gashed open by its door handle. He spent two weeks in the hospital as a result.

Gonzales was referred to as either "Richard" or "Ricardo" by his friends and family. As the child of working-class Hispanic parents, young Richard was well aware of the social prejudices of his day. He reportedly disliked the nickname "Pancho", as it was a common derogatory term used against Mexican Americans at the time. In the Hispanic community, the name "Pancho" is traditionally only given to individuals whose first name is "Francisco", as was the case with Gonzales’ tennis rival, Pancho Segura.

Although his surname was properly spelled "González", during most of his playing career he was known as "Gonzales". It was only towards the end of his life that the Spanish language spelling began to be used regularly. Kramer wrote that one of Gonzales’s wives, Madelyn Darrow, "decided to change his name. Madelyn discovered in the Castilian upper-crust society, the fancy Gonzales families spelled their name with a z at the end to differentiate from the hoi polloi (sic) Gonzales. So it was González for a time, and even now you will occasionally see that spelling pop up. "The Game, My 40 Years in Tennis (1979), Jack Kramer with Frank Deford (ISBN 0-399-12336-9), page 201 However, Kramer’s theory is unlikely, as González is a far more common spelling of that name in Hispanic communities than the anglicised "Gonzales". In his ghost-written 1959 autobiography, "Gonzales" is used throughout.