Tony Trabert

Trabert (left) with Jack Kramer in 1955

Trabert was a stand-out athlete in tennis and basketball at the University of Cincinnati, and was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity.[2] In 1951, he won the NCAA Championship Singles title.[3] He played doubles with Bob Mault and was coached by George Menefee, who later became the head trainer for the Los Angeles Rams. Trabert was also a starter on the Cincinnati Bearcats basketball team at the University of Cincinnati.[4] Previously, at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, he had been Ohio scholastic champion three times and played guard on the 1948 basketball team that won the District Championship.[4]

A native of Cincinnati, Trabert grew up two houses down from a public park. It had clay courts that helped hone his groundstrokes.[5] By age 11, Trabert was winning junior tournaments and eventually became the world's No. 1 amateur at age 25. He turned pro after winning the ’55 U.S. Championships because he had a wife and two children to support. Trabert honed his tennis skills on the courts of the Cincinnati Tennis Club with the help of another member of that club, fellow International Tennis Hall of Famer Billy Talbert. Talbert became Trabert's mentor. In 1951, Trabert posted his first win over Talbert in the final of Cincinnati's international tennis tournament (now known as the Cincinnati Masters). In 1953, Trabert won the men's singles in the Ojai Tennis Tournament.[6]

Trabert's record in 1955 was one of the greatest ever by an American tennis player.[2] He won the three most prestigious tournaments in amateur tennis—the French, Wimbledon, and American Championships—en route to being ranked world no. 1 among the amateurs for that year.[7] In the midst of his amateur career, Trabert's game was interrupted by a two-year stint in the Navy, serving on an aircraft carrier during the Korean War, but this did not stop him.[8][4] He is one of only seven male players to have won three Grand Slam singles title in a year.[5] Trabert's own chance at a Grand Slam was stopped with a loss to Ken Rosewall in the semifinals at the Australian Championships.[9] Trabert won 18 tournaments in 1955, compiling a match record of 106 wins to 7 losses, which included a 38-match winning streak.[3]

An athletic right-hander who mostly played a serve and volley game,[5] Trabert won all five of the Grand Slam singles finals he appeared in. He won the French Championships in 1954 and 1955 (1954 over Mervyn Rose, Budge Patty in the semifinal and Arthur Larsen in the final, and 1955 over Rose in the semifinal and Sven Davidson in the final), becoming the last American man to win that event until Michael Chang in 1989,[2] the U.S. Championships in 1953 and 1955 (1953 over Vic Seixas in the final, and 1955 over Rosewall in the final), and the Wimbledon title in 1955 (over Kurt Nielsen in the final) without losing a set (a record shared with Don Budge, Chuck McKinley, and Björn Borg).[5][8]

Trabert, along with Vic Seixas, was an American Davis Cup team mainstay during the early 1950s, during which time the Americans reached the finals five times, winning the cup in 1954. It was one of only two victories over the dominant Australian teams during the decade (the other being in 1958). He called the 1954 Davis Cup win the "biggest thrill in my tennis career".[8]

Having reached the top amateur ranking in 1955, Trabert turned professional in the fall of that year. Trabert explained: “When I won Wimbledon as an amateur, I got a 10-pound certificate, which was worth $27 redeemable at Lilly White’s Sporting Goods store in London. Jack Kramer offered me a guarantee of $75,000 against a percentage of the gate to play on his tour." With a wife and two children to support, the decision was clear.[10] In 1956, he was beaten on the head-to-head world pro tour by the reigning king of professional tennis Pancho Gonzales, 74–27, consisting mostly of indoor matches on a portable loose canvas surface.[2] However, he beat Gonzales in 5 sets at Roland Garros in the final of the 1956 French Pro title.[5] Trabert also won a South American tour against Gonzales in 1956, winning 6 matches against Gonzales outdoors on clay, and losing three matches to the champion indoor, for a 6–3 tour victory.[11] For the year 1956 as a whole, Trabert had an edge over Gonzales in outdoor matches of 15-11 (1-1 on grass, 5–5 on cement, and 9–5 on clay).[12]

In the 1958 pro tour, Trabert won a personal series against Segura 34–31, showing that he had adjusted to the portable canvas surface used by the Kramer pros in small indoor venues and gyms.[13] In the Wembley Pro in 1958, he defeated Rosewall in the semi-final and was runner-up to Sedgman . In the French Pro at Roland Garros in 1959, Trabert beat Rosewall in the semifinal and then defeated Frank Sedgman in the final, to win his fourth title at the red clay venue.[5] In the 1960 US Pro (billed as Cleveland World Pro), he was runner-up to Alex Olmedo. In November 1961, Trabert led the United States team into the Kramer Cup final (the pro equivalent of the Davis Cup) at Ellis Park in Johannesburg. Trabert defeated Rosewall in four sets, but lost the fifth and deciding rubber to Hoad in four sets.[14] In October 1962, Trabert won the South African Pro Championships on the cement courts of Ellis Park in Johannesburg by defeating Hoad in the final in five sets.[15] Trabert also had wins over Hoad at the Forest Hills Tournament of Champions in 1957 and 1958.[16]

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