Word: pancho
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...allowed to compete on the national teams. What's more, said he, if an open cup tournament is not approved this year, the U.S.L.T.A. may promote a "super tennis series" that would bring the cup champions up against such top contract pros as Rod Laver, Tony Roche and Pancho Gonzalez...
...serve, and the first to win a predetermined number of points by a margin of two, won the set. Under the old system, the competitors struggled on and on until one of them won by two games. Thus it took 5 hrs. 20 min. at Wimbledon last year for Pancho Gonzalez to defeat Chuck Pasarell 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9-a situation that proved exhausting for players and spectators alike, and utterly impossible for network TV coverage...
...poor fellow sounds like a candidate for the geriatric ward, but it's only Pancho Gonzalez describing how it feels to be 41 and starting his 22nd year of professional tennis. It hurts, obviously. Yet there are compensations. Big compensations. In the opening match of the 1970 season at Madison Square Garden, Gonzalez took on Australia's Rod Laver, 31, the top-ranked pro on the tour for the past four years. The old outpatient not only survived; he outlasted Laver through five grueling sets and walked off with the $10,000 winner-take-all prize money...
Jungle Cat. The matches were the first in a ten-city tour offering $147,000 in prize money, and Gonzalez is determined to get the lion's share. Not that Pancho is exactly strapped for cash. He has been topping $100,000 annually from tennis and other interests for the past several years. What keeps him going is the same fierce pride that has marked the moody, 6-ft. 3-in. Mexican-American ever since he arrived on the scene in 1949, firmly convinced that "I'm the best tennis player in the world." There have been disbelievers...
...heart as art. He has made concessions. He uses a lighter aluminum racket. He cuts the pockets out of his tennis shorts lest they get soggy with sweat and weigh him down. And he has taken to rigorous training, practicing three hours daily and jogging around his eight-acre Pancho Gonzalez Tennis Ranch in Malibu, Calif. As for court tactics, he likens himself to an aging boxer who can no longer rely on a quick knockout but must pick out a weak spot and "keep punching until the muscles give." His victory over Laver was a case in point...