Stan Smith - Career

Career

Smith played collegiate tennis at the University of Southern California, under Coach George Toley, where he was a three-time All-American and won the 1968 NCAA singles championship and the 1967 and 1968 doubles titles. At USC, Smith was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

As a kid, he went to get a job as a ballboy at the Davis Cup but was turned down because the organizers thought he was too clumsy http://www.onlinecollege.org/2010/02/16/50-famously-successful-people-who-failed-at-first/.

In his 1979 autobiography, Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, ranked Smith as one of the 21 best players of all time.

In 2005, TENNIS magazine ranked Smith as 35th in its "40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era".

Smith was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987.

Following his playing career, Smith became active as a coach for the United States Tennis Association. He now has his own academy with Billy Stearns called Smith Stearns Tennis Academy, which is in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

Smith married Princeton University tennis player Marjory Gengler. They later mentored South African tennis player Mark Mathabane, helping increase pressure on the South African government to end Apartheid. Today, Smith lives in Hilton Head with his wife and four children, all of whom competed in collegiate tennis. In Hilton Head he also is a co-owner of the highly successful tennis academy Smith Stearns.

Read more about this topic:  Stan Smith

Famous quotes containing the word career:

    From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.
    Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)

    It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)