Professional Hope
Following his Wimbledon victory, Riggs and Kramer offered Schroeder $25,000 to turn pro after he won the up-coming 1949 U.S. Open. Schroeder agreed. But Gonzales upset their plans by beating the heavily favored Schroeder in a five-set final that lasted nearly five hours — it has been called the 11th greatest match of all time. Gonzales lost the 1-hour and 15-minute first set 16–18 but finally managed to prevail in the 5th set. Kramer writes that in spite of his friendship with Schroeder, he has always felt that Schroeder subconsciously "tanked" the match, in order to avoid the rigors of the professional tour. In any event, Gonzales was now the two-time American champion and Kramer and Riggs were obliged to sign him, instead of Schroeder, to a professional contract.
Read more about this topic: Ted Schroeder
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or hope:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
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“If you watch a game, it’s fun. If you play it, it’s recreation. If you work at it, it’s golf.”
—Bob Hope (b. 1903)