Career
Trabert was a stand-out athlete in Tennis and Basketball at the University of Cincinnati, and was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity. In 1951, he won the NCAA Championship Singles title. He was coached by George Menefee. He was also a starter on the basketball team. Previously, at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, he had been state singles champion three times and played guard on the 1948 basketball team that won the district championship.
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. The first win Trabert posted over Talbert came in the final of Cincinnati's international tennis tournament (now known as the Cincinnati Masters) in 1951. Both were enshrined into the Cincinnati Tennis Hall of Fame in 2002. Barry MacKay was enshrined in 2003.
Trabert's record in 1955 was one of the greatest ever by an American tennis player. 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. Only Grand Slam winners Don Budge and Rod Laver, and in 2010 Rafael Nadal, have ever achieved the same feat. Trabert's own chance at a Grand Slam was stopped with a loss to Ken Rosewall in the semifinals at the Australian Championships. Trabert won 18 tournaments in 1955, compiling a match record of 106 wins to 7 losses.
An extremely athletic right-hander who mostly played a serve and volley game, Trabert won all five of the Grand Slam singles finals he appeared in. He won the French Championships in 1954 and 1955 (becoming the last American man to win that event until Michael Chang in 1989), the U.S. Championships in 1953 and 1955, and the Wimbledon title in 1955 without losing a set (a record shared with Don Budge, Chuck McKinley, and Björn Borg).
Trabert, along with Vic Seixas, was an American Davis Cup team mainstay during the early 1950s, during which time the Americans reached the finals 5 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).
Having reached the top amateur ranking in 1955, Trabert turned professional in the fall of that year. He was beaten on the head-to-head world pro tour in 1956 by the reigning king of professional tennis Pancho Gonzales, 74-27. However, he beat Gonzales in 5 sets for the 1956 French Pro title, and beat Frank Sedgman for the same title in 1959. He was runner-up to Sedgman in the Wembley Pro in 1958. In the US Pro, he was runner-up to Alex Olmedo in 1960.
In 2000, the USTA originated the Trabert Cup for Mens 40 and over International Competition.
Read more about this topic: Tony Trabert
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“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)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)