2024
EDWARD GOLDMAN​
Picture it: Forest Hills, 1976. A bookbinding professional who loves tennis and photography borrows a US Open media credential from a friend. (Security back then wasn’t exactly what it is today.) He attends the event, takes photos for fun, and all the other photographers and journalists around him wonder who he is. Over time, though, he makes some connections and begins to sell his work, and in 1982 he receives his first full-fledged credential at Flushing Meadows—where the Grand Slam tournament has now moved. He begins photographing tennis players for Tennis Week, and then the USTA, and then USTA Eastern. He forms lifelong friendships, offers his services pro bono to local tennis organizations, and ultimately sees his snapshots of Grand Slam champions line the halls of Arthur Ashe Stadium.
For longtime tennis fan Ed Goldman, these experiences have led to a life in full color. Even after 40 years, he lights up when reflecting on his unique view of the game.
“It’s so much more than a job because of my love for tennis and how exciting the events and the participants are,” Goldman says. “Because it’s an individual sport, there is an intensity, positive and negative, that is openly on display throughout. That makes it so much fun to be right there in the front row.”
From his vantage point in the photographer’s pit at the US Open, Goldman has observed and snapped some of the most expressive athletes in the sport. He was “enamored” by John McEnroe and thought Yannick Noah “came alive” on court. But nothing came quite close to capturing Rafael Nadal in full flight.
“Rafa was very special,” he says. “His intensity was beyond intensity. You’d need to come up with another word for it.”
Goldman’s work can still be seen today around the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Some appear along the walls inside the president’s entrance hall and the inner corridor of Arthur Ashe Stadium, and one giant banner of McEnroe hangs above the courtside level walkway. Quite a few images of US Open champions holding their trophies adorn the atrium of the Indoor Training Center. For many years he served as a contributing photographer to the famed Tennis Week magazine; the best photo he ever took, in his opinion—Arantxa Sȧnchez Vicario kneeling after winning the US Open in 1994—appeared on that publication’s cover.
Goldman’s proximity to some of these tennis VIPs eventually extended beyond the courtside seats. Over the years, as he became more entrenched in the world of tennis, he developed connections with some of the game's legends and industry vets. Former NYC mayor and fellow Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer David N. Dinkins was a good friend; they first met chit-chatting in between matches at Forest Hills. And Arthur Ashe, another Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer, had Goldman’s number—literally.
“When Arthur was commentating at an event at Forest Hills way back when, I took a photo of him,” Goldman recalls. “I probably carried it around for ten years, but I finally got it to him in 1992 when he was battling AIDS. One day I get this call, and he goes, ‘Hello, this is Arthur Ashe.’ It was mind blowing. I knew he was in the hospital. He’d just called to thank me for the photo. He was one of the finest human beings of the 20th century. That he devoted his time and his energy toward me, even when seriously ill. He was just incredible.”
Some time later, Goldman met Ashe’s widow, Jeanne, at an event and recounted this story. The pair hit it off, and shortly thereafter, Goldman began shooting some of Jeanne’s charitable efforts pro bono, including “a giant indoor gala that Muhammad Ali was attending” in 1998. This, of course, was not a new endeavor for Goldman. For over four decades, he has also donated his services to two local NYC tennis organizations that work with underserved communities: New York Junior Tennis & Learning (NYJTL) and the Harlem Junior Tennis & Education Program (HJTEP). This kind of work, he says, makes him the most proud when he looks back on all he’s accomplished.
Another philanthropic association with which he is uniquely acquainted is the Junior Tennis Foundation. Goldman can’t remember the first year he began photographing Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, but he has been a fixture at the event since at least the early 1990s. One of the biggest highlights of the gig, he notes, was witnessing McEnroe’s induction in 1997—not only because the mercurial star was one of Goldman’s favorite players, but also because a familiar face showed up.
“John’s presenter was [six-time Grand Slam champion] Don Budge,” Goldman remembers. “I had taken lessons from Don at the Montego Bay Racquet Club in the 1960s! That was special, because John was my favorite player, and he was being inducted by someone I had known for about 30 years at that point.”
He also recalls journalist Steve Flink’s induction fondly; Flink was one of the first tennis people Goldman met when he started taking photos at Forest Hills as an outsider.
“Of course, by the time a lot of these people were inducted, I had become very friendly with most of them,” he adds.
The friendships formed, above all, are perhaps the biggest highlight of Goldman’s life in the sport—more so than any one experience or photo snapped. When he heads to the US Open in August, he will relish the opportunity to catch up with a group of people he’s known for more than 40 years. And upon being notified of his own induction into this year’s Hall of Fame, he couldn’t help but focus on two of his closest friends and mentors, fellow photographers and Eastern Tennis Hall of Famers Mel DiGiacomo and Bob Kenas; both of them had unfortunately passed away in the last couple years.
“They were not only great photographers, but two of the most wonderful people that I met in my life,” Goldman says. “It makes me especially proud to be in the Hall of Fame, because I’ll be joining them.”
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HEMEL MEGHANI COSME​
Like many kids who grew up in the city—Forest Hills, Queens, to be exact—tennis industry great Hemel Meghani Cosme discovered the sport in the park.
Cosme and her older sister Hareena often hung out after school at the handball court across the street from their home, and one day a kid from the neighborhood showed up with a Jimmy Connors T2000 racquet. The sisters each took turns taking a couple swings, and when their father returned home from work and saw them having a good time, he endeavored to get them more involved in the sport.
From that point forward, Hemel and Hareena lived and breathed tennis, and they traipsed all over the city in search of places to play and players to compete against. In the summers they packed up tuna fish sandwiches and jugs of water, and their father would drive them over to nearby Forest Park, where they’d play from 9 in the morning until 6 at night with just about anybody who wanted to hit: other kids, adults, senior citizens with moonballs and wicked backhand slices. They became friendly with all the other local juniors in the area—including Hemel’s future husband, John Cosme.
“All the adults that were there kept an eye on us,” Hemel recalls. “Tennis in the parks was really a community back then…We would all get together and we would share a court [to practice]. The beauty of that time was that you had to learn how to play on your own. Today everybody has an instructor, everything's got to be organized. This was unorganized, and we made it work.”
They really did—even Grand Slam champion and local tennis royalty Vitas Gerulaitis thought so. Around this time, Hemel and Hareena attended a star-studded clinic at a park in Queens organized by the City Parks Foundation. After the event, Gerulaitis’s team called the Meghani family to offer the sisters a scholarship to attend the famed Harry Hopman Tennis Academy in Florida for a week.
“We went to the Academy, and some really good players were there,” Hemel says. “And in our heads, we thought, ‘Oh, these players are really good, so Vitas must think we’re really good too!’”
The Gerulaitis seal of approval motivated the sisters to keep getting better at the game. Their rankings climbed high enough that they were both able to routinely make the draws of USTA national junior tournaments across the country. Closer to home, they faced each other in the semifinals of the New York state high school championships, when Hemel was a junior and Hareena was a senior. While Hareena won that encounter, Hemel ultimately reached the final of that tournament a year later. Both went on to compete for their college tennis teams—Hareena at Princeton and Hemel at both Rutgers University and the University of California Santa Barbara.
After graduating from UCSB, Hemel wasn’t quite ready to leave tennis behind for good. She returned to New York and took a job teaching the sport at the National Tennis Center. For a few years, she saved up the money she earned and then headed off to a foreign country for a couple weeks at a time to compete on the WTA tour. She traveled all over the world—playing tournaments in places like Australia, Argentina, Indonesia, Nigeria and Yugoslavia—and ultimately attained a career high ranking inside the world’s Top 400. As her time on tour was winding down, she began to contemplate next steps. Should she go to law school like Hareena? She took a vacation to India to introduce her extended family to her now-husband John, and it was on this trip that she realized she wanted to stay connected to the game.
“I had taken the LSATs and was about to apply to schools,” Hemel recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘God, I really enjoy tennis.’ I enjoyed teaching. There was so much joy in helping someone get better at something. So in India, I said to my mom, ‘I'm not really sure I want to be a lawyer. I don't really think that's where my heart is.’ And she was so incredible. She said, ‘I want you to do what you think is going to make you happy.’”
Hemel returned home with a renewed energy and began teaching at a variety of facilities in the city. Meanwhile, John was working at the ritzy Tennisport Club in Long Island City, where he gave lessons to Betsy Gotbaum, the then-commissioner of the NYC Parks Department. Gotbaum asked John if he had any interest in running the Central Park Tennis Center. John politely declined—his primary focus was advertising—but recommended someone he thought would be perfect for the job: his wife, Hemel.
“So Betsy interviewed me for the position, and I talked about growing up in all the free parks programs, like New York Junior Tennis & Learning and City Parks,” Hemel says. “And she thought I was the perfect candidate, and I ended up running Central Park for ten years.”
When she learned she’d been hired, did she see it as a full-circle moment—given her background in the sport?
“No!” Hemel says with a laugh. “I was 23 years old and someone said to me, ‘You’re going to run the largest tennis facility in New York City!’ I’d never even managed a staff! But I knew I was going to do it. It was a great opportunity and I really thought I could make it a better place.”
Over the next decade Hemel oversaw a staff of 30 people and worked tirelessly to enhance the facility. She developed affordable programming and revitalized its court reservation system. One night, as she was driving back to the home she shared with John on Long Island, she saw that the Alley Pond Tennis Center indoor facility in Queens was looking for a new owner. Hemel had only played there once before, but at a very important moment in her life—for the fateful clinic with Gerulaitis.
Hemel talked it over with John—they now had two small children—and put in a bid for the space. Her offer was accepted, and she ended up running Alley Pond for the next 20 years. Hemel’s personal approach to managing this facility strongly mirrored her own upbringing in the game.
“We really created a community at Alley Pond,” Hemel says. “It was a public facility, but it became a public community. The people who played there, this was their home. We made it feel like home.”
It was a home for Hemel’s family as well. John gave lessons there. Her children grew up there—in fact, daughter Taylor, Hemel notes, “became a better tennis player than I ever was” and went on to play for Brown. Her other daughter Caitlin excelled at soccer, so Hemel put down turf and converted it into a multi-sport complex. (Another accomplished athlete in the family, Caitlin eventually played at Duke University and now competes professionally in France.)
“To this day, most of Taylor’s friends will say, ‘This is how we all met, playing tournaments at Alley Pond!” Hemel says. “Some of these kids are 25, 30 years old and they're like, ‘Oh my God, our best memories are at Alley Pond!’ My kids tease me. They'll go, ‘Mom, more people know you than they know us, and this is our age group!’”
Today Hemel is taking on a new endeavor: running the Active Pickleball & Tennis Center (APTC) out of Queens College. It’s another opportunity a life in the game has afforded her, and just like all the other opportunities before this one, she’s enjoying every second of it.
“I’m so thankful to my parents,” Hemel says. “They were immigrants from India. They encouraged me to play sports at a time when that was somewhat unheard of. And it ended up opening so many doors. It's funny because I look back, and I wasn't the best junior, right? I wasn't the best college player, I didn't play Number 1 or Number 2. People would be like, ‘Oh my God, she's going to go play the tour. Is she kidding?’ But I didn't care what people thought. Not that I was all that, but I went out and tried. And I got to see all these different countries and learned how to be resourceful. One thing that a life in tennis teaches you is that you have to go out there and try things. It might work or not work. It’s just like trying different shots.”
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CHRIS GARNER​
Chris Garner was one of the most prodigious Eastern juniors of the 1980s. Over the course of his playing career, Garner attained the No. 1 national ranking in the 14-and-under and 16-and-under age divisions and the No. 3 national ranking in the 18-and-under division. In that timespan, he recorded wins over Andre Agassi and Michael Chang and captured 12 National titles, including the National Indoor Championships in 1982 and the National Clay Court Championships and National Championships in 1984. He went on to record enviable results on the professional tour, achieving a career-high ranking of world No. 120 and reaching the Round of 16 at the Australian Open as a qualifier in 1993. Following his retirement from the circuit in 1994, Garner began building an impressive coaching resume; since 2015, he has served as the head coach for the Navy men’s tennis team.
Garner grew up in Bay Shore, N.Y., and inherited a love of the game from his mother.
“She had tons of energy,” Garner says of his mom, who taught the sport and served as a high school coach during his childhood. “I think I was able to ride her coattails and get good at tennis, just trying to keep up with her.”
Garner also recalls a real communal energy and excitement around tennis throughout his youth on Long Island. He would bounce around different facilities, practicing against his peers under the tutelage of a variety of coaches: his mom, Tom Jaklitsch at Point Set Racquet Club, Robbie Wagner at his self-titled facility, Paul Gerken at the West Side Tennis Club, and even 2024 Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Antonio Palafox, who at that time was based out of a club in Glen Cove, N.Y. After school a couple days a week, Garner often carpooled with other talented Long Island juniors like Jennifer Fuchs and Allan Van Nostrand to the vaunted Port Washington Tennis Academy, where they got the chance to play on the same grounds that Eastern legends John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis once frequented.
“I think in that era, you just tried to play against other kids and even adults,” he says. “You tried to find matches. [Antonio] might have a program on Friday nights, and a bunch of kids would come to that. At Port Washington, they’d open up their courts, and you’d go and play games with two or three people. There was probably a coach around, but it wasn’t as formal as it is today. They’d have Kool-aid and cookies out.”
It was in this friendly, relaxed environment that Garner refined his skills and began to make a name for himself in tournaments. On court, he became particularly adept at making a lot of balls and reacting to any kind of shot that was thrown at him—a direct result of competing against “so many different types of players” at all the various clubs in his youth. He also found it easy to tap into his competitive instincts.
“I wanted to win when I was on the court, and it was fun to play against people and see where you stack up,” he says. “[But] I also understood that many people were sacrificing for me to have this opportunity to play tennis. My mom, my grandfather, even my uncle were driving me to all these tournaments. My mom would often have to work on the weekends, so she’d enter me in an event and drop me off at a club, and I’d spend the whole day competing. I could also see people around me that were trying to help me and give me opportunities [by opening their facilities to me to let me practice]. So I wanted to do well for others.”
Legendary coach and 2022 Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer Nick Bollettieri was one such person who offered a 14-year-old Garner a primo opportunity: a spot at his eponymous academy in Bradenton, Fla. Garner traveled down south to attend the famous tennis institution at a moment when it was really exploding; over the next four years he bumped shoulders (and sometimes shared dorm rooms) with a real treasure trove of future tennis movers and shakers, including Agassi, Jay Berger, Martin Blackman and Jim Courier. (“It was,” Garner says, “like Port Washington on steroids.”) During this time, he scored some of his biggest junior wins and was selected to compete for the Junior Davis Cup squad. He then headed to the University of Georgia to play for the Bulldogs tennis team, before Bollettieri again returned with another offer Garner just couldn’t refuse: a chance to play on the professional tour as part of a “traveling team,” with Bollettieri paying for each member’s expenses until they found enough success to make their own way.
“It was too good to pass up,” Garner says.
Indeed, the “traveling team” opportunity jumpstarted six solid years on the circuit. In addition to earning a career-high ranking well inside the world’s top 150, Garner scored wins over several notable opponents, including Patrick McEnroe (in Brazil), Patrick Rafter (in Vancouver) and Yevgeny Kafelnikov (in Budapest).
“I’ll never forget playing Kafelnikov because my then-girlfriend and future wife, who was in college at the time, had come over to Hungary with me,” Garner remembers. “It was on slow red clay and I was not missing a single ball. I looked over in the stands and my wife was doing schoolwork! She wasn’t even paying attention. I always give her a hard time. ‘That was some of the best tennis I've ever played and you would never have known it!’”
Garner also has strong memories of his Round of 16 finish in Melbourne in 1993, as he needed to summon his trademark competitive scrappiness several times throughout the run. He nearly lost in the qualifying rounds, and then came through his third round match against fellow American Todd Witsken in five sets after winning the first two comfortably 6-1, 6-1. He credits his childhood friend Van Nostrand—who happened to be in the stands that day—with helping him pull through.
After retiring from the tour in 1994, Garner transitioned into teaching and coaching. He has helped lead college squads at Ohio State University and Amherst and has spent his last decade working with athletes at Navy—including his sons Finn and Luke, who both competed for the Navy team. As a coach, Garner emphasizes team unity and competition; he strives to create an environment much like the Long Island tennis community that he enjoyed so much growing up. He also stresses the importance of academics.
“This past year, our team won the award for the highest GPA among any varsity team at Navy,” he says. “I think they have over 30 varsity teams here. I'm always going to save that plaque. Eventually, I'll retire, but I’ll always be hanging up that plaque somewhere because it's so meaningful that people try to do well in school.”
Garner is so passionate about academics because he understands the opportunities education can bring for his students down the road. And taking advantage of opportunities is precisely, he believes, why he is being inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame today.
“My mom gave me such a great opportunity, and I wanted her to see that something like this has happened because of something she was able to give me,” he says. “And not just my mom, but everyone else, like Tom, Nick, Antonio and others. My name might be on the sculpture, but it’s there because of so many other people who gave me the chance to do something.”
CHRISTINE K. SCHOTT
The tennis balls don’t fall far from Christine K. Schott’s family tree. Schott’s grandfather, Frederick V. Krais, was one of the founders of the Eastern Tennis Umpires Association, while her dad, Frederick V. Krais Jr., captured the boys’ 18s doubles title at the National Indoors in 1939—and also represented the United States in Junior Davis Cup competition. The Kraises teamed up on two occasions to claim the Eastern Father-Son Clay Court Championships, in 1954 and 1957, and the younger Fred went on to compete at the U.S. National Championships (now the US Open) when it was an amateur event held at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens.
As if those tennis bona fides weren’t impressive enough, Schott’s uncle Jack March also occupies a prime perch in the annals of tennis history. A talented player in his own right, March promoted the sport and ran a pro tour of sorts for nearly 15 years prior to the formation of the ATP. Don Budge, Pancho Gonzales, Lew Hoad, Fred Perry and Bobby Riggs were among the major champions who competed on March’s circuit. In 1958, March invited a young Robert Ryland to compete in a tennis tournament in Cleveland; in accepting a spot in the draw, Ryland—a 2002 Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer—became the first Black tennis professional.
It was in this environment—surrounded by the game’s living history—that Schott came of age.
“When I say Bobby Riggs taught me to play backgammon and Fred Perry taught me to serve, it's the truth,” Schott recalls.
Schott no doubt had those memories in mind when, as a West Side board member in 2010, she learned that the club intended to sell the iconic Forest Hills Stadium—where many top US Open matches were held before the tournament moved to nearby Flushing Meadows in 1978. Leaders at the organization had begun speaking with developers who planned to tear down the vaunted structure and replace it with condominiums.
“I just thought it was so shortsighted,” Schott says now. “This is where Althea [Gibson] broke the color barrier, where Arthur [Ashe] became the first Black man to win a Grand Slam, where Billie Jean [King] fought for equal pay for women and where Renée Richards competed as the first transgender player. With all that history sitting there, it was just like, ‘How can we tear down this beautiful stadium?’”
To club leadership, the answer was simple. It had sat vacant for years and required a litany of expensive repairs, and keeping it around would only increase membership dues. As The New York Times noted at the time, “Its wooden seats are rotting, its interior court unfit for play. A place where some of the most famous names played some of the most memorable matches in the game’s history has been reduced to an eyesore.”
Nevertheless, Schott persisted. Knowing that the club’s nearly 300 members would soon be voting to decide the stadium’s future, she sprang into action. Teaming up with local preservationist Michael Perlman, she wrote letters to Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (Arthur Ashe’s widow), then-mayor Michael Bloomberg, former mayor David Dinkins and the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. She also started advocating for the stadium in The Queens Ledger’s Forest Hills Gardens Blog. To her surprise—considering this was 2010, the halcyon days of social media—the posts went viral; they caught the eye of both major media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and politicians like Anthony Weiner, who endorsed Schott’s position. Perhaps most importantly among all these efforts, Schott consistently relied upon her background in business to offer feasible alternatives.
“I worked in magazine publishing, so I knew how to create strategic partnerships,” Schott says. “And I just felt like the people in leadership didn't have any expertise in that area, or they at least hadn’t tried. I came up with ten solid ideas. Could we hold a Davis Cup match? Could the USTA move the US Open legends tournament back here? None of these things had really been explored. I said, ‘Can we please sit down and talk about them before we go through with this?’”
In the end, her dogged campaign breathed new life into the historic arena. First, the members voted against selling the stadium by the tiniest of margins, 51%. Then, slowly but surely, West Side leadership began to implement several of Schott’s suggestions. Today, the stadium is blossoming. The site has hosted World TeamTennis matches, a Davis Cup event and a challenger, but it is most commonly known among New Yorkers as a reliable summer concert venue. (Indeed, music promoters Mike Luba and Rob Pohly helped pay for site repairs as they spearheaded this effort, precisely the strategic partnership Schott was seeking.)
This usage is also another nod to its multifaceted past. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Beatles, Frank Sinatra and Diana Ross, among many other artists, performed to large enthusiastic audiences at the location.
“There is an incredible music history at the stadium, so it’s nice to see that all back again,” Schott says. “The stadium was absolutely barren and there was nothing going on in it for many years, so it’s wonderful to see it being used and appreciated. It really was a passion project.”
Of course, Schott’s own life in the sport branches out far beyond this one major project. She also spent over a decade working with 1989 Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer Eugene Scott at his famed Tennis Week publication. She wore many different hats at the magazine, including serving as a tournament director for the USTA Men’s 35 National Grass Court Championships. It was through this role that she connected with Lloyd Emanuel, another Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer. Together they would go on to run the Eastern Men’s 35 Grass Court Championships at West Side for many years.
“That was a really happy time,” she says of her tournament director past. “It really was the people. These are all guys who had great games. Some played professionally, but many became lawyers and doctors. And they all knew each other from playing in the juniors, and they were still playing against each other in their thirties and fifties and their seventies. It was really nice to see the camaraderie.”
That brand of geniality was precisely why Fred Krais Jr. insisted his daughter pick up a racquet in the first place.
“I was brought up in a family that was all about tennis, but they were not professional tennis players,” Schott explains. “When I started playing, my dad really just wanted me to be a good enough player so that, no matter where I went in the world, I'd always be invited to play. He did not intend for me to become a professional player. It was really about having fun and getting some exercise.”
Schott emphasized that same mentality when her children began playing the sport as well. Indeed, a love of the game continues to flourish within her family. She cites her daughter Whitney winning the Kae Jones Sportsmanship Award at the New York Junior Tennis & Learning (NYJTL) Mayor’s Cup as one of her happiest moments in tennis.
“I was really proud because a group of umpires got together and made the decision to say, ‘We're going to give this award to Whitney because she's such an outstanding sport on the court,’” she explains. “That made me so happy. It’s also nice to see this tennis tradition continuing to transcend generations.”
Schott shares two daughters, Whitney and Meredith, with NYJTL’s former VP of Capital Campaigns, Steve Schott. She is currently married to beauty industry veteran George Ledes and is the Palm Beach Editor of PALMER magazine. They divide their time between Palm Beach, Florida, and Bedford, New York.
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ANTONIO PALAFOX​
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Antonio “Tony” Palafox is a revered former player and two-time Grand Slam doubles champion who established himself as one of the top coaches in the Eastern section throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Based out of the famed Port Washington Tennis Academy for many years, Palafox played a significant role in developing the games of several future Grand Slam champions and Eastern Tennis Hall of Famers—including John McEnroe, Mary Carillo, Peter Fleming and Vitas Gerulaitis.
“[Tony was] a mentor, a friend, a calming influence, the chief connection (along with Harry Hopman) to my formation as a tennis player,” McEnroe wrote in his 2002 memoir You Cannot Be Serious. “His quiet personality always dovetailed with mine: When I was a raging teenager, Tony just stood there patiently as I swore and smashed racquets, waiting for me to let it all out so we could go on with the practice.”
Before taking on the challenge of wrangling the mercurial teenage McEnroe, Palafox made a name for himself competing on the international circuit. Widely regarded as one of the best-ever players to hail from Mexico, Palafox reached the singles quarterfinals of the 1965 U.S. National Championships and—with compatriot Rafael Osuna—captured the U.S. National Championship doubles title in 1962 and the Wimbledon doubles crown in 1963. Interestingly, the Mexican pair actually reached the U.S final three years in a row, from 1961 to 1963. Each time, Palafox and Osuna competed against the same American duo, Chuck McKinley and Dennis Ralston, and each time, the match spanned a grueling five sets.
Perhaps Palafox’s most prized results came in Davis Cup competition. He was a part of the Mexican squad that reached the Davis Cup final in 1962 after eking out ties over more-heralded contingents from the United States and Sweden; in the former, Palafox defeated 1961 U.S. National Championships quarterfinalist Jack Douglas and again paired with Osuna to claim the doubles contest over McKinley and Ralston in another five-set battle. The tie, which occurred on home soil in Mexico City, made Osuna and Palafox National heroes.
That same year, Palafox would score another impressive, rare feat: defeating Rod Laver. In 1962, Laver captured all four major titles to claim the Grand Slam and lifted the championship hardware at an astounding 18 additional tournaments. One of his very few losses that season came to Palafox, in the semifinals of a grass court tournament in Bristol, England. Although Laver led their head-to-head, Palafox was always a tough out. In their first-ever meeting, at a 1959 Davis Cup semifinal tie, Palafox led by two sets and a break before the Australian lefty—then just 19—pulled through in five.
In the late 1960s Palafox landed in New York, where he twice captured the Eastern Clay Court Championship—in 1970 and 1971. (In the 1970 tournament, he defeated future Wimbledon semifinalist and Eastern Tennis Hall of Famer Sandy Mayer en route to claiming the title.) He eventually found a home as an instructor at Port Washington, and it was in this role that he made perhaps his most sizable impact on the sport, guiding an entire generation of future tennis stars.
“I still play very much the way [Tony] taught me, taking every ball on the rise with a short backswing, moving forward, always forward, whenever possible,” McEnroe wrote in You Cannot Be Serious. “Tony felt that the court wasn’t utilized enough. If you watched the old guys play on tape, he said, it looked like they were just standing there and hitting the ball back to each other. Didn’t they realize the idea was to hit the ball away from the other guy?...The more Tony showed me, the more straight-ahead their strategy seemed to me. I began to look at the court differently—as a mathematical equation, almost. The angles were everything.”
Integrating these fundamental concepts into their games, Palafox’s students went on to excel and reach the pinnacle of the sport. Gerulaitis won the Australian Open in 1977, the same year that McEnroe improbably reached the Wimbledon semifinals as a qualifier. McEnroe, of course, eventually lifted the Wimbledon trophy three times and the US Open four, and he teamed up with Fleming to add seven additional doubles titles to his Grand Slam tally. McEnroe also owns one major mixed doubles title, at Roland Garros—which he earned during that breakout 1977 season, with fellow Port Washington alum Carillo. If there was any doubt as to Palafox’s influence on all their development, and in particular McEnroe’s, Carillo put it quite succinctly in a 2000 interview with the New Yorker’s Calvin Tompkins.
“John wanted to play like Tony because he understood that Tony was an artist,” she said.
Even as he won Grand Slams, McEnroe continued to seek Palafox’s advice, and for a brief period Palafox joined his former student on tour in a more official coaching capacity. Palafox eventually moved his junior operation to Cove Racquet Club in Glen Cove; it was there, interestingly, that he crossed paths with fellow 2024 Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame inductee Chris Garner, when Garner was on his way up the junior ranks. As a coach, Palafox is also associated with Top 10 players Aaron Krickstein and Greg Rusedski.
Today, Palafox resides in the Atlanta area, where he is still giving lessons at 88 years old.
NITTY SINGH​
Nitty Singh is one of the most accomplished and enterprising organizers in the history of the USTA Eastern Section. Nicknamed the “Tennis Mayor” in her community, Singh was—for nearly 40 years—the first person you called when you were looking to promote the game in the Capital Region.
Over the course of her decades-spanning career, Singh embraced a wide range of responsibilities that raised the profile of the sport tenfold in her corner of the world. She started out organizing a host of local competitions and clinics through the Schenectady Women’s Tennis Association (SWTA), eventually ascending to the role of SWTA president. She also opened a successful tennis shop, captained a local 5.0 league team that claimed a USTA League National Championship in 1987, and eventually ran a tournament—the Off-Track Betting (OTB) Open—that attracted a who’s who of top professional tennis talent to Schenectady. Additionally, in the mid-1990s, she collaborated with Billie Jean King to bring World TeamTennis to upstate New York. Through all of Singh’s efforts, a whopping 35 Grand Slam champions traveled to Schenectady over the years to compete for fans in the area. She was named one of Tennis Week’s “25 Most Powerful Women in Tennis” and Tennis Magazine’s “20 People Who Make Tennis Fun” in 1994.
Singh began taking tennis lessons in the early 1970s at the suggestion of her husband Inder, a junior and university champion who was nationally ranked in both the U.S. and in India and competed in the main draw of the US Open. Nitty enjoyed playing, but more than anything, the game awakened the latent business instincts that ran in her family. She quickly began running the various local and sectional events that commonly took place in Schenectady’s Central Park during the 1970s tennis boom. Even back then, she was consistently forging bonds with tennis greats.
“We used to hold this event called the Schenectady County Open,” Nitty recalls. “I saw this little 10-year-old kid there, and I came home and told Inder, ‘This kid is really good! He was hitting a lot of drop shots.’ I eventually became friendly with him and learned his name was [future world No. 5 and Eastern Hall of Famer] Jimmy Arias.’”
In 1981, Davis Etkin—the president of the Off-Track Betting Corporation—reached out to Nitty and asked if she would help him start a tennis tournament in Central Park. She agreed, and under her purview, the event grew from a small competition with a $3000 purse to a full-fledged stop on the ATP and WTA tours. Nitty worked tirelessly behind the scenes lobbying the Men’s Tennis Council to make the Open a pro tournament; when its members finally voted in her favor in 1987, Nitty became the first woman to serve as the tournament director of an ATP event.
Over the years, many top players and future stars converged in Schenectady in August to contest the tournament—which, amazingly, remained free to the public throughout its entire 13-year run. In 1986, when the event was still a challenger, Nitty granted a wild card to a young, green-and-orange-haired 16-year-old junior ranked No. 1006 in the world named Andre Agassi. Two years later, she did the same for a then-unknown Pete Sampras, whom she’d watched compete in junior matches at Flushing Meadows.
“While Pete was playing [in Schenectady], I’d stand by the fence taking pictures,” Nitty recalls. “And after a couple rounds he asked me, ‘Why are you taking pictures of me and none of the other players?’ I said, ‘Because you’re going to be No. 1 in the world and they’re not.’ And he just replied, ‘Fair enough!’ He knew inside even then.”
Neither Agassi nor Sampras ever forgot Nitty’s generosity.
“Years later I was attending the [Miami Open] in Key Biscayne, and I was standing in the parking lot with a couple other tournament directors who ran some [much bigger] events,” Nitty says. “A car pulled up and Andre got out. He looked at me and said, ‘Hi Nitty, how are you?’ And I said I’m fine, and he walked off. The other directors were looking at each other going, ‘What about us?’, because he had obviously played their events too. And I just said, ‘You guys were not there when he needed you.’”
Another professional player who forged a strong bond with Nitty: Michael Stich. In 1991, the German athlete committed to playing the Capital Region tournament months before unexpectedly capturing the Wimbledon title that July. Still, Stich stayed true to his word and traveled to Schenectady mere weeks after the life-changing result. (He’d ultimately lift the championship trophy in Central Park as well that year, defeating Emilio Sanchez Vicario in the final.)
When the OTB Open came to an end in 1994, Nitty leaned on one of her inspirations in the sport as she planned her next move. Nitty and Billie Jean King had crossed paths multiple times over the last decade, and they first met at an exhibition match in Albany in the mid-1970s. King had invited Nitty to join a World TeamTennis (WTT) team—which Nitty understandably didn’t take seriously.
“I said, ‘Billie, I just started playing tennis!’” Nitty recalls. “I told her one day I would call her when I was ready. So in 1994, I called and said I was ready.”
Nitty took ownership of the newly-formed New York Buzz World TeamTennis squad and charmed Martina Navratilova into joining her lineup. (“When I met Martina, she was complaining about lights [in the room], so I said ‘I want you to come to Schenectady. I can only offer you two things. One, we have the best lights, and two, we have the best Indian food!’ She said ‘Sold!’”) The Buzz—which played home matches in Central Park and was coached in the early days by none other than Inder—included tennis stars like Navratilova, Boris Becker, Jim Courier, Lindsay Davenport, Mary Joe Fernandez and Martina Hingis on its roster over the course of its nearly 20-year run in the league. The team captured one WTT championship (in 2008) and reached three additional finals.
Nitty and Inder—whose eldest son, Miki, worked for the ATP, and youngest son Sonny played at Binghamton University—eventually relocated to Naples, Fla., where they once again found themselves surrounded by a supportive tennis community. But Nitty’s impact on the Schenectady tennis ecosystem cannot be overstated—and every so often she is reminded of that fact. Last year, she went out with a friend to an Indian restaurant for lunch, and a young man was sitting at the table next to them by himself. Nitty invited him to join them and they got to talking, eventually realizing that they both lived in upstate N.Y. at the same time. When Nitty explained that she used to work in tennis, the young man’s face lit up.
“He said, ‘You’re not going to believe this,’” Nitty recalls. “‘You gave me my first job when I was ten years old. I was a ball boy!’”
He then recounted how Nitty had allowed him to work the 1986 final, which featured Agassi. Sharing a court with a player who became an eight-time Grand Slam Champion is something he’d never forgotten.
After lunch, the pair kept in touch and remain good friends to this day.
Explains Nitty: “This is what life is all about, the connections you make.”
COMING
SOON​