The Great Social Divide, Tennis, The Mayer Bros.

Gene & Sandy Mayer at Roland-Garros 1979

'You still can't hit a forehand even after all the lessons Genie gave you.'

The late 60's and 70's saw an unprecedented tennis boom. When I was a kid in the Bronx we thought that those guys dressed in white had to be 'different'. We didn't have a clue if that was good or bad but grown men, being dressed entirely in white, seemed weird to a Bronx Jew. (Or Bronx anything.)

Tennis in the 30's was a WASP domain. Irish Catholics aka 'micks',Jews and 'blacks' were unacceptable to those fucking hoity-toity WASPS though a Catholic or two may have snuck in. Blacks with their color and Jews with their circumcisions were easily identified in a locker room.

Tennis was strictly a country club, snob affair. Yeah, the blacks and Jews made their names in the boxing and the entertainment worlds, though every once in a while a Jew would sneak into major league baseball. Blacks in tennis or baseball?

Never. Micks? Quite a few in baseball, not so much in tennis. Italians were huge in both boxing and baseball but I don't recall any in tennis.

Read Bud Schulberg's 'Sparring With Hemingway' for a real sense of the great social, living divides of the 30's,some which, sadly, still persist today but mostly 'under the covers'.

In the 50's with four boys and great weather, living in Palo Alto, my lifelong interest in athletics came back to life particularly after four years in ugly weather Iowa. We became founding members of the Alpine Hills Tennis and Swim Club in Portola Valley where they didn't care about my circumcision. Actually, here in the Land of Milk and Honey and Fruits and Nuts the bigotry level was/is so low as to be virtually nonexistent.

The boys did swim in few meets. Those swim meets were, for me, a huge pain in the ass with the waiting for an hour or so to watch my kids swim for very few minutes. And they didn't, for sure, star at swimming.

So I got very involved in junior tennis and in turn started playing as well. When the Princess threw me out and I moved into Oak Creek I became part of the tennis playing crowd. Some of the Stanford tennis team lived here with me knowing one or two of those guys from the 'old days' when they were juniors.

The Mayer brothers, Sandy and Genie, lived here and what a pair they were to draw to. Both were ranked players, both arrogant though Sandy kept his arrogance mostly under control. Genie was another case. He was on a free ride at Stanford to play tennis but only played matches he felt sure that he could win. This was on the advice of his Father, as told to me by his Father. Genie's ranking was the big concern. The higher the rank, the higher under the table cash payoffs to the so called amateur player. Money, money, money !!!!

Genie shared an apartment with one of my kids, Kurt, here at Oak Creek. I fed them both dinner 3-4 days a week with Genie's appetite being absolutely voracious. He never gained weight and we all believed that he had a worm in him. Two major league strip sirloins was kid's play for Gene. When we went out to Stickney's for dinner, Gene would order cream soup and a bunch of butter patties to put in the soup. It was absolutely disgusting to watch.

His Father, Alex, an internationally renowned teaching pro, was staying with me and came to watch me, one morning, hit tennis balls with Rick Fisher. After a few minutes Alex said to me, 'You still can't hit a forehand, even after all the lessons Genie gave you.' I went nuts. Genie, that little shit, had told his Dad that I was feeding him in exchange for lessons. Not even close to being the truth. I fed him because he was living with my kid.

My last experience with the self perceived big shot, Gene Mayer (He later was ranked in the top 10 as was Sandy.) was when he needed a place to stay while looking for an apartment at the beginning of his senior year. None of his team mates would have him. I was going to London for a week and like a fucking dummy I said okay on the conditions that he wouldn't run me out of Perrier water and would keep my place reasonably neat.

Naturally when I got back home Gene disappeared. My place looked like a fucking tornado hit it. That schmuck hadn't washed a dish, had used every pot and pan and ran me out of Perrier water. He was afraid that I'd split his fucking head open if I got close to him again.

Not a thank you, drop dead or suck eggs from that jerk. Never saw him during his final year at Stanford. I bumped into him on a flight to NY. He was getting double servings of everything. The flight attendants could hardly believe the spectacle. His mouth just never stopped moving.

Sandy couldn't hold a candle to Gene when it came to arrogance. My only two negative experiences with Sandy were when he borrowed my Mercedes Convertible (before I totaled it) to take his future wife to Tahoe for the weekend. His exchange was to be 10 lessons. I got one. The other time was many years later, when he told me that he wouldn't give me lessons because I was too old and he saw no future in it. He now hits with the guy who runs Oracle. I guess Sandy had good judgment, if distasteful.

College and pro tennis players, in the sixties and seventies at least, were mostly a narcissistic bunch of assholes. Over the top cheap, deserving the best because they showed up, not because they earned it. My experiences with Pancho Segura, Barry McKay, Mike Davies and Butch Bucholtz are grist for another time.