Frank Kovacs
Frank Kovacs (1919 - 1990) was an American tennis player in the mid-century; he was known as the "Clown Prince of Tennis" for his on-court antics but was a good enough player to be each year from 1940 to 1951 one of the best five in the world (see World number one male tennis player rankings).
Probably the most eccentric major player ever, stories of his antics are still told in the tennis world. Once, serving for a match point, he tossed three balls in the air - hitting the middle one for an ace. He was known to jump into the stands to applaud his opponents, and once staged a sit-down strike during a match. He often stopped play so that he could complain about the heavy nap on the balls, and would then shove the offending balls into his mouth so that he could chew on the nap.
Although he showed flashes of brilliance his career results were relatively disappointing. It was said of him that on the right days, when he was briefly "in the zone", he could be unbeatable : Fred Hawthorne, reporter for New York Herald-Tribune who watched nearly all the early matches of the 1941-1942 pro tour thought that Kovacs at his best reached "sheer brilliancy never before excelled," but at other times Frank played "surprisingly poor tennis." For instance in his first pro match, on December 26, 1941 he gave Donald Budge a tennis lesson and as late as 1952, at 33, he was still able to defeat Pancho Gonzales then the best pro in the world.
His best amateur result was a second-place finish in the U.S. Amateur National Singles Championship in 1941, losing to Bobby Riggs;
In the pro circuit his only very great success was his win in the World Pro Championships held at Lakewood just outside Cleveland where he defeated Pancho Segura in the final 6-2 3-6 6-3 1-6 9-7 on June 17, 1951. Unfortunately a week later he withdrew from the U.S. Pro Tennis Championships won by his last victim, Segura. The previous year, in 1950, he had reached the final of that tournament, losing to Pancho Segura.
As tennis great Jack Kramer, and Kovacs' near contemporary, has written: "Kovacs had picture strokes, but the reason he could never win anything is because he didn't have any idea how to go about winning. He never had a set plan for a match. Hell, he never had a set plan for a shot. He could sort of decide what to do with it halfway through the stroke." Kovacs' best shot, says Kramer, was "a hard, angled backhand crosscourt, but he could never figure out how to set it up so he could take advantage of it." As Riggs said to Kramer one day: "...don't worry about Frankie.... He looks great, but give him long enough and he'll find some way to keep you in the match, and give him a little longer and he'll find a way to beat himself." Nevertheless Kovacs had a very positive win-loss record against Kramer both in the amateur circuit (in that one Kramer almost never beat Kovacs) and in the pro circuit too.
Finally many forget that though the tennis activity was very limited between 1943 and 1945 Kovacs dominated all the players he met as Welby Van Horn, Don McNeill, Adrian Quist, Bill Tilden, Jack Crawford, Jack Jossi, Martin Buxby, Joe Whalen, George Lott, George Lyttelton Rogers.
Kovacs was also responsible for something of a scandal over money in tennis, which before the Open era was strictly divided into amateurs and professionals. After he was barred from amateur tennis in 1941 (leaving with a characteristic witticism - "Amateur tennis stinks - there's no money in it any more."), he talked about how money was quietly - and widely - paid to supposedly amateur players for entering tournaments.
After being evicted from the amateur ranks, he and Riggs turned professional at the same time. In December 1941 - April 1942 the Pro tour consisted of round-robin matches between Don Budge, Bobby Riggs, Fred Perry, and Kovacs (with Gene Mako, Lester Stoefen and even Bill Tilden, for one match, as replacements). Budge ended up with the best record, 52 wins to 18 losses, ahead of Riggs 36-36 and Kovacs, 25 wins to 26 losses : Kovacs even led the very first part of the tour mainly because he had defeated Budge in their first five matches. After the tour he entered the U.S. Pro Championships and reached the semifinals and as the other great pros of the time he then joined the U.S. Army.
His cousin was the famous entertainer Ernie Kovacs. He married the legendary San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis in 1950 and they lived for many years in a beautiful home in the Oakland hills.
See also
Further reading
- Tom LeCompte, The Last Sure Thing contains a number of Kovacs stories