In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!
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Vitas Gerulaitis [USA]Born: 26 July 1954
Died: 17 September 1994
Career: 1973-85
Played: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 3 (1978)
Peak Elo rating: 2,201 (3rd place, 1978)
Major singles titles: 1
Total singles titles: 26
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Tennis was alive in 1979. The men’s game had the big three of Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors, and 20-year-old John McEnroe. All three had compelling personalities, they delivered one dramatic match after another, and they–at least the Americans–gave every impression of hating each other. The media–and not just the sports media–ate it up.
The women’s game had Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and its own wunderkind, 16-year-old Tracy Austin. The tour featured great rivalries, movie-star good looks, and just enough cattiness to keep the sport in the tabloids. Recreational tennis was booming, and the sport was drawing on talent from more and more corners of the globe.
And then there was Vitas Gerulaitis. Sometimes ranked fourth behind the big three, he won the Australian Open in December of 1977 and reached a career-high #3 on the ATP computer before McEnroe arrived in 1978. His game was plenty good enough that his sex appeal, easygoing lifestyle, and undeniable charisma made him a global icon.
At the end of 1979, the 25-year-old New Yorker shared the cover of People magazine with CHiPs actor Erik Estrada and Bee Gees frontman Barry Gibb. Gerulaitis and his flowing blonde mane was one of the “10 sexiest bachelors in the world.” I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t quote at length:
Lipstick has been spotted more than once on the collar of Vitas Gerulaitis’ tennis whites. “Well, I’m a pretty sociable guy and I don’t get lonely too often,” shrugs the world’s fifth-ranked tennis player and the game’s No. 1 ladies’ man. His tastes run to actresses and models. “It doesn’t hurt for a girl to be pretty,” he says of his entourage. “But after a match I don’t want someone to sit there and talk about my backhand. I want to discuss the Pope’s visit or something.” …
Known around the circuit as “the Lithuanian Lion,” Vitas denies his own sex appeal. “Rod Stewart,” he says admiringly, “is the only sexy guy in the world.”
The list hasn’t aged well–Gerulaitis slots in between Prince Andrew and O.J. Simpson–but there’s no denying that Vitas’s celebrity far transcended the aficionados who appreciated his footwork and his forehand.
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It is tempting to ignore Gerulaitis’s on-court career entirely and simply reel off his best lines. Perennial runner-ups tend to give the best press conferences, and the self-deprecating New Yorker was no exception.
You probably know his most famous quip: “And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.” The man who failed to improve on a 16-0 head-to-head was Jimmy Connors, and the occasion was the January 1980 Masters tournament in New York. Vitas won two of his three round-robin matches–one of them a three-set comeback over John McEnroe–and he knocked out Connors in the semi-final in straight sets.
The sequel is rarely told: Gerulaitis really did figure him out. He beat Connors in their next three meetings, including the Roland Garros semi-finals five months later.
The irony in Vitas’s remark is that he did lose 17 times in a row to one player–Björn Borg. It wasn’t for lack of trying. “Every time I play Borg I come out with some thirty ideas that should get me victory,” he said. “And each time Björn breaks each one of the thirty to pieces, like a clay-pigeon shooter.”
Gerulaitis never gave up hope, even after Borg’s stunning early retirement. “If I have to invite him over to my house when I’m 95 and get him out of a wheelchair, I’m going to beat the guy,” Vitas said. “If someone asks me how long I’m going to play tennis…until I beat Borg.” It didn’t take that long–Gerulaitis beat his long-time tormentor in a handful of early-1980s exhibitions.
The Lithuanian Lion can be forgiven for his exasperation. Perhaps his greatest single-match performance was one that he lost, to Borg in the semi-finals of Wimbledon in 1977, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 8-6. Gerulaitis was up a break in the fifth set before it slipped away. He won 176 points to Borg’s 177.
Yet the next day, Vitas offered to help his vanquisher prepare for the final, and they became fast friends. Borg would prepare for the US Open at Gerulaitis’s house, and when the Swede got married, Vitas threw him a four-day bachelor party. McEnroe wrote in his 2002 autobiography, “Borg and Gerulaitis had, shall we say, perfected the art of enjoying the fruits of tennis.”
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Indeed, another of Vitas’s one-liners captures the lifestyle that inspired People magazine: “If I did as well on the court as I do off the court, I’d be No. 1 by now.” He partied with Andy Warhol at Studio 54, and when he bowed to the Royal Box before that 1977 Wimbledon semi-final, Warhol spotted a cocaine cutter on his gold chain.
Gerulaitis’s relentless pursuit of off-court pleasure makes it easy to conclude that he was a dilettante, lacking the work ethic to become the very best. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Tony Palafox, one of his coaches at the Port Washington Tennis Academy, said, “He might be on the court for 10 hours a day. It didn’t matter how long it took; he would practice something until he had it right.” He was a perfect sparring partner for Borg, perhaps the only man on tour who took practice time more seriously.
His attitude was crucial. He only stood a chance when he was in top physical condition. Vitas was fast, and he needed to be. In the 1977 Wimbledon epic against Borg, he rode his trademark “bunny steps” to the net 216 times, including behind almost every second serve.
His father, a Lithuanian immigrant who became the first head coach at the USTA National Tennis Center, identified one flaw in his son’s game: a second serve he called a “baby serve.” In eight matches charted for the Match Charting Project–admittedly a sample biased toward the toughest opponents, given the limited film that has survived from Gerulaitis’s playing career–Vitas won 71% of first serve points and only 45% of second serves.
By his late 20s, the partying and drug use–not to mention a decade of opponents jumping on the second serve–had begun to slow him down. Yet at the Masters event in January of 1982, he pushed Ivan Lendl to a fifth set in the final round. Lendl was so frustrated by his inability to put the match away that, in the deciding set, he drilled a forehand right back at the head of the hard-charging Gerulaitis. It knocked him over, and Lendl won the match. But as usual, Vitas got the final word. “I have nothing in my head to really damage anyway.”
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Oddly, fans in New York took some time before they warmed to the Lithuanian Lion. Gerulaitis and McEnroe reached the 1979 US Open final after McEnroe beat Connors and Vitas defeated Roscoe Tanner. (Tanner had eliminated Borg in the quarters.) It’s hard to imagine the media circus that would ensue if a pair of New Yorkers faced off in the US Open final today. But at the time, Gerulaitis said, “They hate us. Popularity-wise, I’m a notch above John, and John is a notch above Son of Sam.”
Fans in the Big Apple would come around. Still, Vitas’s reputation played better abroad. If he hadn’t played alongside McEnroe and Ilie Năstase, he’d be remembered more for his on-court theatrics. He never hesitated to get in an umpire’s face, even if the confrontations didn’t have the sometimes vile undertones of Năstase’s or the sheer intensity of McEnroe’s.
Gerulaitis was particularly popular in Italy, where he graced billboards advertising a racket called the Wilson Stiff Model. (Yes, really.) This despite the fact that when he lost the first set to top seed Adriano Panatta at the 1977 Italian Championships, he said, “These people are animals. Rome is the asshole of the universe.” He came back to beat Panatta in the third, and he went on to win the title.
He scored a second Italian title in even more impressive fashion two years later. At the same tournament where Tracy Austin ended Chris Evert’s six-year winning streak on clay, Vitas bounced back from a first-set bagel to defeat countryman Eddie Dibbs in the semi-final. Waiting in the title match was Guillermo Vilas, the best clay court player of the era behind Borg.
The Vilas match was possibly Gerulaitis’s greatest victory. It certainly represented everything he was capable of on court. The final lasted five hours and nine minutes, a record for the tournament. The total of 57 games set a new mark as well. Vilas won two tiebreaks to a take a two-sets-to-one lead, but the American came back to win, 6-7, 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-2. Gerulaitis said after the match, “I changed strategy about four times during the match and played just about every way I know how to.” To beat Vilas on European clay, that’s what it took.
Even after retirement, Gerulaitis had one more Roman triumph up his sleeve. In 1994, he filled in for the vacationing Tim Gullikson and coached Pete Sampras to the Italian Open title, Pete’s best clay-court result.
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Regardless of how the crowd felt about Gerulaitis in Flushing, Vitas was enormously well-liked around the game. As a teen at the Port Washington Tennis Academy, he was idolized by McEnroe and Mary Carillo. He was one of the few men who could claim to be friends with McEnroe, Borg, and Jimmy Connors. Vitas’s coach, Fred Stolle, said, “Maybe he was too nice to be the top guy, but that’s what he chose. He couldn’t be any other way.”
Vitas’s celebrity ensured a steady stream of hangers-on, but the friendships were something else entirely. Tracy Austin said, “People gravitated to him because he was so likable, so unselfish, so giving.” Another player of the era, Rick Meyer, compared Gerulaitis’s charisma to that of Bill Clinton. Vitas was the same with everyone, including kids he worked with at charity clinics. He would tell them, “We’re gonna go through this a few times together, and maybe it’ll help us both get it right.”
Gerulaitis hung on in the top ten throughout his twenties, retaking the fifth spot on the ranking list as late as 1983. But his lifestyle took its toll. His last season with a winning record was 1984, when he turned 30, and he was in and out of rehab for much of the mid-1980s.
Vitas’s story doesn’t exactly have a happy ending. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1994, when he was only 40 years old. He may or may not have kicked his drug habit (opinions differ), but he had recovered to the extent that he worked as a color commentator for the USA Network. He was good at it. McEnroe wrote, “Vitas was head and shoulders above almost any of the tennis broadcasters out there.”*
* J-Mac continued, “…which wasn’t saying a lot, since I felt (and still largely feel) that most of them stank: Virtually without exception, they were arrogant, dry, pompous, or just plain boring–take your pick.” Oh, John.
Gerulaitis the commentator gives you a pretty good idea of what he was like on court. He could hardly keep his energy in check–this is not a man who was about to pause an explanation just because the next point was underway. He had plenty of opinions, but he was never imperious about them.
Above all, Vitas was good on television because he was so enormously likeable. It’s quite a trick, wielding such a compelling personality that being one of the hundred best tennis players of the century is a mere footnote.