Fred Stolle died this week, at the age of 86. He made his first appearance at the Australian Championships in 1958 (losing to Rod Laver, no less!), and he was part of the game for six decades after that, as a player, coach, and commentator. He won two major singles titles and ten major doubles titles.
For a more traditional obituary, click for the tributes from Richard Evans or Joel Drucker.
Stolle spent most of his playing days as a runner-up. In five majors between the 1964 and 1965 Australian, he reached four finals and lost the lot to Roy Emerson. My records (which may not be complete) show that Stolle faced Emmo 46 times. He won 14 of them, including just two on his first 16 tries.
Still, in the 1950s and 1960s, the second-best Australian–whoever it was that year–was a very good player. Frank Deford spoke for the entire frustrated American tennis establishment in 1966: “Lock up enough monkeys with typewriters and one of them will write Hamlet: Unleash enough Australians with racquets at Forest Hills and one will win the tournament.”
So it was just a matter of time. Stolle’s breakthrough came at the 1965 French Championships, where he beat John Newcombe, Cliff Drysdale, and Tony Roche to bag his first major title. He was a reliable contributor to the Aussie Davis Cup squad, too, winning a crucial rubber in the 1964 Challenge Round against Dennis Ralston.
Still, it seemed that Fiery Fred Stolle never quite got his due. Part of the problem was Harry Hopman, Australia’s martinet of a Davis Cup captain. Hopman liked hard workers, and Stolle preferred to save his energy for competition. Loaded with talent, Hopman could afford to bench his second-best man. Given the prominence of Davis Cup in the amateur era, Stolle’s second-tier status on the Australian squad led the rest of the world to doubt him, as well.
The 1966 US Championships
Key to the legend is that Stolle was snubbed at Forest Hills in 1966, a tournament he won as an unseeded player.
Back then, only eight players were seeded. Without an official ranking system, the selection was made by the tournament committee. For a long time, favorites had been divided into “home” and “foreign” seeds, and while the US Championships made a single list in 1966, there was probably something of a bias to protect the best American players in the draw.
With his title at Roland Garros the previous year, Stolle was the consensus year-end #3, behind Manolo Santana and Emerson. In 1966, he was seeded 3rd in Australia, 1st at the French, and 3rd at Wimbledon. When the list was released for Forest Hills, he did not like what he saw:
- Santana (ESP)
- Emerson (AUS)
- Ralston (USA)
- Roche (AUS)
- Arthur Ashe (USA)
- Drysdale (RSA)
- Clark Graebner (USA)
- Cliff Richey (USA)
It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Spurred by the extra motivation, Stolle played the tournament of his life, knocking out Ralston in the 4th round and Graebner in the quarters, both in straight sets. The Graebner defeat was a message direct to the committee, “a hopelessly uneven match that was viewed in almost oppressive silence,” according to the New York Times.
Stolle then dismantled Emerson in the semis, losing just six games. His opponent in the final was another unseeded Australian, John Newcombe. Stolle came out on top in a serving duel. By Deford’s count, “service was held for 30 straight games and for 30 of 31 points.” In the pre-tiebreak era, that meant a final score of 4-6, 12-10, 6-3, 6-4.
Despite the “Fiery” tag and the occasional swipe at Hopman, Stolle was gracious in victory. Trophy in hand, he allowed himself just one dig at the men who left him out of the top eight. “When I missed out on a seeding,” he said, “I reckoned they must have just considered me a bloody old hacker. Well, it seems the old hacker can still play a bit.”
Was he snubbed?
As part of my Tennis 128 project, I generated Elo ratings for the amateur era. Pundits of the day rated majors (especially Wimbledon) and Davis Cup even more than they do today, so there is often a wide gap between contemporary rankings and my Elo numbers.
Remember that Stolle was the consensus #3 at the end of 1965. Here’s Elo’s opinion:
Rank Player Elo * Rod Laver 2190 1 Roy Emerson 2121 2 Manuel Santana 2112 3 Dennis Ralston 2108 4 Arthur Ashe 2054 * Andres Gimeno 2048 * Ken Rosewall 2018 5 Cliff Drysdale 2017 6 John Newcombe 2003 7 Chuck McKinley 1999 8 Fred Stolle 1988 9 Marty Riessen 1965 10 Nicola Pietrangeli 1963
The asterisked players were in the pros. Rosewall and Gimeno (and Laver, really) were probably better than their ratings indicate–it is tough to rank two separate groups when the populations virtually never mixed.
More to the point, Stolle is quite a ways down the list. He won only one title that year after Roland Garros, and he finished his Australian campaign in December with a loss to Ray Ruffels. Despite his impressive string of major finals, he lost in the second round of Forest Hills to Charlie Pasarell.
1966 was more of the same. He didn’t win a title until August, when he bagged the German Championships against a second-tier field. Yes, he was seeded among the top three at each of the first three majors, but he earned out the seed just once, with a semi-final showing in Australia. As the defending champ in Paris, he lost to Drysdale in the quarters, and he crashed out of Wimbledon in the second round.
Here’s the Elo list going into Forest Hills that year:
Rank Player Elo Seed 1 Roy Emerson 2122 2 2 Dennis Ralston 2100 3 3 Manuel Santana 2095 1 4 Tony Roche 2059 4 5 Arthur Ashe 2001 5 6 Clark Graebner 1999 7 7 Fred Stolle 1980 8 Cliff Richey 1979 8 9 Cliff Drysdale 1973 6 10 John Newcombe 1964
Given what the committee knew at the time, they did a pretty good job! The algorithm would’ve given Stolle a spot among the seeds, but the Elo gap between him, Richey, and Drysdale is tiny.
The tournament could have given Stolle and Newk a boost because of their grass-court prowess, but not over Drysdale, who had reached the final the year before. Richey, who was dominant at clay events in the United States, probably benefited from a bit of favoritism, but even he had reached a final on Australian grass that year, knocking out Newcombe in the process. He ended up letting his advocates down, falling in the second round to Owen Davidson–yet another man from Down Under.
We now know that for the first two weeks of September 1966, Fred Stolle was the best tennis player in the amateur ranks. He cruised through the best American players on offer, he trounced Emerson, and in the final, he put on a serving display that might have even given Laver something to think about.
Stolle said later that he “went into the tournament with a point to prove.” From our vantage point six decades later, his case was hardly so clear-cut. But he rated himself highly, and he exceeded the most optimistic expectations–even his own.
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