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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Ted Schroeder [USA]Born: 20 July 1921
Died: 26 May 2006
Career: 1938-51
Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 1 (1949)
Peak Elo rank: 2 (1948-49)
Major singles titles: 2
Total singles titles: 25
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The amateur era produced some weird-looking careers. Travel was more expensive and time-consuming–especially before the dawn of commercial airlines–so only a small number of players took part in any kind of global circuit of the sort we’d recognize today. And many players had jobs! Not cushy gigs with equipment manufacturers like the faux-sponsorships enjoyed by generations of Australian stars, but actual, butt-in-chair-by-nine occupations.
So players compromised. Every tournament they played incurred a direct cost to work or family, and travel funding was often touch-and-go. Viewed in this light, it’s no surprise to find the record books full of partial seasons. Many elite competitors semi-retired in their mid-20s or earlier, entering only local tournaments as their professional and family lives moved on.
Add that mix of conflicting forces to the global maelstrom of World War II, and you can begin to explain the career of Ted Schroeder.
Schroeder came on the scene as a local teen star in Southern California, often playing doubles with exact contemporary and lifelong friend Jack Kramer. He played tournaments throughout his time as a student at Southern Cal and Stanford, winning the national intercollegiate title in 1942, the same year he graduated. The cherry on top of his breakthrough year came at Forest Hills, where he defeated the veteran Frank Parker in five sets to become the national champion. The New York Times called the final “one of the most enthralling matches the tournament ever has provided.”
Two days later, he got measured for a Navy uniform. He wouldn’t play another major for seven years.
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Toward the tail end of this year’s Australian Open, a surprising stat made the rounds. In the Open Era, no man has won the next major immediately after winning his first title at that level. Andy Murray was the first to come close, following up his initial slam championship with a final. Daniil Medvedev had a chance to surpass Murray in Australia, but he fell just short of adding a second title to his 2021 US Open winner’s trophy.
Like Murray and Medvedev, Ted Schroeder didn’t start his major-winning career with back-to-back titles. I’ve already told you that after his first slam, he didn’t play another major for seven years. With Wimbledon and the Australian Championships suspended for the duration of the war and the French converted to an ersatz Championships of Occupied France, there weren’t many opportunities. Some elite players in the US military were able to take leave to play their national tournament, but in 1943, Schroeder was not among them. Instead, his undefended title went to Joe Hunt, who himself would not be able to return in 1944 and would die in a plane crash before the end of the war.
Back-to-back first and second majors were more common before 1968, at least when war didn’t get in the way. In the half-century after World War I, nine men won the major right after the one where they claimed their first big title. It’s an impressive list: Tilden, Lacoste, Perry, Budge, Riggs, Frank Parker, Budge Patty, Rosewall, Hoad, and Newcombe. Parker comes with an asterisk, because he grabbed his first two titles at Forest Hills in 1944 and 1945, when the other majors weren’t played.
Schroeder qualifies for a variation on the list, though, and his company is equally strong. Here are the men between 1919 and 1967 who skipped at least one slam, but won the next major that they entered after winning their first major title:
Player First Major Next Major Jack Crawford 1931 Aus 1932 Aus Ellsworth Vines 1931 US 1932 Wimb Jack Kramer 1946 US 1947 Wimb Ted Schroeder 1942 US 1949 Wimb Alex Olmedo 1959 Aus 1959 Wimb
Winning consecutive entries isn’t quite as impressive as the cross-surface feat of, say, Lacoste, who won the French and Wimbledon in 1925, or Rosewall, who won the Australian and the French in 1953. But there isn’t much separating it from the Wimbledon/Forest Hills back-to-backs of Tilden, Budge, Riggs, and Newcombe.
And then there’s the fact that only a one-of-a-kind character could deliver a multi-major career with a seven-year gap in the middle.
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After his 1942 Forest Hills title, Ted Schroeder didn’t return to regular tournament play until 1946. The closest he came to elite competition in the meantime was in 1944, when he found himself at the same Navy base as Joe Hunt, the man who took his place as national champion. The 1942 and 1943 US titlists faced off in front of a large crowd that enjoyed what must have been the highest-quality tennis in Pensacola, Florida for a long time. Hunt won.
By 1946, Schroeder was married and expecting a baby. Still, he committed to the Davis Cup team, which was headed to Australia to reclaim the trophy. He would take unpaid leave for that trip, leaving no flexibility to play that year’s circuit of Eastern tournaments. He worked his way back into form in time to reach the final at the Pacific Southwest in Los Angeles, winning two five-setters before losing to Jack Kramer. Kramer was considered the best amateur in the world, so there was little shame in coming up short.
Schroeder at full stretch
The American side swept the competition in Australia and brought the Davis Cup back home, which made life easier for everyone. To retain the trophy, the defending nation needed to win only one tie, a Challenge Round played late in the season, hosted by the defenders. When the Americans held the Cup, the Challenge Round was usually scheduled immediately before or after the national championships at Forest Hills.
In 1947 and 1948, Schroeder continued to play his part for the home team, winning two singles matches each year against the now-challenging Australians. But he didn’t play Forest Hills. Perhaps business commitments allowed just so much time for tennis and no more, but Kramer offered a different explanation. Schroeder felt he had been burned in the past by the favoritism displayed by the Eastern tennis establishment. That–at least in Kramer’s telling–was reason enough to skip the season’s central individual event.
Whatever the reason behind his scheduling choices, it was clear that tennis was just one of many demands on Ted’s time. According to TennisArchives.com, he entered exactly seven tournaments (not counting Davis Cup) in each of the first three seasons after the war. Two of the 1946 tournaments were part of the Davis Cup trip to Australia. Schroeder played well, but only when time permitted.
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Schroeder took the plunge and returned to grand slam tennis in 1949. A month away from his 28th birthday, he made a whirlwind trip to England, arriving in time to play the Queen’s Club warmup and booking a flight home the Monday after Wimbledon. He planned to be back at his desk on Tuesday.
Ted’s Davis Cup exploits were enough for the Wimbledon seeding committee to rank him first. He lived up to his billing, but bettors who backed him at 7-4 odds lost plenty of sleep during the fortnight. By the end, the Brits were calling him “Lucky Ted.” He overcame a two-set deficit against fellow American Gardnar Mulloy in the opening round, and needed five sets in the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final triumph against Jaroslav Drobny. Schroeder escaped two match points in the quarter-final versus Frank Sedgman, even after he was called for a first serve foot-fault on the second of them.
Schroeder himself wasn’t sure how much credit he deserved. He wrote to Harry Hopman afterwards: “I played some bad tennis in this tournament to get myself into trouble and then played some good–and lucky–tennis to get out of it.”
The mix of bad, good, and lucky continued two months later. He came through in five sets against Bill Sidwell in yet another Davis Cup Challenge Round against the Aussies, and he reached the final at Forest Hills (yes, he opted to play) after sneaking past Sedgman and Billy Talbert in two more matches that went the distance. Kramer was so baffled by his friend’s uneven form that after Talbert took a two sets to one lead, he accused Ted of tanking.
21-year-old defending champion Richard “Pancho” González awaited in the final. It promised to be a meeting of huge serves and easy holds, and so it proved. The first set went to 18-16, establishing a record for the longest frame in the tournament’s history. Schroeder didn’t get to deuce on return until the 25th game, and he finally broke in the 34th. After Ted won an easy second set, his form abandoned him, and González’s serve was too strong. After yet another five-setter, Schroeder went home with the runner-up trophy.
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Jack Kramer was rarely afraid to speak his mind, but he didn’t often accuse his friends of tanking. There was a backstory here.
After the 1947 season, Kramer went pro. The professional game depended both on the presence of a big-name star and on a viable challenger who could keep matches interesting. In 1949, even before Wimbledon, Kramer and promoter Bobby Riggs decided that Schroeder was that challenger. They agreed on a contract, but Ted soon decided the pro game wasn’t for him, and he begged off. That left Kramer and Riggs in a tough spot: Schroeder was now the Wimbledon champion, and whoever replaced him would look like a very poor challenger indeed.
Schroeder recognized the problem. Kramer and Riggs thought that Ted agreed not to play Davis Cup and Forest Hills, which would allow Richard González–next in line to turn pro–an opportunity to emerge as a bigger star. While González would be the same player with or without Ted hanging around, professional tennis depended on selling a lot of tickets, so the goal was to get González’s name in as many laudatory headlines as possible before his amateur career concluded.
Agreement or not, Schroeder played. He and Kramer were close, so he must have had mixed feelings. When Kramer accused him of tanking, the rationale was obvious: A loss to Talbert would open the way for González to win the title. It would remove any lingering pressure for Ted to turn pro.
Kramer was similarly skeptical of Ted’s motivation in the final. He later wrote of Schroeder’s approach after taking a two-set lead:
[T]he book called for Schroeder to relax, let Gonzales have the set; then with the intermission [after the third set], come back relaxed and win in four. Instead, Schroeder fought like a tiger for every point but lost 6-1. Ridiculous.
Kramer knew what Schroeder should have done, because the two men had spent their careers playing from the same book. They learned tactics together as teenagers at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. Kramer became famous for his prototypical “Big Game” of high-percentage serve-and-volleying. And Jack thought that the system–devised by a local club player named Cliff Roche–helped Ted even more than it did himself.
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We’ll never know if Schroeder gave his best effort in the 1949 Forest Hills final. Kramer settled on the face-saving conclusion that Ted might have “subconsciously” let his opponent win.
What we do know is that Schroeder very, very rarely lost five-setters. His style was physically demanding; Bobby Riggs called him “the most spectacular, most aggressive player I’ve ever seen.” The Cliff Roche game plan balanced aggressiveness with careful conservation of energy–basically, serve-and-volley combined with strategic tanking.
Before the González match, Schroeder had a career record of 20-2 in deciding fifth sets. Fifth sets are typically contested between closely-matched competitors, so a mark north of 90% defies belief. Novak Djokovic has won 35 out of 45, a rate of 78%. Bjorn Borg won 26 of 32, good for 81%. Schroeder was hardly in the same league as those two, but put him in a decider and he was untouchable. Through the 1949 semi-final at Forest Hills, he hadn’t lost a fifth set since before the war. While he was called “Lucky Ted,” it’s unlikely his record can be fully explained by good fortune.
Kramer explained some of the roundabout wins:
The funny thing was that early in a tournament, Schroeder could not help himself from trying to play a classic game, imitating [Don] Budge. He would try gorgeous textbook strokes, staying back, trading groundstrokes, and then he’d fall behind and have to fight his way back scratching and hustling, playing like Ted Schroeder.
Ted’s greatest matches do give the impression that he could crank things up to eleven, virtually at will. In the 1949 Wimbledon quarter-final against up-and-comer Frank Sedgman, he twice faced match point in the fifth set. The second time, on his serve at 5-6, he was called for a foot-fault on his first serve. He shook it off, charged the net behind his second, and hit a volley winner off the frame.
In the final of that tournament against Drobny, the correspondent for the New York Times essentially signed off on the conservation-of-energy hypothesis. The match went five “none-too-well-played” sets, but Schroeder was “never so extended as the scores would seem to indicate. [He] played only as hard as he needed to win.”
None of this is to say that the five-setters were all tactical. Observers were unanimous that Schroeder’s fighting spirit was unparalleled. Harry Hopman wrote, “It is his outstanding characteristic … to him it is natural to fight.” But he was essentially a part-time player, and he didn’t keep up with any special training regimen while at home. Cliff Roche-style percentage tennis was the only way for him to win five-setters against the best players in the world, and for whatever reason, he abandoned the game plan with so much on the line against González.
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Schroeder’s career spanned nearly two decades, from his first junior tournaments in 1938 to his final local outings in 1956. Yet in that entire time, he played fewer than 100 tournaments. If we count Davis Cup ties, we can nudge the total into triple digits.
What-ifs abound. Had he come along five years sooner, he could’ve played a few more full seasons in his early 20s before the disruption of World War II. Had he tolerated the slights of the tennis establishment, he might have played Forest Hills more often, possibly challenging Kramer in 1946 and 1947 and delaying the rise of Richard González in 1948. If he had more of an appetite for the daily grind of professional tennis, he could have made a lot of money and perhaps even altered the top-heavy landscape of the late-1940s pro game.
But except for the timing of the war, the counterfactuals tend to be variations on the question, What if Ted Schroeder had been less like Ted Schroeder? The type of guy who skips warm-up tournaments and then takes the scenic route to three major singles finals and two titles doesn’t fit the profile of a day-in, day-out pro tennis warrior. The hypothetical version of Ted that entered 20 tournaments every season would’ve quickly soured on the game or sacrificed the qualities that sparked so many dramatic victories.
The career that Schroeder did have was truly one-of-a-kind. Few men have ever eked out so much triumph from so few matches, even if he often needed to play the full five sets to do so.