Wimbledon never saw the best of the great Pancho Gonzales
Was he the best tennis player ever?
It is a real mugâs game trying to compare players out of their eras so we will never know.
It is said that for about 14 years from around 1920 to 1934, Bill Tilden was generally considered the greatest player of all time.
From 1934 through to 1967 when Vines, Perry, Budge, Riggs, Kramer, Gonzales, Segura, Sedgman, Trabert, Hoad, Rosewall, and Laver were the top tier players, Gonzales was considered the best.
Since 1968, with the arrival of the Open Era, champions such as Laver, Jimmy Connors, Björn Borg, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and now Novak Djokovic have been considered by their contemporaries to be greater players than Tilden or Gonzales.
Gonzales's parents migrated from the Mexican state of Chihuahua to the US in the early 1900s. Gonzales was born in 1928, the eldest of seven children.
In his autobiography, he stated: "We had few luxuries at our house. Food wasn't abundant but it was simple and filling, and we never went hungry. Our clothes were just clothes â inexpensive but clean."
Largely self-taught, he was the World No. 1 tennis player for an all-time record eight years from 1952 to 1960. He won 17 Major singles titles including 15 Pro Slams and two Grand Slams, the US Open in 1948 and 1949. However Gonzales was ineligible to compete at Grand Slam events between the end of 1949 when he turned pro and the start of the Open Era in April 1968.
That meant no Wimbledon. How Wimbledon debenture holders, debenture ticket holders, hospitality and hospitality package lovers would appreciate him today.
It has however been estimated that Gonzales would have won an additional 11 titles at Forest Hills and Wimbledon alone.
But he did nevertheless rack up some weird records of sorts once re-admitted. In May 1968, he was the first professional to lose to an amateur, the British player Mark Cox, 0-6, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 at Bournemouth.
The first major open tournament was the 1968 French Open, when Gonzales had just turned 40. In spite of the fact that he had been semi-retired for a number of years and the tournament was held on slow clay courts that penalise serve-and-volley players, Gonzales beat the 1967 defending champion Roy Emerson in the quarterfinals. He then lost in the semi-finals to Laver.
In 1969, Gonzales reached the fourth round at Wimbledon winning what was then the longest match ever played, one so arduous that it resulted in the advent of tie break scoring. Gonzales met Charlie Pasarell, a Puerto Rican younger than him by 16 years who revered his opponent. He won a titanic battle which produced a staggering final score of 22â24, 1â6, 16â14, 6â3, 11â9.
In the fifth set, Gonzales saved all seven match points that Pasarell had against him, twice coming back from 0â40 deficits, to walk off the court the eventual winner in a 5-hour, 12-minute epic.
No-one made a âright Charlieâ out of Pancho!