Ricardo Alonso "Pancho" González (May 9, 1928 – July 3, 1995), known sometimes as Richard Gonzales, was an American tennis player. He won 15 major singles titles, including two U.S. National Championships in 1948 and 1949, and 13 Professional majors. He also won three Tournament of Champions professional events in 1957, 1958, and 1959. Gonzales was ranked as the amateur world No. 1 in 1948 by Ned Potter and in 1949 by Potter and John Olliff.
Gonzales was a prominent professional champion in the 1950s and 1960s, winning world professional championship tours between 1954 and 1961; he was the world number one ranked male tennis player professional between 1952 and 1961. Gonzales was a determined competitor with a fierce temper. He was often at odds with officials and promoters. However, he was a fan favorite who drew many spectators.
Gonzales was given a 51-cent racquet by his mother when he was 12 years old. He received tennis analysis from his friend, Chuck Pate, but mostly taught himself to play by watching other players on the public courts at nearby Exposition Park in Los Angeles. Once he discovered tennis, he lost interest in school and began a troubled adolescence in which he was occasionally pursued by truant officers and police. He was befriended by Frank Poulain, the owner of the tennis shop at Exposition Park, and sometimes slept there.
Due to his lack of school attendance and occasional minor brushes with the law, he was ostracized by the tennis establishment of the 1940s. The headquarters for tennis activity was the Los Angeles Tennis Club, which actively trained other top players such as the youthful Jack Kramer. During that time, the head of the Southern California Tennis Association, and the most powerful man in California tennis was Perry T. Jones.
Jones, the head of California tennis, was described as an autocratic leader who embodied much of the exclusionary sensibilities that governed tennis for decades. Although Gonzales was a promising junior, once Jones discovered that the youth was truant from school, Jones banned him from playing tournaments.
Eventually he was arrested for burglary at age 15 and spent a year in detention. He then joined the Navy just as World War II was ending and served for two years, finally receiving a bad-conduct discharge in 1947.
Despite his lack of playing time while in the Navy, and as a mostly unknown 19-year-old in 1947, Gonzales achieved a national ranking of No. 17 by playing primarily on the West Coast. He did, however, go East that year to play in the U.S. Championships at Forest Hills. He beat the British Davis Cup player Derek Barton and then lost a five-set match to third seed Gardnar Mulloy, despite leading 4–3 with a break in the fifth set. Following that, in the last major tournament of the year, the Pacific Southwest, played at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, he beat three players that would end their careers with Grand Slam singles titles, Jaroslav Drobný, Bob Falkenburg, and Frank Parker, before losing in the semifinals to Ted Schroeder.
The following year, Perry T. Jones relented in his opposition to Gonzales and sponsored his trip East to play in the major tournaments. The top-ranked American player, Schroeder, decided at the last moment not to play in the U.S. Championships and Gonzales was seeded No. 8 in the tournament. To the surprise of most observers, he won it fairly easily by a straight-set victory over the South African Eric Sturgess in the finals with his powerful serve-and-volley game. As The New York Times story of that first win began, "The rankest outsider of modern times sits on the tennis throne." His persona at the time was strikingly different from what it would become in future years. American Lawn Tennis wrote that "the crowd cheered a handsome, dark-skinned Mexican-American youngster who smiled boyishly each time he captured a hard-fought point, kissed the ball prayerfully before a crucial serve, and was human enough to show nervousness as he powered his way to the most coveted crown in the world." This was Gonzales's only major tournament victory of the year, but it was enough to let him finish the year ranked as the number one American player. Gonzales was ranked world No. 1 amateur by Ned Potter.
In 1949, Gonzales performed poorly at Wimbledon, where he was seeded second but lost in the fourth round to Geoff Brown, and was derided for his performance by some of the press. Gonzales was called a "cheese champion" and, because of his name, his doubles partner of the time, Frank Parker, began to call him "Gorgonzales", after gorgonzola. This was eventually shortened to "Gorgo", the nickname by which he was later known by his colleagues on the professional tour. (Jack Kramer, in his autobiography, says that it was Jim Burchard, the tennis writer for the New York World-Telegram who first called him a "cheese champ".)
When Gonzales returned to the United States Championships in 1949, he repeated his victory of the previous year. Schroeder, the top seed, had beaten Gonzales eight times in nine matches during their careers and was heavily favored. The only time he had beaten Schroeder, Gonzales was playing with a broken nose that he had suffered the previous day from his doubles partner's racquet during a point at the net. In a tremendous final that has been called the 11th greatest match of all time", Gonzales lost a 1-hour and 15-minute first set 16–18 but finally managed to prevail in the fifth set. Once again he finished the year as the number-one ranked U.S. amateur. Gonzales was ranked world No. 1 amateur by John Olliff
and Ned Potter. Gonzales also won both his singles matches in the Davis Cup finals against Australia. Having beaten Schroeder at Forest Hills, Bobby Riggs, who had been counting on signing Schroeder to play Kramer on the professional tour, was then forced to reluctantly sign Gonzales instead.
Gonzales was beaten in his first year on the professional tour, 94 matches to 29, by the reigning king of professional tennis, Jack Kramer. During this time, Gonzales apparently changed from a friendly, happy-go-lucky youngster to the hard-bitten loner he became known as for the rest of his life. According to Kramer in his 1979 autobiography, "The worst thing that ever happened to Gonzales was winning Forest Hills in 1949... At a time when Gorgo wasn't mature as a player he was pitted against Kramer, an established pro at his peak." Moreover, says Kramer, "Pancho had no idea how to live or take care of himself. He was a hamburger-and-hot-dog guy to start with and had no concept of diet in training... On the court, Gorgo would swig Cokes through a match... Also, Gorgo was a pretty heavy cigarette smoker. He had terrible sleeping habits made even worse by the reality of a tour."
Life on the tour was not easy. Most of the matches were played indoors on the tour's portable canvas surface. "One night", Gonzales recalled later, "I sprained an ankle badly. The next night in another town I was hurting. I told Jack I couldn't play. He said to me, 'Kid, we always play.' Jack had a doctor shoot me up with novocaine, and we played. That's just the way it was. The size of the crowd didn't matter. They'd paid to see us play."
Kramer won 22 of the first 26 matches and 42 of the next 50. Gonzales improved enough to win 15 of the remaining 32 but it was too late. Bobby Riggs, the tour promoter, told Gonzales that he was now "dead meat": Kramer would need a new challenger for the next tour. As compensation, however, Gonzales had made US$75,000, well above his guarantee of $60,000, in his losing efforts. Kramer also said that "his nature had changed completely. He became difficult and arrogant. Losing had changed him. When he got his next chance, he understood that you either win or you're out of a job." He was now "a loner", said Ted Schroeder, "and always the unhappiest man in town."
One bright moment for Gonzales in his rookie year as a professional was winning the U.S. Pro Indoor Championship at Philadelphia in late March, defeating Kramer in the final in straight sets. Gonzales also won the tournament at Wembley, beating Don Budge and Welby Van Horn. He did not play in the 1950 U. S. Professional Championships in Cleveland, which were authorized by the USPLTA.