Fiend at Court Unplugged
The moment a tennis racquet is placed into a player’s hand is a potential inflection point. It could be that moment that sparks a lifetime love of the sport. I have a reverential curiosity about how dedicated and accomplished tennis players came into their first racquets. Bobby Riggs relayed the story of how he obtained his first racquets in both of his autobiographies. The story of just how Riggs did that is… not exactly reverential. However, it does reflect the quintessential hustle of Bobby Riggs.
When this site was launched, a conscious decision was made to use the spelling “racquet” rather than “racket.” In fact, “Making a Racket about the Racquet” was entirely dedicated to that decision. For Bobby Riggs, I was tempted to make an exception and revert to the alternate spelling. Almost everything associated with Riggs and tennis was a racket.
Riggs was the youngest son of a Church of Christ minister, a fact that is mentioned because it is the only reverential part of the story. He was first exposed to tennis when one of his older brothers decided to go out for his high school tennis team. At first, Bobby Riggs hit with that brother using a racquet borrowed from a friend. In a stroke of luck, Dr. Esther Bartosh, an accomplished amateur player, saw Bobby hitting and offered to give him free lessons.
Initially Riggs borrowed his brother’s racquet when working with Dr. Bartosh, but the logistics of that sharing arrangement became untenable. His first opportunity to snag a racquet of his own came when he spotted a man at the park playing fetch with his dog. They were using an old beat up tennis racquet as the stick. On one of the throws, Riggs beat the dog to the racquet and presented it to the man with the explanation that he needed the racquet more than the dog did. The man let him keep it.
Nor surprisingly, that racquet wasn’t in great condition and Riggs was immediately on the lookout for a replacement. After literally “winning all the marbles” in a game with one of his classmates, he was offered an unused tennis racquet in exchange for the marbles that he had just obtained. Riggs quickly agreed to the offer.
It is a delightful fact that Riggs hustled for both of his first racquets. First, by outrunning a dog in a game of fetch and the second by trading his gambling winnings from a game of marbles. In retrospect, I would be disappointed if Riggs had obtained a racquet in any other way.
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the stories of Riggs and his first tennis racquets were relayed in both of his autobiographies. Detailed coverage of both of those books were included in “Tennis is My Racket: Bobby Riggs” and “Court Hustler: Bobby Riggs.” Both books are out of print, but copies can be found on the secondary market. They are great reads and I would advise people to snatch up a copy if you ever come across one that is reasonably priced.
