One of the regular memories that I have is of my dad soaking in the tub. The phone rings and this gruff voice shouts, “Yeah, is Bobby there? This is Mike?” My dad liked to bet on football, and he tells me to get the line on that Sunday’s games. I would recognize the voice of my dad’s bookie and I would say to my dad, “Hey dad, Mike the Bookie is on the phone.” My dad would ask me ‘to get the line,’ and I would write down on a pad of paper the betting line for that day’s NFL games. So I’m on the phone with Mike, giving Dad the line on all the games—Colts five over the Dolphins, whatever—and my dad’s telling me, “Put two units on this” or four units on that, where a unit is a hundred dollars. And for me it was like normal. This is what all American kids do for their dads.

My father played a lot of golf when I was growing up, and had something like a 1 or 2 handicap. Some of my fondest memories was going to the golf course with him and riding [around] in the cart as he played golf. When we lived in Miami Beach we would go, and this is a vague name, to the course at Normandy Isle. I remember him taking me to the golf course and introducing me to his golf buddies. “I’d like you to meet the Dog Man,” “Here’s the Fat Man…The Stork Man,” who would play while standing on one leg. I also remember the Thin Man and a very muscular, fire-plug guy, with a handshake like a vise, who was called Dick the Fireman. I think, in fact, that he may have been a firefighter. Then there were two guys from Detroit just named Dick and Frank, as I recall. They didn’t have nicknames, and I’d just say to myself, “Well, okay.” And when they played, a crowd, maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty people would gather and follow them around the course. I think that eventually the course officials asked him to be a bit more subdued about it all.

After a while in Florida with my father just playing golf all the time, my mom decided she wanted more, so in order to get my father out of that environment we all moved to New York, where he got a job at the family company. My grandfather had two daughters, Patricia and Priscilla, and he gave their husbands jobs in the company. I’m not sure how they divided up the duties, but they were each vice-president and had their own office. But my father and Patricia’s husband, Michael, couldn’t be two more diametrically opposed personalities. As you know, my father was outgoing and gregarious, but Mike was the methodical, cautious grinder. He was trained as a lawyer, a real smart guy, but his personality was to methodicallay plug away. My mom liked to contrast their personalities, so maybe this characterization is exaggerated, but if so I suspect that this is exaggeration in the direction of the truth. Which is not to say that Mike and my dad did not like each other – they were, as far as I know, always fond of each other.

While in New York, my dad still had plenty of time to play a lot of golf. I recall traveling with him both to our own golf club, Plandome Country Club, where he was the club golf champion, and to other courses, especially to one of the famous courses in Westchester. He was meeting people, making golf bets, socializing; and for me, this was great fun, traveling with dad, hanging out in the locker rooms and steam baths. He also had a tennis thing with a group of characters at the tennis club in Manhattan, and also on Long Island. I recall some big name people, like Hank Greenberg and Jack Dreyfuss. There was also Tony Vincent, who was a second-tier player when younger but kept in great shape and was an excellent older player. There was also Es[mund] Martin whom I recall as being a wealthy, handsome, soft-spoken man who had on Long Isalnd the most beautiful indoor tennis court I had ever—or have ever—seen.

My dad, though, really wasn’t home all that much, with his work and his golf and his tennis and so on. So the burden of bringing up the kids all fell on my mother. We had some in-house help… who did cleaning, cooking, household chores… [but] all the other parental responsibilities, the doctors’ appointments, the schooling, discipline and whatever fell upon my mom.

When my Mom and Dad moved to New York from Florida there might have been an unstated compromise between them: He would give up his itinerant lifestyle, settle down, and do the nine-to-five thing; she would put up with the absences from home, the gambling, the women. I don’t think she ever consciously thought about it this way; and they certainly didn’t spell it out in the way we think of in the ’90s, but maybe they should have spelled it out, because in the end it didn’t work out.

The predominant memory of my childhood was my mother’s growing alcoholism. As I grew up, she started drinking more and more, and earlier and earlier in the day. By the time I was in junior high school, when I got home she was usually already drunk. Not stumble-down or passed out or incoherent—that was to come—but drunk. It’s funny how kids can tell these things, too. They have a sort of intuition. I could tell just walking in, maybe by a certain smell, or the way the house was left or the sounds that she’d been drinking. For some reason, perhaps because I was the oldest, I became her confidant. What’d happen is I’d get home and she’d want to talk. She’d get very emotional and talk about her problems and her life. I wasn’t sure how to react to all this. On the one hand, a part of me might have felt special at having this relationship. On the other hand, I didn’t know what to do and grew to dread it. Now, all I can remember is just how much I hated coming home.

Anyway, she had two great laments. The first was that she had no life of her own, that she could have “been a contender “and gone on to be somebody. I mean, she had talent and she was smart. She was a Phi Beta Kapa, or perhaps Summa Cum Laude at William and Mary, where she studied psychology, I think. But she would go on about how trapped she felt, and how she could have been somebody more than just a homemaker living in the shadow of her husband.

The other lament was about my father and basically that she was just terribly lonely. She’d complain about his gambling—at one point she made him go see a therapist about it, which he agreed to do—and though she never got specific about there being other women, I think she knew there were others.

She could so sweet and funny and nice when she was sober, but she underwent a complete personality change when she was drinking—a real Jekyll and Hyde transformation. Drunk, she was vicious—both verbally and physically: occasionally throwing things, breaking dishes, [and] screaming. Once in a while she would storm out of the dining room and throw all of Dad’s clothes out of the window onto the lawn. Dad would come home and his clothes would be tossed out on the front lawn. That sort of stuff. But one thing she insisted on was all eating dinner together. It was important for her to have that semblance of family unity. But as her alcoholism got worse, these dinners got to be awful because of the personality change she went through from her drinking. And she had a real knack for knowing exactly what someone’s soft spot was. At these dinners she would just tear into us— everybody was afraid. I don’t think she picked on me so much, perhaps because she considered me her friend. And I think Dorothy didn’t get it so bad, but the others did, and especially my dad. He bore the brunt of it. She would go on about his sports friends, his gambling, whatever. And I remember him with his head down, just taking it, not saying anything. He’d just ride it out.

Thursdays were the worst. That was when the help had the night off and my mother would cook, which is tough to do when you’re drunk. So add this stress to everything else and Thursdays were just a nightmare. Everybody dreaded them. I remember one particular Thursday with my mom screaming at my dad in the kitchen. As she is yelling at him, she grabs his glasses off his face and crushes them under his foot. And my dad doesn’t do anything, he just stands there with tears welling up in his eyes.

I think one reason my father wouldn’t fight back was he was a very sensitive guy. And despite his bluster and all that sexist stuff surrounding the Billie Jean King match, my father had a profound respect for women. In fact, one reporter once asked him about his views on women’s liberation and he admitted he didn’t know anything about it. He said it was just a hook to promote the match. This respect for women goes back a long way. His first tennis coach was a woman: Esther Bartosh. He always had a deep respect for his sister, Mary Lee, who had a career as a school teacher. And he and Billie Jean became quite close after that match. I remember right before he died they had a long telephone conversation in which he told her how proud of everything he was able to do for women’s tennis.

Looking back on it, the screaming, the throwing dishes, the tantrums, it probably happened less frequently than it seems in my mind. But that was the impression they leave, and the fact that it could happen at any time made it seem worse than it was. At any rate, I can hardly recall my mom not being drunk at night during most of my junior high and high school years.

The relationship between them wasn’t all bad. They had fun together. They’d play golf together, or tennis, go to parties together. I remember one summer when they decided to drive to Alaska. They just got in the car and off they went. Another time she went to Wimbledon with him, because he’d go there every year.

Part of the problem was my father really didn’t know how to deal with her alcoholism. Perhaps if he could seen it and his need to gamble in the same terms, he might have been better able to deal with it. But he never saw his gambling as an addiction, so he just didn’t know what to do with my mother. No, he wasn’t a classic gambling addict in the sense of losing the mortgage or playing until he was broke, but it was definitely something he couldn’t do without in his life.

My dad drank, and he enjoyed drinking, but he could stop. For example, three months before the Margaret Court match he put down his Heineken and got into shape to prepare for the match. That wasn’t the case for the Billie Jean match, however. I think he probably had too much Heineken. I remember watching it on television and thinking to myself, “Dad, you look awful.” He must have been 25 pounds overweight. And after he lost I called him up to find out what happened, and he said “Geez, son, I just miscalculated. I figured I’d kill her, but I just wasn’t prepared. I kept on drinking the Heineken.” Did he get sick from all the vitamin pills he was taking at the time? Well, those weren’t the only pills my dad took. He also had a thing for amphetamines, and had a pharmacist [this special doctor] in New York who would repeatedly fill his prescription [What my dad’s relationship with the prescribing physician was, I have no idea. My sense was always that the repeated prescription refills were the pharmacists doing rather than the physicians, but I have no way of knowing.]

He told me that if one or two worked well, then he figured for the Billie Jean King match he’d pop three or four Dexedrine and would be okay. That might explain why he was sweating so profusely and looked so bad. I felt bad for him since he really should have won the match, and the loss cost him, literally, millions in endorsement money.

Not long after my mom was diagnosed with emphysema. In 1991, she moved out to California and was hospitalized at Scripps near San Diego where, among other things, they had her in detox and put her on medication. It was working well, too. She had lost weight. She was much mellower. She still smoked a little, but she was taking care of herself

My father lived nearby in Leucadia and had also been diagnosed with cancer. In 1989, he had both his testicles removed. And he was dealing with that okay. But by then, because of their health problems and their age, all the rough edges were removed from my parents. While my mom was there, my dad offered to let her stay with him, and pretty soon they ended up getting back together. That was in October, and in January he proposed to her and they got married on Valentine’s Day.

I remember getting a call and they wanted me to perform the service. I remember saying to myself: I’ve married young people. I’ve married old people, and I’ve remarried old people. But I’ve never remarried old people who happen to be my parents. What do I say to them?

When I went out there, I was driving them around in the car and they were in the back seat holding hands and cooing to each other. It was really quite sweet. I felt like a dad driving home two sweathearts from the prom.

Jasper, my mom’s big black poodle was part of the wedding party. There was a reception after the service with maybe 50 people and after the food and the toasts, my dad went around the room stopping at each table, describing each person there and what they meant to him. It was an amazing performance.
They really seemed happy, and I believe they thought they had some good years left with each other. I think my father thought she’d actually outlive him, and that they could make plans to travel together or whatever. But not long after they got married, my mom’s health got a lot worse, and then my dad’s health also got worse.

My dad wasn’t religious, necessarily, but he was spiritual. I remember one visit where he told me that he had just read the Bible straight through for the fourth time—and I have no doubt that he really did. He told me that he just didn’t understand it. “Red Seas just don’t part . . . All these things just don’t happen,” he said. I’m a minister, you know, so he felt comfortable asking me about these things, so he would confide in me, and with my wife, Cindy, who is also a minister. I tried to tell him that the Bible doesn’t have to be literal in order to be true.

But he just didn’t understand. The Church of Christ, which he grew up in, is very strict—no jewelry in church, no musical instruments—the Bible is taken literally. Many of his family, his sister Mary Lee included, still have strong ties to the church.
I think after my mom died my dad made a conscious decision that that was it for him. After he lost her, and had his testicles removed and had a colostomy, I think he decided that there was so little left of life for him that it was time. He asked to be taken off the antibiotics, which he needed all the time because with the colostomy he had an open wound to his intestines. Without them he would be vulnerable to infection, go into a coma and die, which he did.

My dad was very sensitive guy, but I don’t think he was comfortable getting very close to people. I think in a way his gregariousness was a defense, a way to control people and keep them at a distance.

During his wedding reception in which he went around the room talking about each of the guests, he stopped at his brother John and told a story about how when he was a kid he played in his state boy’s championship, and how he and how he and his brother John hitchhiked to the tournament. He told it like it was meant to be funny, but I remember thinking to myself, “Here he is: one of the top players in the state, playing in his first big tournament, and he has to hitchhike?” Where’s his mother? Where’s his dad? I can’t help but think he must have been really isolated and lonely as a kid.

He mentioned the loss to Billy Jean King, and I thought to myself, “What about Jim’s death? What about losing the first son that you and mom had together?” But I don’t think he could face the pain—and I say that with no criticism because I’ve seen other parents lose children and I’ve seen how terribly painful such a loss can be. I don’t think he could say it. He just didn’t know how to deal with it.

I think, in a way, this isolation and loneliness explains his affinity for oddballs and outcasts. He would take them under his wing, make them part of his crowd. I guess he sort of understood their disconnection. He would try to help them.
He could be generous, but I don’t think it came easily to him. He was peculiar about money. He was rapacious and acquisitive. He would horde, and was tighter than the bark on a tree. I think part of this was growing up in the Depression, but also growing up the youngest of seven kids in the house of a minister. They may not have been impoverished, but they didn’t have a lot of money, either.

For example, in the 1980’s my father would play in these tennis exhibitions, and part of the deal would be that whoever was sponsoring the event would agree to send my father money for first class airfare, ground transportation, and hotel rooms. Well, my dad had this plane ticket, a multiple ticket like a Europass, where he pays a flat rate and can take a certain number of flights in coach over a certain period. Now, if someone’s going to give me first class airfare and hotel, I’m going to take it. But my dad, he’d pocket the money, fly on his own ticket and then stay with his friends and mooch off them.

When we played our dad in tennis, the tradition was when you the first set you got a hundred dollars. Of course, this never happened against my dad. But I remember one time playing my dad when I was a teenager and I was “on.” I was up 5-2 the first set and if I won the next game I’d win the $100. At the changeover, my dad takes out his wallet and pulls out a hundred dollar bill. He then takes that and places it in the alley under a rock, and then says to me, “I want you to think about that.”

Of course, I fell apart and lost five straight games. Looking back, I think if that was my son, I’d be happy to see him win. I might even go out of my way to let him win, just to give him the satisfaction. But my dad just couldn’t do that.

I came to realize that my dad was better as a pal than a father. And once I was able to understand his limitations, and not to expect him to be someone he really could not be, I was able to have a better relationship with him. Because he was fun to hang out with, and I always enjoyed going with him to the golf course, or to watch tennis together or just hang out.

We’ve always been a little touchy about reporters. Most of them are just looking to perpetuate the Bobby Riggs myth or find a neat little hook for their story rather than work to get at the actual man. I remember at dad’s public funeral, Jack Kramer got up and gave this long and lovely eulogy about my father, about how tough he was to play, and how he could beat every great player of his era, including Budge and Kramer (until Jack figured out how to beat him), about how the war cut his and everyone else’s career short, about the pro tour and their long friendship. And he ended it with an anecdote about them all nearly getting arrested in New Zealand over pitching coins on a Sunday to see who would pay for lunch. Of course, the San Diego television news ignored everything in the eulogy except the coin incident, because that’s what fit with the image they wanted.

So I guess we’ve become very protective of my father’s legacy, in part because he didn’t seem to care. Maybe he didn’t worry about it because he knew what he had done, and nobody could take that away from him. Also, he had that Hollywood “star” mentality about such issues. He told me, point blank, “any publicity is good publicity.”

My father I think was very proud of what he did for the game. He had a sort of hard-scrabble, street-tough mentality, and tennis was a very elitist game for him growing up. The matches were played at these very exclusive country clubs. You had to wear all- white. The men wore pants. You had to be quiet during play. My father hated all that. He thought if you couldn’t play unless it was quiet, you had no business being on the court and being one of the world’s best.

For him, the best thing about the Billie Jean King match was that it got people who didn’t necessarily know much about the game so involved. He loved the spectacle and cheering and the noise. That’s what he thought tennis should be about.

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