Bob Kelleher: The Man Who
Opened American Tennis
By John Yandell
It's been a bad couple of months for titans in the history of tennis. First the word that the great Barry MacKay was no longer with us. (Click Here.) And now the death of Judge Robert Kelleher.
Most people who follow tennis have heard of Barry, but who was Bob Kelleher you ask? A high level college and seniors player, a prominent Los Angeles litigator and later federal judge, a winning U.S. Davis Cup coach, and the most important figure in the creation of the modern professional game in America.
How is that possible? The answer is Bob Kelleher was the man who spearheaded the creation of U.S. Open when he was president of the USTA in 1967. His leadership broke open the door for modern pro tennis and lead to its growth into the international billion dollar business it is today.
Judge Kelleher died last month at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 99. I had the good fortune to meet him in 2001 when we were filming Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and other stars in high speed video at a pro tournament in Los Angeles, where he had incredible box seats.
Although in his late 80's at the time, he was incredibly vital, perceptive and gave our filming project a big boost with his unqualified endorsement. He was particularly fascinated by our study of Sampras's serve toss, with its arc from right to left, and it's height, which reached around 2 feet above contact at the highest point.
He told me the story of standing on a ladder behind the fence when Dennis Ralston practiced his serve for the Davis Cup. By studying how Ralston's toss lined up with specific holes in the chain link he was able to convey to Dennis the ideal ball position for both his first and second serve.
As an attorney in Los Angles in the 1960's, Kelleher did legal work for stars like Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and Pancho Gonzalez. His campaign for an “open” policy in the United States followed the lead of Wimbledon, which inaugurated the so-called Open era after defying the International Lawn Tennis Federation and choosing to allow amateurs and professionals to compete in the tournament in 1967.
“We don't think the world-class amateur can live honestly and effectively,” Kelleher told the USTA board.
“They told me I was letting the money-changers into the temple, but I thought it was inevitable that tennis would have to go professional, and to tell the truth I'd do it all over again if I had to,” he later said in a 1998 interview with The New York Times.
In the 1960's the U.S. National Champioships at Forrest Hills had declined, contested by a shrinking pool of amateurs. Players such as Pancho Gonzalez were defecting to the professional circuit after winning a grand slam event or two.
Since they were barred from major tournaments, this cost players like Jack Kramer and Rod Laver dearly in the record books. Kelleher insisted that tennis could best market itself and its star players by abandoning its pretense of being an amateur sport. His legacy is enduring: the prize money at a grand slam tournament can now exceed $20 million.
Anyone who has worked with the USTA can imagine that type of monumental shift must have seemed virtually impossible at the time. Kelleher met fierce resistance from an old guard, whom he called “old goats who made crooks out of little kids by making them take money under the table instead of paying prize money.”
But in the end, Kelleher prevailed. In February 1968, the USTA voted to open competition to professionals, and weeks later the International Tennis Federation followed suit. Professionals became eligible to play in grand slam tournaments. For his accomplishments, Judge Kelleher was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.
But breaking open pro tennis was not his only high profile endeavor. In the 1980's, Kelleher was the trial judge in the celebrated “Falcon and Snowman” case of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, who were convicted of supplying classified information to the Soviet Union. The case was the subject of a book by Robert Lindsey and a film starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton.
When Lee was paroled, he paid the judge a friendly visit during which Kelleher pronounced him “rehabilitated.” Ironically it was his fame and accomplishments in the legal world that probably prevented him from becoming a household name in the tennis.
Robert Joseph Kelleher was born in New York City on March 5, 1913. In his youth, he was a ball boy at Forest Hills. He was a graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School.
At Williams, he was the captain of the tennis team and won an Eastern Collegiate doubles title. He later held multiple national senior doubles titles with his playing partner, Elbert Lewis.
Judge Kelleher was captain of the United States Davis Cup team in 1962 and in 1963, a championship season for the United States. That squad included Arthur Ashe, an unheralded rookie who, ironically, went on to win the first United States Open of the Open era in 1968.
When he was not practicing law, Judge Kelleher sharpened his tennis game on his backyard hard court, but also on the only clay court in Beverly Hills, which belonged to his next-door neighbor, the actress and dancing legend, Ginger Rogers.
In 1940, Kelleher married Gracyn Wheeler, a former top-10 tennis star. She died in 1980 at age 60. He is survived by a son, R. Jeffrey; a daughter, Karen Kathleen Kelleher; and three grandchildren.
