John Powless, one of the most highly regarded senior tennis players in the United States who also happed to have coached basketball and tennis at the University of Wisconsin, died May 20 at the age of 88. In 2017, Powless was one of the featured tennis players in the book “Sport of a Lifetime: Enduring Personal Stories From Tennis” by Judy Aydelott and published by New Chapter Press (for sale and download here https://www.amazon.com/dp/1937559645/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_DABA1C74A7EVNDZ1E4CV via Amazon.com) The book highlighted some of the great senior tennis player in the United States. There’s no doubt that Powless should be included in a book of this ilk. The chapter on Powless is excerpted below.
John Powless is a hard man to pin down. He travels the world playing in senior and super senior tennis events. However, I finally cornered him at a hotel in Virginia Beach where he was playing the USTA National 80-and-over clay courts in singles and doubles.
Tall, 6 foot, 5 inches, handsome with a shock of well-coifed white hair, and as personable and positive as they come, we found a computer room that the hotel front desk said we could use. Space was tight, but John curled his long legs under a chair, and we began our journey.
John, born on August 24, 1932 during the Depression, was raised on a large farm in the small town of Flora, population approximately 4,000, in southern Illinois. He lived with his extended family of great grandfather, grandfather, grandmother, parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins, all under one roof in a large farmhouse.
“I slept in the attic on a straw mattress,” he said. “But when an aunt or an uncle or somebody went away on business or whatever, I’d take up residence on their feather bed till they returned.
“Everybody worked on the farm,” John explained further. “We had no running water, no heat and no electricity, and nothing was motorized. When I was nine, I started plowing with a single blade plow pulled by one of our work horses. The farm was large, very large, probably several hundred acres. We grew acres and acres of crops – all kinds – and we’d grow alfalfa for the horses and cows to eat. The alfalfa was harvested and packed into large stacks and left in the fields so the animals could feast at their leisure.”
“Did you have a large herd of cattle?” I asked.
“No, we kept the cows just for our own family needs. We didn’t sell any milk or dairy products.”
“Did the Depression have an impact on your lives?”
“No, it really didn’t. To begin with, we didn’t have running water, electricity or mechanized equipment. We didn’t have anything invested in the stock market. We were hard working farm people. Life didn’t change for us.”
“But World War II did have an impact,” he said. “I was too young to enter the service, but many of my relatives served. I’ll never forget one day when I was 9 or 10. I was out by our barn, and I saw a small World War II plane, a P-38 Lightning, heading toward me. The plane flew very low over our barn, turned upside down, and there was my uncle flying his plane, a Pathfinder, giving me a salute! I saluted right back.”
John paused and added, “I often wondered if he ever got into trouble for that maneuver.”
I asked, “So John, you grew up on a farm, and everybody worked their butts off. How in the world did you get started in tennis?”
“My Dad was a tennis player,” he said. “When he was 18 or so, he was hustling this good looking gal who played tennis. She told him that she wasn’t interested unless he could beat her. So he set out to learn the game, and a match between them was arranged. Unfortunately, the young lady beat my Dad, and the romance was over. But not his romance with tennis. He kept at his game and became quite a player.”
“You told me Flora is in southern Illinois, but was it unique in any way?”
“Flora was on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and a large, three-story depot was built in the early 1900s to accommodate all the passenger trains that came through every day. And one of the town’s annual attractions was a tennis tournament on the 4th of July. We’d have a draw of 128 players coming from all over, even some well-known players, Dick Savitt being one. And my Dad usually did pretty well and became fairly well-known. One day, a gentleman, Louis Roeder, got off the train hoping to play my Dad whom he had heard of. I’ll never forget it. He was dressed in a double-breasted suit. I’d never seen such a suit. So he introduces himself to my Dad and says, ‘Cecil, so when am I going to get to play you?’ My Dad replied, ‘You have to beat my kid here if you want to play me.’ The poor guy never got to play my Dad!”
John laughed at the thought of one of his early victories on the tennis court.
But Louis Roeder, who happened to be a reporter, first covering the New York Giants and then the New York Yankees, kept in touch with young John, especially when John played in the national tournaments at Forest Hills in New York. Roeder took him out to dinner during the tournaments and continued to be a mentor of sorts.
Continuing in his non-stop, stream of consciousness fashion, John said, “When I was 11, I went to enter a local tournament. I had my racquet, and I wore my usual tennis clothes: bib overalls but no shoes or shirt. The tournament director defaulted me because I didn’t have ‘the proper attire.’
“While I was still a kid, my father and I built a dirt tennis court on our farm, and folks from all around came to play on it. The court became known as the “Frog Island Tennis Court.”
“How did you come up with that name?”
“Well, every time it rained, the frogs would come out and take over the court. So, we started this tradition that if you wanted to play after the rain you had to catch a frog. And to make it more exciting, you had to catch the frog after dark. Have you ever tried to catch a frog after dark?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“It’s not easy because if you just go after the frog he’ll jump away, and you’ll end up with a fist full of mud. What you have to do is shine a flashlight at the frog. Then you’ve got him.”
“You’ve got some great stories.” John just smiled broadly.
“And the best part is, they’re true,” he said.
“Now, when you got to high school, did your high school have a tennis team?” I asked.
“Oh yes. In our high school, everybody had to play three sports, and the only three sports offered were football in the fall, basketball in the winter and tennis in the spring.”
“No baseball? America’s favorite sport?”
“No baseball. A lot of the people who lived in Flora were oil people from Texas and Oklahoma. Their sports were softball and tennis. So, the school wasn’t going to have a softball team because no other school in the area had softball teams. Tennis became the third sport. We’d start football practice in August, and once that started, all the basketball hoops in town were taken down. No sneaking in pick-up games with your buddies on the side. When basketball practice started, the same thing. All the boys in school concentrated solely on basketball. Then came tennis – same deal.
“We’d have our practices after school, and then at 9 p.m. every night the town whistle blew meaning all the kids had to get home and go to bed. That was one way to take care of idle mischief.”
“How’d you do on the tennis team?”
“Glad you asked,” answered John, grinning. “I won the State Championship my senior year, and that had never happened in little Flora.”
“Has it happened since?”
“No, it hasn’t. That’s a pretty good long-standing record. And it was a pretty good win. I beat the No. 2 player in the U.S. juniors, Al Kuhn from Evanston High School. Over the years we’ve played against each other many times, and we’ve become great friends.”
After high school, John went to a pharmacy school in Michigan but soon transferred to Murray State in Murray, Kentucky. He played forward on the basketball team all four years and led the team to the Kentucky Invitational title.
“And I set the single scoring record at the time – 34 points in one game.”
In tennis, John was equally triumphant, never losing a match in all three years of varsity competition. He also was the Ohio Valley Conference singles and doubles champion all three seasons.
After graduating from Murray State in 1957, Powless taught and coached basketball and tennis for two years at Florida State. He followed that up with three years as assistant basketball coach at the University of Cincinnati under the Head Coach Ed Jucker.
“We had one remarkable undefeated season and compiled an amazing 78-6 record over three years. During those three years, the Cincinnati Bearcats had two back-to-back NCAA titles defeating Ohio State both times, before losing to Loyala University in the NCAA finals in 1963.”
John’s next move was to the University of Wisconsin where he coached basketball for 13 years and tennis for five. Leaving the University of Wisconsin in 1976, he launched a new tennis career as founder and owner of the John Powless Tennis Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The center opened its doors in 1979, and it’s still going strong with eight hardcourts and two Har-Tru indoors and four hard courts outdoors.
“The club was recognized by the USTA as Club of the Year in Wisconsin as well as Best Tennis Club in the Midwest and was the finalist for the National Club of the Year contest,” John proudly said. “All our programs are very strong, particularly the juniors and the Rising Stars programs. We’re helping to get kids off the streets and onto the courts.”
“After college, while you were coaching tennis and basketball, did you have a chance to play in any national or sectional tournaments?”
“This would have been in the late 1950’s, early 60’s,” he said. “That was when I was playing my best tennis. Don Dell was a top professional, Davis Cup captain and later one of the first player reps and sports’ promoters, and he knew everybody in tennis – well, he was always calling me to come East and play in men’s events. So, I did. I’d play at Forest Hills, and some of the other tournaments in the East, and I got into the top 20 in singles and as high as No. 3 in doubles at one point.But, you know, this was all before we had Open tennis in 1968. I still played competitively, but there was no money in the game. That’s why I kept my ‘day jobs’ – coaching. And, to tell you the truth, I didn’t think they’d ever go for open tennis. Boy! Was I wrong.”
Changing subjects, I asked, “So how did the idea of senior tennis start?”
“The USTA was never much interested in senior tennis. It actually started with World War II veterans. They fought hard for world peace in the European theatre and occasionally, during leaves, had a chance to play tennis, often with their military counterparts. After the war was over many of them, along with the Canadians, said, ‘Let’s get together.’ They arranged to hold tournaments at a club in Lake Placid, New York every year for years. Draws were established for four singles matches and three doubles. The winner was awarded the Gordon Cup, a handsome gold cup resting on a marble base.
“After a few years as the average age of the entrants was 45, I decided it made sense to drop the ‘veterans’ title as many of the players were not veterans, including myself – I was only nine when the war started – and rename it ‘Senior Tennis.’
“The Gordon Cup is still played the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday of July, alternating one year in Toronto, Canada, and the next in Cleveland, Ohio. The Canadian seniors invite some of their best players, and the Americans do as well. Forty-five matches are played over a three-day period, and the winning country is awarded the Gordon Cup. The Davis Cup, by the way, is the only international team tournament older than the Gordon Cup. I often speak at the dinner given by the host country and have a chance to tell old stories of matches won and lost and of longtime friendships made.”
While John caught his breath, I thought I couldn’t imagine a better after dinner speaker than John with his endless enthusiasm, good humor and raft of stories.
“We started as a 45-and-over tournament but eventually it grew to a 50-and-over,” John continued. The USTA considered the Gordon Cup merely social, so we decided to recruit top players – Vic Seixas, Bobby Riggs, Gardnar Malloy, the No. 1 tennis player in the U.S. and favorite partner of Billy Talbert, Davis Cupper Tommy Edlefsen,and Lester Sack are just a few of the names I can think of now who played in the Gordon Cup matches. Their participation helped to get the USTA’s attention but still no financial support.
“But we kept going. Then, Jay Freeman of Little Rock, Arkansas, an aging player and one of the original veteran players, and Roe Campbell from Knoxville, Tennessee, suggested we expand the senior tennis to 55-and-over and call it ‘Super Senior Tennis.’ He said ‘We can’t compete against these 45 and 50 year olds. We have to expand the category to 55s, 60s and even beyond.’
“So, a clubhouse in Knoxville where Roe was a member placed a cornerstone announcing the birth of Super Senior Tennis. Jay Freeman, Van Zerbie, Joe Cullen, C. Alphonso Smith, Roe Campbell and others were the founders of Super Senior Tennis which has now grown to include even 95-and-over.
“We still didn’t get any funding from the USTA. They thought we’d never get enough entries to make the tournaments worth it. Van Zerbie, a USTA board member, asked the Board to sanction the tournaments, but when he was turned down, he said ‘The hell with you all,’ offered his resignation and stormed out of the room.
“After that episode, Van and I talked and settled on a plan. Van was to go back to the Board and ask again for support knowing that the Board would claim we wouldn’t have enough entries. Then I was to get up and say, ‘Listen, this guy, Van, has done so much for tennis, we’ll just hold the tournament anyway. And that’s what we did.
“So we had to go it alone. We bought our gold, silver and bronze balls, the trophies for first, second and third places, and we set up our own tournaments. We had 64 players in each draw. We had so many entries, they were coming out of our ears! And even today, we have 32 players in the 95s! One of them is Warren Webster, a World War II Thunderbolt pilot. What a character he is.
“We established Super Senior Tennis, Inc., a not-for-profit organization promoting tennis opportunities and enjoyment for players 55 and above, and we publish the ‘Super Senior Tennis News’ sent free to all the members.”
“Are you involved in that?”
“Oh yes, I’m on the Board of Directors and Editor of the SST News. And many years later Senior Tennis spread to the women who have their own organization, the National Senior Women’s Tennis Association [NSWTA] which has its annual meetings in Houston. I’m a life member of NSWTA and go to their meetings every year. I think we’re the only sport now that is totally co-ed with the men supportive of the women and vice versa.
“And we have every combination of play you can think of: husband and wife mixed, father/son, father/daughter, mother/son, mother/ daughter, grandfather/grandson, you name it.
John took a sip of water, and I changed the subject.
“How about your own seniors’ career, John?”
“You might say, my seniors’ career started early because I played many father/son matches with my Dad. This would have been in the 1950’s when I was playing my best tennis. We won the national clay court father-and-son tournament three years in a row! And now I’m continuing the tradition by playing with my son Jason in father/son events. We’ve won two events and have been the finalists several times.
“But, I really got into senior tennis when I was in my 40’s, and I’ve been playing it ever since.”
I asked John how many gold balls he has accumulated, but he didn’t give a number.
“I’ve got a bunch because I’ve been fortunate enough to win national titles, but I don’t keep track,” he said. “People always ask me, and I tell them. ‘I don’t know. You can go over to the trophy case and count them up.”
Then John changed the subject. “I have to tell you about Charlie Hume. Charlie is 91 years old, and he just won his first gold ball. Now that’s what I call ‘hangin’ in there. It’s remarkable that these seniors persevere, and when they win, especially at 91, it’s such a sweet victory.”
“That’s a good segue, John,” I said. “Tell me what you most enjoy about playing senior tennis?”
John replied, laughing, “No match is fun until it’s over.”
“No, really. What are the benefits of senior tennis, and what do you like most about it?”
“First is the camaraderie and the relationships you develop. I told you about coaching basketball and winning two NCAA titles back to back when at the University of Cincinnati. Occasionally I’ll get a phone call from a player, but in tennis I get phone calls every day from tennis players!
“Second, and this is totally unique to tennis – its international aspect. We play cup matches all over the world with players from different nations, and they become friends. I’m leaving to play the Gardnar Mulloy Cup in Croatia. We’re playing at a club on the Adriatic which is spectacular! Some of the countries participating are Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Sweden, Norway and Germany. Many of the players I have played against before. They’re already friends, but there will be new ones, and they’ll become friends too. This sort of international connection through tennis should be expanded into other sports and activities. Maybe then we’d have more understanding and be more tolerant of foreigners.”
“My third reason is personal. I played senior tennis with my Dad in the ’50’s as I mentioned. Winning the tournaments we did was very special and made our bond even stronger. And the same thing is happening now with my son, Jason. We play father/son tournaments together and enjoy our time working as a team.”
Pausing a few seconds to gather himself, John concluded, “And, with senior tennis you stay fit and engaged. You’re meeting people all the time and enjoying their company. And, just look at the senior players – particularly the super senior players. They don’t look their age and they don’t feel it either. I can’t think of anything better than that to recommend senior tennis and super senior tennis to all players. They don’t have to play at the level of the ranked players to enjoy the benefits. It’s open to all players.”
But John wasn’t finished. He had some tips for all senior players.
“First, staying injury free is important. That’s not always easy, but we have such advanced medical care that my tennis buddies with bad hips and knees are back on the court with no pain; meds and physical therapy help us heal too.
“Second, you have to play on a regular basis. When Roger Federer hired Stefan Edberg as his coach, Edberg told him that he had to play more as he got older. To keep himself agile, quick and fit, he needed court time practicing and competing. And we see the results of that now. Federer plays more tournaments and is playing his best tennis.
“Third, everyone is different so you have to create your own routine. Whatever it is that works best for you – diet, practice, drills, weights, competition, running, walking – should become your routine.
“And last, you have to be disciplined and tough. When you decide to play competitive senior tennis you must follow your routine and play on a regular basis to be ‘tournament tough.’ If it’s not top level competitive senior or super senior tennis, you still want to win when you go out to play with your buddies and being disciplined is the best way to accomplish that.”
John Powless’ actions speak as loud as his words.
