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LEGACY: Gould's teams won 18
NCAA titles in 38 seasons.
Peter Stember |
take just two of his famous
players: Roscoe Tanner, ’73, and John McEnroe,
’81. “Tanner put us on the map, and McEnroe
was the best we ever had,” Dick Gould says, looking
back on his 38-year reign as men’s tennis head
coach.
McEnroe, who played one year for the Cardinal, “represented
Stanford well the vast majority of the time, and yet
he had his moments,” Gould says. “You wish
everyone were an angel on the court and looked like
they were respecting the honor of the game, but sometimes
that’s hard for an 18-year-old kid to do.”
Spoken like a father of five and a grandfather of 14.
Who looks like he could take you in straight sets without
a single lob. In spite of the fact that he hasn’t
picked up a racquet in 15 years and doesn’t watch
much tennis on TV (“unless one of our guys is
playing”). Face it, says Gould, ’59, ma
’60, coaching spoils you. “Just sitting
in a stadium, watching a game, is really boring.”
When Gould steps down as head coach on September 1
and assumes his new duties as director of tennis, he
won’t be far from the courts, however. They’re
building a new office for him, tucked under the stadium,
in a spot that once was designated as a ticket office.
Gould isn’t going anywhere, except home more
often. He’ll be able to spend more time with his
wife, Anne, ’72, MA ’80, who coached the
women’s team for three years in the 1970s. “I’m
hopeful I won’t be here until 7:30 every night,”
he says, glancing around an office that is wallpapered
with photos of past stars. “And I’m hopeful
that I won’t have only six or seven days off between
the second week of January and the end of July.”
In his new director’s chair, Gould will continue
to do many of the things he has excelled at on the Farm:
fund raising, special events and stewardship. At a dinner
held in his honor on January 25, the coach showed just
how profitable a move it could be. Planned for 350 guests
at the Arrillaga Alumni Center, the event had to be
moved to Maples Pavilion because more than 850 fans
responded—and contributed more than $1 million
to install bleachers for the back courts.
And the testimonials rolled in all evening. “Going
to Stanford was one of the best decisions I ever made,
even if it was only for one year,” said McEnroe
in a taped interview from Australia. “Coach, you
were one of the main reasons why. Bottom line, you’re
a good man, and you’re a winner.”
In almost four decades, Gould has landed some $30 million
to improve facilities, endow the men’s program
and launch endowments for the women’s team. He
has brought the Bank of the West tournament, the 1999
Fed Cup Final and the Siebel Champions to Stanford.
All this while becoming the winningest men’s tennis
coach ever, with 18 NCAA team championships, 10 NCAA
singles champions and seven title-winning doubles teams
to his credit.
“The first championship in 1973 was the most
important because it proved we could do it,” Gould
says. “That was a gigantic monkey off my back.”
His two favorite NCAA-winning teams were those of 1978
and 1998, and he still remembers which players held
which slots. When McEnroe played No. 1 singles in ’78,
Gould says, there were three or four other players who
could have held the position, including the defending
NCAA champion, Matt Mitchell, ’79, who played
No. 3 all season. On the 1998 team, which posted a perfect
28-0 record, “it was the same—four guys
alternated at No. 1 throughout the year.”
Although this year’s 9th-seeded team lost, 4-0,
to No. 4 USC in the NCAA quarterfinals, Gould said the
squad “was capable, on a given day, of putting
together a couple of wins over anyone in the country.”
In doubles competition, sophomore KC Corkery and junior
Sam Warburg earned one last NCAA title for the coach.
As he looks at the achievements of the past 38 years,
Gould says that “one of the joys of the job is
that you’re with [players] four years, three to
four hours a day, six days a week—which is more
time than they spend around their parents before they
go to college.” (This from a man who started his
own daughters’ Bluebird troops in group tennis
lessons when they were 6 or 7, and who has made sure
all his grandchildren were similarly enrolled in clinics.)
Gould has seen scholarships for the men’s team
plummet over the years, from eight to 4.5, but he’s
not complaining. “Title IX affects us all,”
he adds. “But having four daughters, I can’t
say it’s all bad.”
In fact, Stanford has submitted a bid to host the first
coed NCAA championship in 2006—an idea that Gould
proposed and the national body is now considering. As
more and more tournaments worldwide, including the U.S.
Open and Wimbledon, involve men and women competing
at the same site, Gould says it’s a natural for
collegiate competition. “It could be a great championship
if it’s done right—a double draw,”
says one of the game’s greatest boosters. |
