Jack Kramer, Tennis giant dies at 88
Jack Kramer, a world-renowned tennis player in the 1940s and early ’50s and a well-known businessman and tennis promoter in Southern California for more 60 years, died late Saturday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88.
The cause of death was a soft tissue cancer that was diagnosed in July.
Kramer, the No. 1 player in the world for much of the late 1940s, won the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1947 and the men’s U.S. Championships, the forerunner of the U.S. Open, in 1946 and ’47. He also won seven other Grand Slam titles in doubles, all at Wimbledon or the U.S. Championships.
He was among the most successful of the touring pros, who barnstormed from arena to arena in the early 1950s. He retired from tennis with an arthritic back in 1954.
He was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. in 1968.
Kramer was among those leading the way for a more unified, open tennis tour and was among the group advocating a boycott of Wimbledon, which took place in 1973. He was among the founders of the Association of Tennis Professionals, a forerunner to the current ATP Tour, and was its first executive director in 1972.
He and his family have been the owners and operators of the long-running Los Angeles men’s pro tennis tournament since the late 1970s. The summer tour event was called the Jack Kramer Open for five years and is now run by Bob Kramer, one of Jack’s five sons. It began in 1927 as the Pacific Southwest Tournament and was held initially at the L.A. Tennis Club, then moved over the years to Pauley Pavilion at UCLA, Los Caballeros in Orange County and eventually to the UCLA Strauss Tennis Stadium, starting the year after the 1984 Olympics.
Kramer and his family also own Los Serranos golf course in Chino. Kramer’s son David manages the course.
Kramer also owned more than 100 race horses over the years and made two trips to Del Mar this season to watch his horses run.
His most recent trip was over the Labor Day weekend.
The last tennis match he saw was on July 27, when he went to UCLA for the tournament now run by his son. He said he wanted to see Pete Sampras play an exhibition match against Marat Safin.
