The ep07 The Story of Big Bill Tilden

This is Jimmy Powers, and I've got a most interesting story for you today. There, this is Jimmy Powers again, and now let's discover who Granny Rice considered the greatest tennis star of all time, with another chapter from the Tumal and the Shouting.

Now in first person, I'll tell you about another champion. In tennis, I covered a distance of ground. I was conscious of the court game, in fact played it back in 1900 while an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University.

Malcolm D. Whitman was the national champion. I followed it down the years watching the best. Maurice McLaughlin's Little Bill Johnston's, Lacostes, Vinnie Richards, Vines, Fred Perry, Don Budge, Bobby Riggs, Jack Kramer, Tony Travert and the rest.

I've seen the gals come and go all the way from Elinor Cears. She was the first female who invaded a man's game. Onsru, Suzanne Longlan, Helen Wills, Helen Jacobs, Alice Marble, Sarah Cook, and up to Maureen Lillemo Conolly.

Now, that's a lot of names, a wealth of talent and dedication, but one name stands head and shoulders, at least to me, above this crop of the racket world, Big Bill Tilden. In my opinion, Big Bill was the greatest player who ever stepped on the court.

In September 1919 I went to Forest Hills to cover the National Tennis Championships. I was after a column on the singles between Tilden and Little Bill Johnston. That day I had lunch with Little Bill in the dining room with a clubhouse.

He was no bigger than a sack of peanuts. Wait 121 pounds. After a long match he weighed as little as 112 pounds. His right arm, the one that propelled his famed forehand, was no bigger around than a billiard cue.