Baylor's national champion 1967 tennis team
As Baylor School dedicates its new Zan Guerry Tennis Center Saturday afternoon with an exhibition by former standout pros Brian Gottfried and Dick Stockton, a look at the history of the sport there reveals a rich tradition.
Although Baylor, McCallie and Girls Preparatory School all now have excellent high school tennis programs and have taken turns beating each other in recent years, for several years in the 1960s and 1970s, Baylor had the best tennis program not only in Chattanooga, but also possibly in the South or even the nation.
Evidence to the latter is the fact that the Red Raiders won the National Interscholastic Tennis Tournament in 1967, when Baylor was still an all-boys military school.
And the success all started with coach Jerry Evert. If his name sounds familiar related to tennis, it might be because he is the uncle of noted former professional female star Chris Evert, who visited his family some in Chattanooga and competed in town as a junior player.
Mr. Evert came to Baylor as a coach in the 1957-58 school year and slowly built up the program to where it began making its mark on a national level. But the success all happened almost unexpectedly.
“I didn’t have any reputation as a tennis pro then or as a schoolteacher,” said Mr. Evert with a laugh recently from his Houston home.
Mr. Evert, who grew up in Chicago, said that he was teaching at Pinecrest School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at the time but teaching tennis in the summer in Cleveland, Ohio. He was connected with Wilson Sporting Goods, he said, and he thinks it was through them that he learned of an opportunity to teach and coach at Baylor and also teach tennis at the Fairyland and Manker Patten tennis clubs. This seemed like a much better setup to him than having to travel from Ohio to Florida during certain parts of the year, he said.
The late Chattanooga businessman Alex Guerry Jr., who had stayed interested in tennis after graduating from Baylor as a standout player in 1935, was also involved in bringing him to Chattanooga, he added. The Guerry family had been involved in Baylor tennis since the beginning, when then teacher and future headmaster Alex Guerry Sr., the father of Alex Jr. and grandfather of Zan, introduced the sport in 1914 while Baylor was still located on Palmetto Street in Fort Wood.
And by the time Mr. Evert arrived, the school had already produced a few good players, including Robert “Lefty” Bryan from the Class of 1930, future N.C. State and Dartmouth coach John Kenfield ’39 and future University of Tennessee coach Louis Royal ’52. The popular McCallie tennis coach John Strang ’36 also played there. John Guerry, Alex Jr.’s younger son, was also the coach in 1950.
Mr. Evert, who also taught math, said he had a simple philosophy when he came to Baylor in the late 1950s – develop the players he had. “I did no recruiting,” he said. “I tried to use our players I had taught.”
However, Baylor became so successful over the next 10 years or so with such players as Forrest Simmons, Zan Guerry and Roscoe Tanner that people like Mr. Guerry’s friend, Tony Ortiz, and Mr. Tanner’s friend, Brian Gottfried, also wanted to be a part of the Baylor success, he said.
Roscoe Tanner would go on to win the 1977 Australian Open and be a finalist at Wimbledon in 1979. Gottfried enjoyed a successful pro career, and Zan Guerry also competed successfully in a number of top pro tournaments before eventually heading up the family business, Chattem Inc.
Although people may not have realized it at the time, this era would perhaps be the start at Baylor - and perhaps at all Chattanooga high schools -- of the modern high school sports philosophy popular today in which young athletes pick a single sport and work hard at it throughout the year. It was the beginning of the end of the three sport high school stars so popular at the time but so rare today.
One longtime assistant Baylor coach during this era, who had also previously served as head coach, was Bryce Harris. As evidence that the Baylor dominance and success of this era were almost unplanned, Mr. Harris remembered that Mr. Evert actually wanted him to be the head coach. However, Mr. Harris thought Mr. Evert was more suited with his tennis teaching background. Mr. Harris actually was his boss as chairman of the math department, and their working relationship worked perfectly, Mr. Harris recalled.
“He looked up to me in the math department and I looked up to him in tennis,” said Mr. Harris, who turned 99 in February. “He was 100 percent plus.”
Baylor won six championships in the prep school Mid-South conference over Mr. Evert’s last seven years as head coach and the 1967 national championship. Several of his Baylor players also won national singles or doubles junior championships.
Zan Guerry held the unusual distinction of being the No. 1 varsity player at Baylor all six years he was there before graduating in 1967. Such upperclassmen as Mercer Reynolds, Richard and Edwin Hines and Neil Thomas were older than he was, Mr. Guerry recalled, but he did not remember any animosity. “They all treated me wonderfully,” he said. He admitted that playing tennis was the happiest part of being at Baylor for him, and he enjoyed getting to play on the attractively situated rubico clay courts next to the Memorial Gymnasium and Rike Field before the courts were moved to the north side of the school’s lake.
“Honestly, I didn’t care for the military, but I remember my tennis years very fondly,” he said. “We played college teams. My senior year, we would have won the SEC (Southeastern Conference) without a doubt.”
Besides Mr. Evert, Mr. Guerry said his skills as a youngster were also aided by playing with such middle-aged players as Frank Willett, Tommy Bartlett and John Strang.
Unfortunately for Baylor, Jerry Evert’s teaching reputation became so great that he was hired in 1968 at the Houston Racquet Club and left with his wife and five children. Ira “Sonny” Sumner, who was also a good tennis player, had assisted the Baylor tennis team for a period and took over as head coach. Mr. Sumner managed to continue the high level of success into the early 1970s with such players as Buzz Willett, multi-sport athlete David Dick, Joe Garcia, Jamie Howell, Tony Webb, Pem Guerry and Wes Cash, among others. Mr. Cash - who still plays on a high senior level -- recalled that he came to Baylor as a freshman in the fall of 1971 and he had somewhat modest goals, despite already being a pretty accomplished junior player.
“Truly my goal was just to make the team,” he said. “The top seven guys went to major colleges on full scholarships.” He added that his game was also aided by the teaching of Chattanooga tennis instructor Bill Tym.
By the time Wes Cash and Pem Guerry, the brother of Zan, had graduated in 1975, after Jon Chew had replaced the departing Sonny Sumner for one year their last year, each was a state singles champion and they had joined to win state and national doubles championships.
It was a fitting end to a nearly amazing decade or more run of tennis dominance for the Baylor program.
And Mr. Evert has not forgotten all these years later of being a part of that exciting time period.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “We had lots of enjoyment winning national tournaments and taking kids on tennis trips.”
Jcshearer2@comcast.net