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Little Pancho: The Life of Tennis Legend Pancho Segura

Little Pancho: The Life of Tennis Legend Pancho Segura
By Caroline Seebohm

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Product Description

Born into a poor family in Ecuador, Pancho Segura was an undersized and undernourished kid working as a ball boy at an exclusive tennis club when he first picked up a racket. Little Pancho is the story of how this improbable athlete, with his bandy legs, infectious smile, and unorthodox two-handed style of play, became one of the greatest and most beloved tennis players of all time. During his twenty years in pro tennis, general audiences appreciated his spirit as a master entertainer, while tennis fans adored him.
 
Drawing on interviews with many in the game who knew or admired Pancho, Caroline Seebohm provides a close-up picture of the unlikely pro as his career first emerged in Ecuador and then developed further in the United States during the 1940s, where he broke down social and political prejudices with his charm, naturalness, and brilliance on the court.
 
Little Pancho follows Segura from the University of Miami, where he won three consecutive NCAA championships (still a record), to his time on the U.S. professional tennis tour. On the pro tour of that time, Segura and his fellow players struggled to earn a living and find acceptance in the traditional, sometimes elitist tennis world, which scorned “professionals” as outcasts. Little Pancho shows us Segura when he quit the professional tour to become a coach at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, working with movie stars such as Charlton Heston, Barbra Streisand, and Lauren Bacall. And finally, we hear for the first time from some of the later champions Segura coached, including Jimmy Connors. This history of tennis in the midcentury also is the inspiring story of how one poor Latino kid, through sheer grit, grace, and talent, changed the face of the sport forever.
(20090501)

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #614172 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-05-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 264 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Plenty of tennis books have chronicled the triumphs of the modern greats, but few have gone into the depth that Caroline Seebohm does in her excellent biography of the colorful and scrappy Pancho Segura, a major figure during the ''40s and ''50s."-Inside Tennis (Inside Tennis 20090415)

"An entertaining, compelling new biography."-Tennis Week (Tennis Week )

About the Author

Caroline Seebohm is the author of numerous books, including No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree and the novel The Innocents. She is a keen tennis player, but her only title is the singles championship at her boarding school in England. She now lives on the Delaware River in New Jersey.

Customer Reviews

Review of "Little Pancho"5
Caroline Seebohm has done her homework and come up with an excellent, informative, and very enjoyable biography. Pancho's childhood in Ecuador was not easy. The description of what it was like in the early days of the pro tour (40's and 50's, before open tennis) is surely one of the best that you'll ever find. You'll get to read about Big Pancho's (Gonzales') point of view on things, which is something new for many of us. Segura played a crucial role in teaching the American superstar, Jimmy Connors.

This book should be required reading for today's and tomorrow's touring professionals, who are enjoying the fruits of the labor of guys like Budge, Kramer, Riggs, Mulloy, Schroeder, Parker, Kovacs, Gonzales, Hoad, Sedgman, McGregor, Pails, Olmedo, Laver, Rosewall, and of course, Pancho. Outstanding!

A Tennis Master3
Good book about the early days of professional tennis, but not an intimate portrait of Pancho Segura. Seems more historical than biographical. That said, the contributions to the game by Segura are enormous from coaching hall of famers, like Connors, Ashe, Smith and Chang, to great matches with Kramer, Gonzalez, Rosewall, Riggs and more. Somehow even in Segura's own biography Big Pancho steals the spotlight from him. Also an except from The Tennis Partner captures an essence of the man that the book does not come close to. A very good chapter on Connors, whom he mentored and coached from his latter junior days through his three slam year in 1974.