I don’t write about myself that much. But this year I’m making some exceptions. The AC “A” Board announced that I’ll be inducted into the Austin College Hall of Honor in the summer of 2025. My sport is tennis, and Legends Weekend 2025 is igniting a bunch of Marc tennis stories. Here’s one:
I wrote a tennis Roo Tale about Billie Jean King and the Houston Racquet Club. The racquet club is the site of the first women’s professional tennis tournament, started by King and the “Original 9” in 1970. Amazingly, Kangaroo Paul Pearce played a significant role at that tournament. King later defeated Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes,” and women’s tennis never looked back.
The movie “Battle of the Sexes” was a great opportunity to write about Pearce and the tournament in Houston. When I shared the story, former Trustee Holly Mace Massingill wrote “this might be my most favorite Roo Tale yet!” Happy late birthday Holly; see the comments for that tale, which took place at the Houston Racquet Club.
But Marc also has his own personal tennis ties to the Houston Racquet Club.
I was an unranked 12-year-old tennis player in 1982. In the first round of the Texas A&M Open, my opponent was #1 seed Thomas Cook of Galveston, TX. Cook, one of the best players in Texas, competed that year in the Boys 12-and-Under National Championships in Indianapolis, IN. Cook was also a former player of my Bryan/College Station coach Tommy Connell, who had recently moved from Galveston.
Tennis players will grade themselves against great players in unique ways. How many games can you win? Can you extend a set into a tiebreaker? And might you even do the unthinkable: split sets, sending the match into a deciding third set? When I hit the court against Cook, winning a set was my goal. And I pulled it off! Because I wrote down everything, I know the score of the Cook match back in 1982: 6-1, 5-7, 6-2.
After the match, I found Mom (Linda) and Dad and told them of my accomplishment with pride. Mom’s response was exactly the kick in the butt I needed to hear. “Tommy Connell came by and said you would probably lose because you were too excited to win that second set.” It was 100% accurate. And it also changed my perspective forever. A loss is a loss, and Tommy Connell thought I could actually WIN.
The best tennis players in the world are the ones who turn their minds off. Am I winning the match? Am I losing? Is my opponent a beginner? Or is he Bjorn Borg? All these questions are irrelevant, even problematic. You play against yourself and your mistakes, and you overcome and win no matter the situation or opponent. It’s hard to pull off mentally. But the great ones do exactly that.
Conquering the mental aspects of tennis eventually led me to a Top 100 ranking in Texas. I know I played Cook many times again after 1982 in tournaments exclusively for ranked players. And I know I never beat him, as Cook was consistently ranked in the Top 10 in Texas. But I do know this. After that loss in 1982, I approached every match as one I could and should absolutely win. It’s an attitude that Coach Tommy Connell, a former player at Texas A&M, demanded.
Thomas Cook enjoyed a fine career after high school. He played for Texas Tech, eventually reaching the #1 spot for the Red Raiders. In 1993, Cook advanced all the way to the Southwest Conference Finals at line #1. His title run came up short in the last match however, as he fell to Texas A&M’s Mark Weaver. Weaver today is the Coach of your 2024 National Champion Texas A&M Women’s team. Weaver also a FB friend of fellow Aggie Tommy Connell.
And where is Thomas Cook? You know that a Marc story will always tie up lose ends and finish where it started. For the past 20 years, Thomas Cook has been at the place where Billie Jean King, The Original 9, and Paul Pearce put women’s professional tennis on the map in the era of the King-Riggs “Battle of the Sexes.” Thomas Cook, from whom I won a set but quickly learned to want more, is the Head Tennis Pro at the Houston Racquet Club.
H/T to Galveston Roos Jim Kelso & Reid A. Nelson (online friends with Cook) and Valerie Vance Lochner (Houston Racquet Club tennis regular and sister of my buddy Roo David Vance).
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