Take just two of his famous players: Roscoe Tanner, ’73, and John McEnroe, ’81. “Tanner put us on the map, and McEnroe was the best we ever had,” Dick Gould says, looking back on his 38-year reign as men’s tennis head coach.
McEnroe, who played one year for the Cardinal, “represented Stanford well the vast majority of the time, and yet he had his moments,” Gould says. “You wish everyone were an angel on the court and looked like they were respecting the honor of the game, but sometimes that’s hard for an 18-year-old kid to do.”
Spoken like a father of five and a grandfather of 14. Who looks like he could take you in straight sets without a single lob. In spite of the fact that he hasn’t picked up a racquet in 15 years and doesn’t watch much tennis on TV (“unless one of our guys is playing”). Face it, says Gould, ’59, ma ’60, coaching spoils you. “Just sitting in a stadium, watching a game, is really boring.”
When Gould steps down as head coach on September 1 and assumes his new duties as director of tennis, he won’t be far from the courts, however. They’re building a new office for him, tucked under the stadium, in a spot that once was designated as a ticket office.
Gould isn’t going anywhere, except home more often. He’ll be able to spend more time with his wife, Anne, ’72, MA ’80, who coached the women’s team for three years in the 1970s. “I’m hopeful I won’t be here until 7:30 every night,” he says, glancing around an office that is wallpapered with photos of past stars. “And I’m hopeful that I won’t have only six or seven days off between the second week of January and the end of July.”
In his new director’s chair, Gould will continue to do many of the things he has excelled at on the Farm: fund raising, special events and stewardship. At a dinner held in his honor on January 25, the coach showed just how profitable a move it could be. Planned for 350 guests at the Arrillaga Alumni Center, the event had to be moved to Maples Pavilion because more than 850 fans responded—and contributed more than $1 million to install bleachers for the back courts.
And the testimonials rolled in all evening. “Going to Stanford was one of the best decisions I ever made, even if it was only for one year,” said McEnroe in a taped interview from Australia. “Coach, you were one of the main reasons why. Bottom line, you’re a good man, and you’re a winner.”
In almost four decades, Gould has landed some $30 million to improve facilities, endow the men’s program and launch endowments for the women’s team. He has brought the Bank of the West tournament, the 1999 Fed Cup Final and the Siebel Champions to Stanford. All this while becoming the winningest men’s tennis coach ever, with 18 NCAA team championships, 10 NCAA singles champions and seven title-winning doubles teams to his credit.
“The first championship in 1973 was the most important because it proved we could do it,” Gould says. “That was a gigantic monkey off my back.” His two favorite NCAA-winning teams were those of 1978 and 1998, and he still remembers which players held which slots. When McEnroe played No. 1 singles in ’78, Gould says, there were three or four other players who could have held the position, including the defending NCAA champion, Matt Mitchell, ’79, who played No. 3 all season. On the 1998 team, which posted a perfect 28-0 record, “it was the same—four guys alternated at No. 1 throughout the year.”
Although this year’s 9th-seeded team lost, 4-0, to No. 4 USC in the NCAA quarterfinals, Gould said the squad “was capable, on a given day, of putting together a couple of wins over anyone in the country.” In doubles competition, sophomore KC Corkery and junior Sam Warburg earned one last NCAA title for the coach.
As he looks at the achievements of the past 38 years, Gould says that “one of the joys of the job is that you’re with [players] four years, three to four hours a day, six days a week—which is more time than they spend around their parents before they go to college.” (This from a man who started his own daughters’ Bluebird troops in group tennis lessons when they were 6 or 7, and who has made sure all his grandchildren were similarly enrolled in clinics.)
Gould has seen scholarships for the men’s team plummet over the years, from eight to 4.5, but he’s not complaining. “Title IX affects us all,” he adds. “But having four daughters, I can’t say it’s all bad.”
In fact, Stanford has submitted a bid to host the first coed NCAA championship in 2006—an idea that Gould proposed and the national body is now considering. As more and more tournaments worldwide, including the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, involve men and women competing at the same site, Gould says it’s a natural for collegiate competition. “It could be a great championship if it’s done right—a double draw,” says one of the game’s greatest boosters.
