Sunday, February 15, 2004
ED HICKEY, WHO HELPED RESCUE PRO TENNIS

What wouldn’t you do for your child?

That was the motivation for Ed Hickey, a benefactor not only for his daughter, Julie, but, as it turned out, for innumerable sports followers in this province and the athletes in a game that was almost out of business: professional tennis.

Edward Victor Hickey, who died Jan. 22 at his home in Sandwich, Mass., wearing out at age 88, had no intention of doing all that in 1964. A Boston bank vice president, specializing in public relations, he became known there for his easy-going TV commercials on behalf of the since vanished New England Merchants. In tweed jacket, bow tie and accompanied by a pipe, he was a comfortable, avuncular spokesman.

Though that life would continue, it jogged unexpectedly the day in 1962 he took young Julie to the U.S. Doubles Championships, a tourney that ran at Longwood Cricket Club for decades. The best player in the amateur world that year, about to complete a rare Grand Slam, was the redheaded Australian, Rod Laver, and Julie – like many others – thought him wonderful.

Schoolgirl-crushed, she looked forward to seeing him the following year, eagerly awaiting the tournament’s next edition. But her visit to Longwood was a bummer. No Laver. “Where’s Rod?” she asked.

Her father explained that Laver had signed on as a pro, no longer eligible to play in the most prominent events such as amateurs-only Wimbledon and US Championships. That situation was to change with the dawning of open tennis in 1968.

Tersely 13-year-old Julie put down tennis segregation of the time: “That’s dumb!”

So it was, and Ed Hickey, a golfer by avocation, wondered why Boston couldn’t have a pro tournament so that his kid, and everybody else, might see Laver again, as well as Pancho Gonzalez, Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad, who had brightened the Longwood lawn in their amateur days.

Was it even possible? Maybe, Hickey felt, despite a glum situation. Eighteen years had passed since the last professional tourney at Longwood, and the pros were staggering in their flighty one-night-stand enterprise, even though their dwindling cast contained a half-dozen of the finest players on earth.

Hickey began to investigate, learning, not very encouragingly, that the U.S. Pro Championships of 1963 had gone bankrupt at Forest Hills in New York. Even though the pro tour was in disarray, in low-key lobbying he found three receptive ears: Richard Chapman, president of the Merchants; John Bottomley, president of Longwood; Jack Kramer, longtime impresario of pro tours.

Kramer told him there were no plans to play in the U.S. in 1964, but he liked talking to a banker as a prospective sponsor. If there were prize money, say $ 10,000 – heavy cash then – Kramer would try to round up a respectable number, including Laver. Bottomley said Longwood was available if the bank would underwrite any losses. Chapman, sharing the Hickey vision, gave the go-ahead from the Merchants, and the U.S. Pro -- the longest running professional tournament, dating back to 1927 -- was resuscitated.

“Ed got the ball rolling for us,” said Ken Rosewall, the 1965 and 1970 champ, from his home in Sydney. “He got his bank to go out on the limb for us, and that started the turn-around for pro tennis.”

Bottomley insisted on a representative field for a week-long tournament, and Kramer rustled up 12 bodies. That was pro tennis in its entirety 40 years ago. Involvement of the Merchants Bank encouraged seven other cities to take a chance, and a circuit worth $ 84,000 took form for the summer of ’64. From that sprang open tennis in 1968, eventually a male tour offering $ 60 million in prize money this year.

Saddened at the news of Hickey’s death, Rosewall recalled him as “patient and calm, a man we could trust. Very different from many promoters we had to deal with in those uncertain days. Like the fellow at Forest Hills in ’63 when we didn’t get paid.”

Hickey’s patience and relaxed manner were essential the first time around when daily rains nearly flooded out the tournament, and the bank took a big bath. It was completed remarkably on a Monday in a driving nor’easter, the storm making a treacherous morass of the grass court. Becase the pros had a date for a one-nighter in Scotland the next day, the show had to go on (as it always did with those hardy pioneers). The returned Laver beat Gonzalez for the first of his five titles. Wearing spikes (as he would five years later in completing his second Grand Slam in the U.S. Open at soggy Forest Hills), Laver prevented Gonzalez from winning a ninth time.

Watching happily was a poncho’d Julie Hickey among a slim gathering of about 1500.

Laver’s first prize of $ 2200 “seemed like a million then,” he would say. Bank chief Chapman, presenting the check, got a laugh, grimacing, “Who authorized this expenditure?”

Hickey, born in Wakefield, Mass., raised in Newton, schooled at Boston Latin, Exeter and Williams College, served in the U.S Army Signal Corps during World War II.

“He should be remembered as the patron saint of pro tennis,” says Bruce D.H. Wogan, long the voice of the U.S. Pro as its PA announcer.

He was the background overseer as long as the bank was the prospering tournament’s angel, and a supportive fan when other sponsors took over the show that lasted through 1999. That year 19-year-old Marat Safin was the last to win the U.S. Pro, his initial title. He likes to refer to himself as the King of Boston when he and I get together.

Like countless other fans, Hickey was dismayed by Longwood’s desertion of its traditions and position on the global stage by selling the franchise, and razing its stadium.

Ed was ever modest about his role in the rise of the game. For him it was great fun, and he would say, “Aren’t we lucky Julie fell for Rod Laver.”

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