Tuesday, March 02, 1999
Bill Talbert, tennis legend, dead at 80
BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Bill Talbert, a former University of Cincinnati tennis player who became a star on the international scene, died Sunday in New York at age 80.
Talbert and another former UC star, Tony Trabert, are regarded as the greatest tennis players Cincinnati has produced. Their finest hour together came in 1954, when Talbert captained the U.S. Davis Cup team and Trabert was the No. 1 player in a defeat of Australia.
Alvin W. Bunis of Indian Hill, a former doubles partner of Talbert and a leading authority on Cincinnati tennis, said Talbert and Trabert stand alone in Queen City tennis annals.
“They were the best, no question about it,” Bunis said. “That's not even arguable.”
Bunis teamed with Talbert to win the 1943 Tri-State Championship doubles title at Cincinnati Tennis Club. The event was a forerunner to today's Great American Insurance ATP tournament in Mason.
The cause of Talbert's death was not immediately known, but he had been confined to a wheelchair for the last several years.
Born in Cincinnati on Sept. 4, 1918, Talbert was diagnosed at age 10 with diabetes. He was recognized as the first diabetic to compete in athletics at the highest international level. “When he was a boy, the medical profession was confining diabetics to a lifetime of inactivity,” Bunis said. “What he did was a breakthrough.”
A 1967 enshrinee of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., Talbert reached the singles finals at the U.S. Championships — later known as the U.S. Open — in 1944 and 1945 and the U.S. Indoor Championships in 1948-51. He was ranked among the top 10 in the United States from 1941 through 1955, and was a stalwart of the American Davis Cup team.
As a player, he starred in doubles, teaming with Gardnar Mulloy to reach the U.S. doubles final six times, winning in 1942, '45, '46 and '48.
Talbert teamed with Trabert, another Hall of Famer, to win both the French and Italian doubles titles in 1950, and was U.S. Davis Cup captain from 1953-57.
Paul Flory, longtime director of the Great American Insurance ATP, saw Trabert play many times.
“He was a very stylish player,” Flory said. “He had great strokes, a strong serve, and was a superb vol leyer. He was a great tactician and he really understood the game. It's a great loss for the tennis world.”
Talbert, a product of Hughes High School, once wanted to be a baseball star. His goal was to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds.
Talbert once spoke of tennis doubles as “one of the most exciting of all spectator sports. It is full of action ... sudden moves and countermoves ... with requirements of shot-making and tactics all its own ... not a game of power but of angles.”
Known as “Mr. Tennis,” Talbert was named director of the U.S. Open Championships at Forest Hills and served as chairman and director of the Open from 1971-75.
When the Grand Slam tournament moved to Flushing Meadows, Talbert returned as director from 1978-87 and served as honorary vice chairman until his death.
Having played in both the longest men's doubles match and mixed doubles match on record, Talbert was instrumental in introducing the tiebreaker in a major tournament in 1970.
He was chairman emeritus of the Hall of Fame, served on the Hall of Fame's executive committee and was tournament chairman of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships in Newport.
Talbert was married to the former Nancy Pike, an editor for Vogue and Life Magazine, from 1946 until her death in 1995. He is survived by two sons, W. Pike and Peter, and two grandchildren.
At the request of the family, funeral services will be private.
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