player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameFrederick Rudolph (Ted)
LastnameSchroeder
GenderMale
CountryUnited States of America
Date of birth1921-07-20
Place of birthNewark, New Jersey, United States of America
Date of death2006-05-26
Place of deathLa Jolla, California, United States of America

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From The Guardian, 6 June 2006:

Obituary – Ted Schroeder

By Richard Evans

The tennis champion Ted Schroeder, who has died of cancer aged 84, won Wimbledon in 1949 on his only appearance at the All England Club. With his death is severed one of the closest friendships between two outstanding players, Schroeder and Jack Kramer, the man who preceded him as champion by two years and with whom he enjoyed much of his sporting success.

Kramer went on to form his own professional tennis tour which, in those pre-open days, meant he was barred from the world’s major tournaments. It said much for Schroeder’s independent spirit that he refused Kramer’s entreaties to join his tour, which included such luminous stars as Pancho Gonzalez, Frank Sedgman and, later, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver.

His reasons, typically, were both sensible and quirky. He had been born in Newark, New Jersey, and raised in Los Angeles, where he attended Glendale Union High School. Then, having read Economics at Stanford University – and won the 1939 U.S. junior singles championship – he knew he had the makings of a successful businessman, a judgment soon confirmed when his boss made him vice president of a Californian refrigeration company. “And anyway, tennis was always much too emotional for me to treat it like a profession,” Schroeder used to say, between puffs on his corn cob pipe.

There was certainly no lack of emotion in the air when, at a Davis Cup team meeting in Melbourne in 1946, Kramer insisted that his buddy, Schroeder, play second singles against Australia, instead of the reliable Frank Parker, the choice of captain Walter Pate. Happily, Schroeder justified his friend's faith by beating John Bromwich 6-3 in the fifth set – and then ensured the US reclaimed the cup after a five-year hiatus by teaming with Kramer to win the doubles.

Schroeder had won the U.S. title at Forest Hills in 1942 before having his sporting career interrupted by service in the U.S. navy, when, appropriately for a quick-witted man of daring and courage, he served in destroyers and flew carrier-borne fighters. Finally, he found time to play Wimbledon in 1949 and, with Kramer acting as his coach – a rare occurrence in those days – he survived three tight, five-set matches with his aggressive game before beating Jaroslav Drobny in a marathon final, 6-4 in the fifth set.

Asked why he never returned to the All England Club, Schroeder said: “I was a businessman. I had to work for a living.” But the Davis Cup was something else and, in 1951, he and Kramer found themselves playing in Australia again, remembering the first time, just before the war, when they had been teenage reserves for a beaten team in Melbourne. They had played gin rummy then and, despite having a match to play in Sydney the following day, the ever-nervous Schroeder repaired to Jack’s hotel room once again to play through the night.

In his book The Game, Kramer recalled the scene. “It seemed so familiar, but then I thought what has passed between. We had both won our Wimbledon. Together, we had won the Davis Cup and defended it. And, God, there had been a whole war and wives and children, too. And here it was at the other end. Another hotel room. Another very long night.”

The pair spent a lot of long, hot afternoons at California racetracks, too, cheering on horses they co-owned. And while Kramer went on to help shape the formation of the new open game after 1968, creating the grand prix format, the player’s computerised ranking and helping with the formation of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Schroeder remained the dedicated amateur.

He followed the game closely, reported on Wimbledon and other grand slams for local radio stations and fired off heated letters to the United States Tennis Association (USTA) hierarchy whenever he felt its policies were hindering the development of American tennis – which was often. In one of his milder asides, he described them as bureaucratic bumblers.

Three days before Schroder died, Bob Kramer, now the ATP tournament director in Los Angeles, drove his father [Jack] from Bel Air to La Jolla to say goodbye to the man who had shared so much of his life. Schroeder is survived by the three sons of his marriage to the former Ann de Windt, who predeceased him.

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