Pancho Segura, born Francisco Olegario Segura (June 20, 1921, known as "Segoo"), was a leading tennis player of the 1940s and 1950s, both as an amateur and as a professional. In 1950 and 1952, as a professional, he was the World Co-No. 1 player. He was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, but moved to the United States in the late 1930s and is a citizen of both countries.

Biography

Segura almost died at his premature birth, then suffered from hernias and malaria. No more than 5'6" (1.68 m) tall, he had badly bowed legs from the rickets that he also had as a child. In spite of this, he had extremely fast footwork and a devastating two-handed forehand that his frequent adversary and tennis promoter Jack Kramer once called . .

By the time he was 17 Segura had won a number of titles in Latin America and was offered a tennis scholarship at the University of Miami. He won the NCAA Singles Championships for three straight years: in 1943, 1944, and 1945. He was also the No. 3 ranked American player during those years. He won the U.S. Indoors in 1946 and U.S. Clay Courts in 1944 but was never able to win the United States Championships at Forest Hills, NY although he reached the Semi-finals a number of times.

Kramer writes that he lost

Professional career

Long before Open Tennis, Segura turned professional in 1947 and was an immediate crowd-pleaser with his winning smile, infectiously humorous manner, and unorthodox but deadly game. According to Bobby Riggs, Jack Harris (the promoter of the forthcoming Riggs-Kramer tour for 1948) attempted to sign Ted Schroeder to play the preliminary matches of the tour. Ultimately he failed and instead signed Segura to play the latest Australian amateur champion, Dinny Pails. Instead of a percentage of the gross receipts, as Riggs and Kramer were contracted for, Segura and Pails were each paid $300 a week.

Although he was overshadowed as a player by Kramer and Pancho Gonzales in his professional career, Segura won many matches against the greatest players in the world and was particularly brilliant in the annual United States Pro Championship. He won the title three years in a row from 1950 through 1952, beating Gonzales twice. He also lost in the finals four times, losing to Gonzales three times and once to Butch Buchholz in 1962 when he was 41 years old.

In the 1950–1951 professional tour in which Segura played the headline match against Kramer he was beaten 58 matches to 27, a noticeably better performance, however, than Gonzales's record of 27 victories and 96 defeats against Kramer the year before. In the following tour, that of 1952-1953, Segura was reduced to playing the preliminary match, where he beat the Australian Ken McGregor 71 matches to 25.

For the calendar year of 1952, when Kramer, Budge, and Gonzales all played sporadically, Segura was ranked as the World No. 1 player by the Professional Lawn Tennis Association, with Gonzales at No. 2.

Segura, Kramer writes, "was the one pro who brought people back. The fans would come out to see the new challenger face the old champion, but they would leave talking about the bandy-legged little suonuvabitch who gave them such pleasure playing the first match and the doubles. The next time the tour came to town the fans would come back to see Segoo." For this, according to Kramer, Segura made more than $50,000 in each of six or seven years during the 1950s, a time in which "there were very few baseball, football or basketball players making $50,000."

Career assessment

Segura, says Kramer, probably played "more matches against top players than anyone in history. Besides my couple hundred, he must have played Gonzales a hundred and fifty, and Budge, Sedgman, Riggs, Hoad and Rosewall all around fifty apiece. I beat him about 80 percent of the time, and Gonzales also held an edge over him. He was close with Budge. Pails beat him 41-31 on the Kramer-Riggs tour, but that was when Segoo was still learning how to play fast surfaces. With everybody else, he had the edge: Sedgman, Rosewall, Hoad, Trabert, McGregor."

According to Kramer,

Kramer goes on to say, however, that with Segura:

At a professional event in 1951 the forehand drives of a number of players were electronically measured. Pancho Gonzales hit the fastest, 112.88 mph, followed by Jack Kramer at 107.8 and Welby Van Horn at 104. Since it was generally assumed at the time that Segura had the hardest forehand among his contemporaries, it is possible that he was not present at that event.

Retirement

After leaving the Professional Tour, Segura became a teaching professional at the La Costa Resort in Southern California, where he is now retired. He is widely credited with helping coach, mentor, and structure the playing game of a young Jimmy Connors.

Before the famous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973, he openly supported Riggs. When King won the match, Segura declared disgustedly that Riggs was only the third best senior player, behind himself and Gardnar Mulloy, and challenged King to another match. King refused.

Segura was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1984.

Notes

Sources

• The Game, My 40 Years in Tennis (1979), Jack Kramer with Frank Deford (ISBN 0-399-12336-9)
• The History of Professional Tennis (2003) Joe McCauley
• Tennis Is My Racket, (1949), Bobby Riggs

• List of male tennis players

External links

• International Tennis Hall of Fame profile