A true playboy who could play

Dave Newhouse, STAFF WRITER

ALAMEDA -- That mischievous grin, it could only be Whitney Reed, the forehand of frivolity, the backhand of bravado, the drop shot of deviltry.

Indeed, it is Whitney Reed, tennis' last party boy. His hair is thinner, and there's a paunch where there didn't use to be, but that mischievous grin is a dead giveaway, even though this Alameda legend now is 73.

Some who followed Reed's escapades will wonder how he ever made it to 73. But these same doubters were stunned when he became America's No.1 tennis player in 1961. What they didn't realize was the playful Reed had priorities.

Yes, he set limits. He enjoyed the libations and the ladies, but he took precautions so he could see his opponent with, at least, one eye open.

"I tried to make sure I got my eight hours sleep," said Reed, that nocturnal wonder. "Eventually, the tournament committees learned to schedule me late in the afternoons."

Tennis is dramatically different from those days when Reed traveled the circuit as an amateur with little money in his pocket, but with a lust for living. The game's now professional, and sterile, starving for characters.

"They're making all that money, and they have trainers and masseurs traveling with them," Reed scoffed. "They have their own travel agents. But the way they're playing, they're missing a lot of fun."

Nobody in tennis ever had more fun than Reed, who partied as hard, or harder, than he played. His serve was far less remarkable than his stamina.

"I was able to go out in the evening and do well on the court the next day," he said. "I smoked. I drank beer. I liked poker. I met a few ladies on the circuit who'd take me from tournament to tournament. I had no moderation. Sacrifice is not one of my main attributes."

Neither was conditioning. His opponents lived a pure existence, took their tennis far more seriously. Reed had to outwit them, and he did mostly.

"We played in a tournament in Canada sponsored by a beer company," said Clif Mayne of Orinda, who competed with and against Reed. "If ever there was a tournament for Whitney, thiswas it. But the tournament was on clay, it's hot and humid, and Whitney's playing a 19-year-old Canadian hopeful.

"Whitney shows up from the beer company after an all-nighter, and he's lurching against the fence with this horrible cough. The kid takes two laps around the court, knocks out a bunch of pushups, then the match begins.

"Whitney's lurching around the court, holding his own. Then in the third set, the kid is carried off with cramps. When the media asked Whitney for his reaction, he said, 'The kid just needs to get into better shape.'"

Such stories abound about Reed, though he's not reluctant to tell them on himself with his familiar slow, sarcastic W.C. Fields-like delivery.

"I wasn't always on time," he said. "I was late at Wimbledon in 1962 when I played Neale Fraser, my first time on Centre Court. What happened was that I got into an all-night poker match the evening before. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the sun peeking through.

"I went back to the hotel, got some sleep, then arrived at Wimbledon at 1:45 p.m. for a 2 o'clock match. Only I had left my rackets in a friend's car. So I borrowed a racket from a ball boy and ran out to the court. Neale's already there, and I see him motioning for me to bow. I did, but the royal box was behind me. So I turned and bowed again. That didn't go over too well."

Neither did that third-round match, Fraser winning 7-5 in the fifth set. But all wasn't lost that day for the carefree Reed.

"I traveled to the next tournament in Ireland with this barrister from South Africa," he said, "a fiery little redhead who had an MG and a little Derringer pistol in her purse. We hit it off and spent the rest of the week together."

What was Reed supposed to do? There are groupies in tennis, too.

"Some of these ladies, when you're dancing, they put room keys in your pocket," Reed said. "I always tried to tell them that when the week is over, I go on to the next tournament."

Reed didn't marry the first time until the night before he turned 40. He later wed again, but neither marriage stuck.

"I get a D-minus in husbandry," he said. "Coming back from a tournament in Cleveland, my first wife was waiting for me at the Oakland Airport. I landed in San Francisco with a stewardess who lived in Mill Valley. That was my wife's first clue that maybe the marriage wasn't working.

"I guess I was a real rogue, a heartbreaker."

By his second wife, Reed had a son, Whitney Jr., who's 19 and living in Massachusetts, and who suffers from a bipolar condition.

Even though he frolicked on the wild side of tennis, Reed managed to become the top-ranked player in the country at age 29.

"To garner my No.1, I was the only American to have played in all the tournaments in 1961," he explained. "I had my share of losses, but the Aussies were winning most of the tournaments. But my wins qualified me as the highest-ranking American that year.

"The next year, I was seeded No.1 at most of the tournaments. So I started trying to hit the ball hard like Jack Kramer instead of playing relaxed. And I was spotting these players 10 years in age. I went from No.1 to No.9 to No.19 to oblivion."

Reed had been the Air Force champion and the NCAA singles champion at San Jose State before hitting the circuit. He played in two Wimbledons, twice was on Davis Cup teams, and had one of the finest touches in tennis history.

"It's God-given. You can't teach it or transfer it," Reed said. "Good hands, they call it, being able to take the pace off the ball and change it so it just drops over the net. For some reason, I was gifted with anticipation. I could tell by the way an opponent was standing or by the tilt of his racket which way the ball was going.

"The Berkeley Tennis Club pro pointed at me and told his students, 'This is not how you want to play.' It looks like I'm doing everything that's not in the book, until I meet the ball. On contact, everything is right."

Ever the devil, Reed admitted plying Rod Laver with beer the night before he beat the great Aussie in Puerto Rico. Reed also beat Roy Emerson, Fraser, Chuck McKinley, Frank Sedgman, Manuel Santana, Gardnar Mulloy and 1950 U.S. national champion Art Larsen from San Leandro.

In 1962, Reed reached the final of a Scottsdale tournament. His roommates were Mayne and Hugh Ditzler of Oakland, who were awakened when they heard the door open. Ditzler checked the clock. It was 5:50 a.m.

"Whitney, do you know what time it is?'" Mayne asked.

Whitney looked at the clock, then turned it over.

"It's 12:25," he said.

Reed lost in the final the next afternoon, so sometimes his night- owl pursuits caught up to him. Those were different times, before the Aussies arrived en masse, when a top-seeded player generally coasted into the final of a non-Grand Slam tournament.

"Nowadays, that's totally impossible," Ditzler said. "The physical demands are different. When Whitney played, the depth of talent wasn't as great as it is now. Look at (Andy) Roddick in this U.S. Open."

Roddick, who won the U.S. Open in 2003 and was the No.4 seed this year, was beaten in the first round by 68th-ranked Gilles Muller from Luxembourg.

It was Reed's victory over McKinley in the 1961 U.S. championships that elevated him to No.1. But how good a tennis player would he have been had he tucked himself into bed by 10 o'clock nightly?

"I don't think it would have mattered," Mayne said. "Whitney's Whitney. He's one of those guys who defied logic."

Now tennis friends are encouraging Reed to get in condition for the 75-and-over division, two years away. He thinks about it, sometimes.

"There's an opportunity to come out here twice a week," he said at the Harbor Bay Club, "but I've been putting it off. With the weather the way it is, I get the itch, but that lasts only 20 to 30 minutes."

Perhaps the devil in Reed has turned docile at last.

"I don't look for trouble," he said. "I'm very peaceful. I don't do much."

Reed then got that faraway look in his eye, as if he suddenly recalled something from his past, something he just might want to rekindle again.

"I keep thinking," he said, "that I'll run into a member of the opposite sex one of these days and get something going."

Well, love has been a part of tennis forever.

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