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The Golden Age of College Tennis:

 A USC Coach's Unique Contributions to the Game

A warm, revealing, and touching memoir by USC's legendary tennis coach written in collaboration with a writer who produced what Sports Illustrated judged to be one of the 100 best sports books ever written. It brings the reader into intimate contact with some of the great names of professional tennis -Tilden, Kramer, Riggs, King; the celebrated tennis venues of Wimbledon, Forest Hills, Paris, Los Angeles; and the innovative ideas that gave tennis its world wide status. Extensively indexed with an encyclopedic list of championships won by Toley's players with dozens of Toley's tips on what makes a better tennis player.

EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO
THE GOLDEN AGE OF COLLEGE TENNIS

I have long felt that George Toley was the best teacher and coach of tennis anywhere. He was [also] an excellent player in his day, competing with and against the likes of Bobby Riggs, Gardnar Mulloy, Bitsy Grant and Ellsworth Vines.

It was as a coach that he had a Hall of Fame career  having coached 10 NCAA-championship teams at the University of Southern California.  Toley also was the longtime head teaching pro at the legendary Los Angeles Tennis Club and coach of the girls at Marlborough School.

Four of his USC players — Alex Olmedo, Rafael Osuna, Dennis Ralston and Stan Smith — are in the International Tennis Hall of Fame. His athletes have won countless tournaments, and 74 of them have won at least 429 national and international titles, led by Smith (49), Raul Ramirez (30), Ralston (24), Dick Leach (22) and Sally Moore Huss (21). This does not include Davis Cup. Six have served as Davis Cup captains for the United States (Ralston) or Mexico (Francisco Contreras, Eduardo Guzman, Yves Lemaitre, Eduardo Martinez Lanz, Ramirez). Five have served as Federation Cup captains for Mexico (Elena Osuna, Alejandra Vallejo, Joaquin Loyo Mayo, Ramirez and Claudia Hernandez).

Along with being a great teacher who prepared his players with sound fundamentals, Toley had an amazing knack of telling them just what they should do to pull out victory. The greatest tribute I ever heard paid to any coach, anywhere,  was paid to Coach Toley by [future All-America] Chris Lewis. He told me,  "Coach is a genius. He just won another match for me. It isn’t fair that you guys have to compete against him."

If you put the 20 best college coaches in a room and George Toley walked in, I contend he’d know more than all 20 combined. He had no peer. Besides that, he was the most thoughtful, kind, generous and beautiful person I’ve ever met. Seeing him once or twice a year for many years was among my greatest pleasures.
 

Stan Drobac
Tennis Coach Emeritus
Michigan State University

ISBN:      978-0-935047-64-6

LC NUMBER:      2008048823

PRICE:     $15.95

PUBLICATION:     Softbound - 6" x 9" (150mm x 230mm) - 208pages -  Photo-graphs- Encyclopedic List of Champions - Extensively indexed

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