Pasarell: A tennis great with a disposition to serve
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
By JOHN McPHAUL
For all the glory that tennis great Charlie Pasarell gained on the court, the Puerto Rican-born member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame best remembers the lessons taught to him by his family, fellow competitors and mentors off the court, and how he turned those lessons into opportunities to serve others.
In fact, the title of his autobiography, written with the noted tennis historian Joel Drucker and published by New Chapter Press, reflects the dual purpose of his tennis life: “Serving First: Dreams Realized and Lessons Learned from Family, Friends and a Life in Tennis.”
“Serving First” refers not only to the ritual of deciding who should begin a match but also the ethos of service that Pasarell grew up with in his family in San Juan and also learned from such tennis titans as Arthur Ashe.
In fact, Pasarell devotes a chapter to Ashe, whom he met at the 1951 National Juniors Championship and later roomed with at UCLA, where they became best friends, a bond that lasted until Ashe’s untimely death of complications from AIDS in 1993.
“Arthur was a very special person,” Pasarell said. “He had the power of listening. In interviews he would ask as many questions as he was asked.”
Ashe came under sometimes fierce criticism from fellow black civil rights leaders for not speaking out more forcefully against discrimination in the almost exclusively white sport of tennis.
Pasarell relates a story when Ashe was invited to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young’s house for dinner with other prominent civil rights leaders.
At one point during the proceeding, the Rev. Jesse Jackson stood up and in his dissertation, he told Ashe that his problem was that he “was not arrogant enough.”
When it came his turn to speak, Ashe stood up and said simply, “My lack of arrogance doesn’t affect me one bit,” and sat down.
Ashe also received a hail of criticism for accepting an invitation to play in apartheid South Africa.
Pasarell relates that Ashe told him he accepted the invitation because “I want to see it with my own eyes what is going on.”
Ashe also told Pasarell that he was in communication secretly with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, who would go on to be president of South Africa with the end of apartheid.
He also learned to stick by his friends, from people like UCLA coach JD Morgan, who once told an organizer of a California Tennis Tournament who wanted to ban Arthur from the tourney that “No Ashe, no UCLA.”
Pasarell credits his parents with instilling character and Welby Van Horn, a youth tennis coach at the Caribbean Hilton who mentored four kids from different parts of the island to national youth championships, including Pasarell, who won the title in 1951, and also coached women’s tennis great Gigi Fernández.
Pasarell, 82, who lives in Rancho Santa Fe, north of San Diego in California, led protests in the 1960s within the game, such as refusing to play if unseeded players were unable to eat lunch.
Then there was the 1973 Wimbledon boycott, where 81 of the world’s best players protested over the suspension by the Yugoslav tennis association of Nici Pilic because of a dispute over his nationality upheld by the International Lawn Tennis Federation.
As a founding member of the Association of Tennis Professionals, which led the boycott, Pasarell was deeply involved in defending players’ rights.
He credits his family for his success on and off the court.
“I’m very fortunate to come from an incredible family and have incredible friends,” said the founder of the Indian Wells BNP Paribas Open tournament in California. “They gave me a solid background, telling me it’s not what I can get, but what I can contribute.”
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