Bill Lenoir, May 3, 1970. Manuel Miera / Tucson Citizen file photo
June 23, 1960: Bill Lenoir wins U.S. Junior Tennis Championship
Boys tennis players from Tucson have won 71 state singles championships. Some of them won four times, like The Gregory School’s Pat Brick; some won three, like Rincon’s Sudhaker Kosaraju, and a few won two, like Rincon’s David Tzou.
It’s almost poetry.
By any pronunciation, it’s as impressive as any sports lineage in Tucson prep sports, dating from the first title, Tucson High’s Merle Moore in 1928, to the last, Salpointe Catholic’s Yash Parikh, 2016.
Tucson brothers have won state tennis championships — Palo Verde’s Dominic and Carlos Bermudez; and Flowing Wells’ Chris and Mark Evanson — and so have a father and a son, Sabino’s Mike Lee and later, Catalina Foothills’ aptly named Mike Lee.
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Tucson state tennis titles have been won by the father of a major-league shortstop, Catalina’s Mark Hardy (Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy is his son), and by young men named Loveless, Tripp, Brewster and, more recently, Sri.
At the top of that list of 71 champions is a four-letter word in capital letters: BILL.
Bill Lenoir won the state championship for Tucson High in 1959 and 1960. In the summer of his senior year, he won the U.S. Junior National championship in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was just getting started.
Over the next six years, Lenoir would play at Wimbledon in 1963 and 1965, beat Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Dennis Ralston and Cliff Richey and three times become a first-team All-American at Arizona.
There’s more: Lenoir, the son of a UA professor, was ranked in the top 20 by the United States Tennis Association five years in succession, chosen to the U.S. junior Davis Cup during a period he was ranked No. 1 for those 18-under.
The biggest local crowd to ever watch Lenoir play tennis came in the fall of 1964, when UCLA’s great Arthur Ashe joined Lenoir and NCAA champion Rafael Osuna in a series of matches at the Tucson Country Club.
Lenoir didn’t disappoint. He beat Osuna 9-7 and lost to Ashe 8-6. It might’ve been the most rousing day of tennis in Tucson history.
Lenoir was such a highly respected tennis figure, an ahead-of-his-time, double-fisted baseline player, that he was named the UA’s head tennis coach when he was only 25. His team had a 16-3 record, best in school history, finishing No. 4 in the NCAA. Lenoir coached while he completed his master’s degree (engineering) and maintained a 3.75 GPA through his college days.
Surprisingly, in a 1995 interview, he told me he left too much on the table.
“I’m mad at myself for not really going after it,” he said, laughing lightly. “I quit too soon. I didn’t reach my peak in tennis. I should’ve been better than I was.”
He got married, started a family and, in the prime of his career, chose not to play in the 1965 U.S. Open.
“I had to get back for teaching and so did my wife. I’m tired,” he told the Star in ’65 after playing in five European events. “This winter I’m going to concentrate on my job teaching math at the UA. I’ll play some tennis against the varsity team and try to point for next summer.”
When he stopped playing regularly, Lenoir was ranked No. 19 in the U.S.
What came next was most unexpected of all: He agreed to become the head tennis coach at rival Arizona State, where he stayed from 1966-72.
“It was a very intense rivalry, but I knew what I was getting into,” he told me in 1995. “I’m a Wildcat, but at the time it was the right thing for me to do. I was getting my doctorate and ASU was accommodating.”
Where are they now? After 21 years as the head tennis pro at the Tampa Yacht and Country Club, Lenoir died of thyroid cancer in 2007. He was just 64. Earlier, he was the head pro at Scottsdale’s Chaparral Racquet Club.
How he did it: As a 1962 All-American at Arizona, Lenoir drew the praise of UA coach Dave Snyder, who said “when I have my players take 10 laps around the field, Lenoir takes 13 laps. When it comes to practice, he always practices more than the others. Bill told me he hit more than 100,000 volleys against the boards in practice over the winter.”
Photo: Bill Lenoir was named first-team ITA All-American three times for the Wildcats in the 1960s. Photo by Jack Sheaffer / Arizona Daily Star file
