Opinion by Greg Hansen : Ace of a player and ace of a man, Lenoir was Tucson's tennis icon

Ordinarily, that would be his lasting identification.

But there was so much to Bill Lenoir that his coaching career is a mere footnote, obscured by his accomplishments as a tennis player and as a husband, father and friend.

"I traveled with Bill in Europe last summer and what struck me most was how kind he was, how much he truly cared about other people," his sister, Jean Rabura, said Monday. "That's the way he was even as a young boy. He wouldn't get angry. He would choose to be your friend."

This past tense business is never easy and especially with someone like William Jefferson Lenoir, the best tennis player ever to compete for a Tucson high school, and, clearly, the best tennis player in UA history.

Bill Lenoir died last week in Tampa, Fla., essentially from a seven-year struggle with thyroid cancer. He retired in 2005 after spending 21 years as tennis director of the Tampa Yacht and Country Club.

"We started playing tennis when we were boys in Athens, Ga., and he just seemed to be a natural," said Carter Lenoir, Bill's oldest brother. "We moved to Tucson in 1957 and he just took off from there. He played at Wimbledon. He was twice the USTA junior champion. He beat all the big names of the day: Arthur Ashe, Dennis Ralston, Charlie Pasarell. What started out as just a game among boys became his career."

At Tucson High School, Lenoir won the 1959 and 1960 state singles championships.

At the UA, he was three times a first-team All-American, reaching the semifinals of the 1962 NCAA championships and the quarterfinals in 1961 and 1963. He played Wimbledon in 1963 and 1965, and at a time a tennis pro's career would routinely accelerate — who had better credentials? — Lenoir chose to pursue graduate degrees at both Arizona and ASU, get married and have a family.

At 18, after winning the USTA 18 singles championship and ranked No. 1 nationally, Lenoir declined a spot on the U.S. junior Davis Cup team.

"I'd be better off studying at the UA," he said at the time. His classes that semester included analytic geometry, chemistry, physics, ROTC and English. He maintained a 3.75 GPA his entire UA career.

His UA teams finished No. 3 and No. 4 in the country his final two playing seasons, the highest ranking the school has ever achieved.

Lenoir coached at ASU from 1967 to 1972 and from there became the teaching pro at Scottsdale's Chaparral Racquet Club. Both of his brothers, Bob and Carter, played tennis for Arizona.

Lenoir's career goals were easily understood. If you drive down Eighth Street near the intersection of Treat Avenue, where Lenoir grew up, you can imagine how his upbringing went in that 1950s-style, middle-class neighborhood.

Books first. Tennis last.

He was one of five children of James and Lora Lenoir, an academic couple who raised five kids on a professor's salary.

Jim was a law professor at the UA who had moved his young family to Tucson from a similar role at the University of Georgia. Lora, who had a degree in international law from Radcliffe University, chose to be a stay-at-home mom.

"We all benefited from Mom staying home," his sister, Jean, said. "It helped to give us our bearings."

After losing at Wimbledon in 1965, Bill Lenoir was ranked No. 13 among all U.S. tennis players. He might've jumped into the Top 10 had he aggressively pursued the European summer tour, spending more time on clay courts, which were his speciality.

"I do regret that I didn't play in five or six French Opens," Lenoir told me in a 1995 interview. "I was very good on clay. Had I stuck to it, I could've reached the semifinals there. I could've been ranked in the Top 10."

But, at 23, he chose to return from Wimbledon and become a graduate student in engineering. When UA tennis coach Dave Snyder left for post-graduate study at Iowa, Lenoir was appointed the UA's head tennis coach.

That meant he would have to skip the 1965 U.S. Open at Forest Hills.

"I wanted to play there," he said. "But I had to get back to school and so did my wife," Linda South, a Tucson native who remained married to Lenoir until his death.

He is survived by his two sons, Jim and Jeff, who will be part of a celebration of Bill's life Saturday at their Tampa home.

"It's a shock to lose him," his brother Carter said Monday. "He has always been so strong and so positive. He was such a good man."