Two retired accomplished touring pros, Dick Stockton and Brian Gottfried, will play exhibition matches as part of Baylor School’s dedication of its Zan Guerry Tennis Center on Saturday.
Gottfried is a 1969 Baylor graduate who followed an outstanding junior career and All-America collegiate career with 25 singles championships and 54 doubles titles as a pro, including two French Open doubles, a Wimbledon doubles and four consecutive Italian Open doubles titles. He once was a French Open singles runner-up and rose to the world No. 3 ranking in 1977.
Gottfried won a 12-under national doubles title with Stockton in 1963, a year after teaming with Jimmy Connors for the championship. Stockton, now the University of Virginia tennis coach, was ranked as high as No. 8 in his ATP career and reached the singles semifinals at both Wimbledon and the French Open and the quarterfinals twice at the U.S. Open. He was on the U.S. Davis Cup team five times in the 1970s.
Guerry, Baylor’s tennis captain from 1965 to ’67 and the Mid-South champion from 1962 to ’67, was a three-time All-American at Rice University and is in the College Tennis Hall of Fame. He has more than 20 national pro titles, but most of his adult life has been devoted to running the internationally renowned Chattem company. He has been chairman of the board of trustees at Baylor.
The tennis center bearing his name is next to the indoor/outdoor center named for his father, and Saturday has a full schedule there. That includes an alumni round-robin tournament from 10 a.m. till noon, an alumni lunch from noon to 1 p.m. and the dedication ceremony from 1 to 1:30. Gottfried and Stockton then will take the court, and a youth clinic also will be included before the event concludes at 4:30.