USPTA Eastern Division Hall of Fame
The Hall of Fame, USPTA’s highest honor, enshrines tennis professionals who have shown a lifetime of exemplary service to the tennis industry.
Inductees to the Hall of Fame must have momentous international and/or national tennis industry or teaching service and be well-known by name to teaching professionals in the country in which they reside. In addition, they must be retired from active teaching for more than five years and fulfill at least one of the following requirements:
- Be 50 years of age or older
- Have 20 years of industry-related service
- Be a member of USPTA for 20 years or longer
Eastern Division’s Hall of Fame Inductees
George Bacso
George Bacso served as USPTA’s Director of Certification and Academies before his death in November 1998. In this capacity, he traveled the world conducting certification exams, tennis teachers’ courses and certification training courses. He was also a popular speaker and clinician in the United States and was the guiding force behind the careers of many young tennis professionals.
George also was instrumental in developing the current USPTA certification process and worked with USPTA’s national tester network. The award given to the National Tester of the Year as well as the Eastern Division Tester of the Year, is named in his memory.
From 1978 to 1980, he served as the USPTA’s national president. He also served several years as the president of the USPTA Eastern Division. He received the USTA National Education Merit Award and the 1984 national USPTA Professional of the Year Award. George also received the inaugural George Bacso Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998, and he held a Master Professional rating. He was the second grand inductee into the USPTA Hall of Fame in 1994 behind Arthur Ashe and is now in the first class of inductees into the Eastern Division Hall of Fame.
George Agutter
George Agutter was a charter member and one of the pioneers that formed the Professional Lawn Tennis Association of the United States. He served as the first president of the association in 1927. Through the efforts of Agutter and the PLTA’s, tennis emerged as an extremely important national sport.
At the age 10, George learned to play tennis at the Queens Club in his native London. He was a ball boy at the club, earning a few bob shillings a week retrieving balls for the great English players, Reggie and Hugh Doherty. But George was doing more than shagging balls, he was taking in the tennis knowledge of the Dohertys and also fine-tuning his strokes.
George never thought about doing anything other than teaching tennis. When he was 16, he had his first job teaching at a club in Wales. At 18, George was hired as a tennis professional at the Tennis Club de Paris (France) and the occasional instructor of royalty. When he was 19, George came to the U.S. with a wealthy American international lawyer who hired him to be his personal tennis professional. It was fairly common in those days for a man who had the means and was a good player to have a personal tennis professional. For 8 years, he worked the summers at the Homestead in Hot Springs, Va., and the winters at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla.
In 1913, when the West Side Tennis Club was planning its move from Manhattan to Forest Hills in Queens, George was hired as the club’s tennis professional. He opened the facility in 1914 by winning an exhibition match against the club’s reigning champion. Mr. Agutter spent 46 years at the West Side Tennis Club, and helped to turn it into the No. 1 tennis club in the United States. As such, many people considered him to be the No. 1 tennis teaching professional of his time.
Mr. Agutter was a mine of tennis information, lore and anecdotes, and a man of firm opinions on the game and the way that it should be played and taught. In the 1930s, his book “Lessons in Tennis, A Textbook of the Game” was the bible for tennis teachers and tennis players.
George understood the importance of setting an example of what the tennis professional is and should be. He set the standard by which they all should be judged.
After his 46 years of service at the West Side Tennis Club, Mr. Agutter retired at the age of 73. He taught thousands of boys and girls the fundamentals of sound tennis, and coached many famous players including Helen Wills. At his retirement dinner, the club extolled that if all the people who esteemed George were to come to bid good luck to him, they would have to hold the celebration in Yankee Stadium.
Gregory “Spike” Gonzales
Gregory “Spike” Gonzales was inducted into the USPTA Eastern Division Hall of Fame in May of 2009. A native of Rochester, NY, he was a 3 time President of the USPTA Eastern Division and served 6 years on the National Executive Committee. As a National Certification Tester, he collaborated with George Bacso in developing the criteria for the Master Pro category of the USPTA and also served as the Chairman of the National Nominating Committee.
He was cited by Eve Kraft as “The father of the NTRP” for his part in the collaborative efforts that launched the widely used rating system. Spike has written dozens of articles for USPTA, IHRSA and USTA publications and has been a speaker at over thirty conventions for the USPTA, IHRSA and USTA as well as being a staff speaker of the National Tennis Teachers Conference for seven years
During his 20 years with Tennis Corporation of America, Spike helped the company grow from one to 30 tennis clubs throughout the country, first as a tennis professional, then tennis director, and finally as Chief Operating Officer.
Spike spent a two-year sabbatical founding and directing a program for the inner-city of Rochester called “15-Love, Tennis for Drug-Free Kids.” This was a free summer tennis instructional program that grew to year-round tennis activities and tutoring for thousands of underprivileged youth. Renamed, “Love-15,” the program continues to thrive, being operated out of the Rochester YMCA and funded by various grants and the Rochester Bureau of Parks and Recreation. The Director of the Bureau of Parks and Recreation credited Spike for having left a “tremendously positive and valuable legacy in the Rochester community,” and for creating a program that “has saved many lives.”
While having developed several junior tennis players to high national rankings including one person (Billy Nealon) to the number ranking in the country in the Boys 14-and-under division, Spike has been a constant and prolific influence on tennis professionals to being involved with grassroots tennis development and bringing newcomers to the recreational ranks of tennis.
In addition to being a tennis professional and businessman, Spike is also an accomplished tennis and squash player, holding national rankings in both sports.
George Seewagen, Sr.
An editorial in the sports section of The New York Herald Tribune once stated unequivocally: “If George Seewagen…had become interested in tennis when he was roaming the courts and diamonds for Newtown High School [in Queens]…we’re certain he would have been the champ of the world.”
Seewagen passed away in 1990 from the effects of a stroke that he had suffered a few years earlier, but he achieved spectacular success in several sports, as a young athlete. But a negative first encounter on a tennis court motivated him to do a complete about-face and become the heroic “Iron Horse” of the individual sport of tennis for more than half a century. By example and dedication, he inspired a passion for the game in others and brought respect and great dignity to the role of professional tennis teacher and coach.
He coached at St. John’s University for 49 years and taught all week long at clubs around the Eastern Section in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. He was the USTA Eastern’s Junior Davis Cup coach and conducted free clinics sponsored by the Eastern Tennis Patrons, the forerunner to the present Junior Tennis Foundation. His goal was to get tennis into the schools. “If tennis is to thrive…the schools must play a major role,” Seewagen said. “Our schools prepare the individual for life…and are remiss…if they fail to teach youngsters…sports which are available to them in their post school years…After graduation…too many boys and girls confine their interest in sports to the role of spectator.
George’s son, Butch Seewagen, said: “My father went seven days a week and seven nights; he was doing clinics all the time. I know, because he would always drag me to them. I’d be eight years old and I’d be demonstrating the forehand. Family time was 4 o’clock Monday afternoons. We’d go to Jones Beach and we’d be shivering.”
Added Seewagen’s daughter Barbara: “Dad could not say no to tennis. I once said to him, ‘you’re doing too much, you have to give up something.’ He decided to quit coaching at St. John’s. His team arrived at the house and gave him a plaque. He looked at me, shrugged and said, ‘How can I leave?’ and he went back.”
George Seewagen always preached the joys of teaching tennis to his students. “Teach tennis, teach tennis,” he’d say. He inspired at least 50 members of his St. John’s teams to become teachers, even while they pursued other careers.
He was so classy,” said a Seewagen student. “It was the discipline. George would say, ‘You’re going to wear all white, exercise strenuously, be courteous, be absolutely fair and try your best all the time. Pretend your opponent is your beloved grandmother or grandfather and treat him accordingly, whether you’re winning or losing, regardless of how he treats you.’”
Seewagen had been brought up in a team sport environment. His father managed the Elmhurst Grays baseball team. George achieved All-City status in basketball and baseball, and was a member of the winning mile relay team at the Penn track relays. He was offered a contract to play for the New York Yankees farm team out of high school, but turned it down to attend Springfield College in Massachusetts. At Springfield, he lettered in baseball, basketball and tennis and was named All-American soccer goalie for the national intercollegiate championship team.
The folk story about the letter in tennis that unfolds in all the newspaper clippings claims that Seewagen’s college roommate challenged him to a game of tennis in his junior year and trounced him. So he took a physical education course in tennis, made the team in his senior year and lost only two matches. From that point on, he was a man on a mission. By the mid-1930s he had started his career as a physical education teacher at his Newtown alma mater and was a top-ten Eastern tennis player in the amateur game for three years before he turned teaching pro.
Seewagen made a couple of appearances at the amateur U.S. National Championships at Forest Hills alongside greats Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, Frank Shields and Don Budge before they, too, turned pro. When he lost to Budge there in 1936 he wore shorts; it was the only time he ever wore shorts on a tennis court, probably in deference to Budge. (Budge won the Grand Slam in 1938 and turned pro in 1939. He was an early proponent of professional tennis, arguing that with the incentive of financial reward, fewer stars would leave the game before they reached their full potential.)
Teaching pros like Seewagen got to play with former amateur champions–among them Budge, Perry, Bill Tilden, Vinnie Richards, Pancho Segura, Jack Kramer, Lew Hoad and Pancho Gonzalez — on the pro tour and at pro exhibitions. Seewagen was a leader in the U.S. Professional (Lawn) Tennis Association, serving as the national president from 1948-1953 and again in 1963, and as president of the Eastern division for 12 years. The organization ran the pro game, including the U.S. Pro Championships at Forest Hills, so Seewagen worked them as the tournament director/referee. He bought a tux to referee the pros’ matches at Madison Square Garden, and then he’d play exhibitions with the pros at Fordham, at the Notlek Tennis Club (that was owner Frank Kelton’s name spelled backward) and at Grossinger’s in the Catskills during the second World War to raise money for the troops.
During the war, Seewagen was a member of the National Guard and the tournament referee at the U.S. Pro Indoors at the Park Avenue Seventh Regiment Armory in Manhattan. Butch Seewagen and McMahon were ball boys and saw the world’s best players up close, like Tony Trabert, Gardnar Mulloy, Vic Seixas, Bill Talbert and Dick Savitt. Butch got to work Savitt’s court the three times he won the indoors. “He liked me because when I was a kid he hit with me at the armory,” Butch said. McMahon recalled the time a top player had food poisoning and gave him a hard time during his match: “George followed the player into the locker room and told him, quietly, that he was never to speak to any of his ball boys again in that manner or he’d be banned from the tournament.” The player’s response? “‘Yes, sir!’”
“My sister and I were never allowed to play as kids before our father whitened our shoes the night before a match,” said Butch, who along with Barbara was ranked first in the East and among the country’s top juniors. “He said you cannot go on the court with dirty shoes. We always felt we couldn’t disappoint him with our behavior. And all his students felt the same way.”
Perhaps Butch’s wife Chris captured George Seewagen’s spirit best when she said, “Tennis was the wind beneath his wings that made him soar. “
George Seewagen Sr. passed away on December 27, 1990 at the age of 82. He was an outstanding coach and teacher, the Head Varsity tennis coach at St. John’s University for nearly half a century and the pro at the North Shore Tennis Club for 35 years. He was also active in the USPTA, and was a 2-time National President as well as a 6-time Eastern president. The influence of his teaching is felt far and wide. He helped shape the early careers of such players as John McEnroe, Dick Stockton and Ron Holmberg. George regularly conducted free tennis clinics on behalf of the Eastern Tennis Patrons. His son Butch (George Jr.) and daughter Bobby were outstanding players, with butch going on to a successful professional playing and coaching career.
Written by Nancy Gill McShea