cover story: may 2005

whitney reed Sleepless at Wimbledon

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Whitney Reed was to play Neale Frazer in the round of 16 at Wimbledon. Mindful of Reed’s horrendous reputation for tardiness, officials assigned someone to escort him to the dressing room as soon as he appeared. The night before, Whitney had run into an old Air Force buddy. It led to poker with the boys and plenty of drinking. Somehow, he missed his ride back to his digs. A taxi got him home at 5 a.m. Then he overslept. He got to Wimbledon 15 minutes before his match and was whisked to the locker room. But his rackets were with his ride and no one would loan him one, except for the ball kid in the corner. The grip was a little small. But after Reed’s misdirected bows to the royalty box outside, he managed to stretch Fraser to 7-5 in the fifth set.

When asked about the hardest thing about playing big time tennis, Reed would begin in his raspy wheeze as he squinted at the distant horizon, “Huh, showing up on time, I guess.”

Tennis has had no greater anti-hero than Reed, who grew up in Alameda and was the U.S. No. 1 in ‘61. The 6-foot-1 Reed trained on hot dogs, beer, gin rummy, backgammon and ping-pong. He was always ready for an all-nighter, especially in a friendly bar. But he loved tennis more than anything. Canada wanted to make him a citizen after he won the nationals in ‘61. A beer company sponsored the tournament, and Whitney wasn’t averse to taking a pitcher onto the court with him. To anyone pressing about what sort of work the did, he’d fib and say he had a paper route. A job and Whitney were like oil and water.

For years, local tournaments adjusted to his unreliable ways. The San Francisco City tournament once kept two draws, one with Reed in it and one with him out of it. Once when he was supposed to play a final in Carmel against former Wimbledon finalist Tom Brown, Reed came walking up from the beach with his shoes in hand, 45 minutes late ,asking, “Was I supposed to play today?”

—TOM CARTER

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