Few things I have written have evoked as many responses as my essay in the August 2008 Tennis magazine about searching for Bill Tilden’s almost invisible grave in his home city of Philadelphia.

Some wrote in praise on my blog and in old-fashioned letters to my home for my delving into the forgotten story of a tennis player who won six U.S. Championships, the tournament that became the U.S. Open in 1968, and a record that Roger Federer is attempting to tie with a win this year at Flushing Meadows.  R.E. Cummings of Tugoff, S.C. wrote a very kind note:  “I am now 95 years old and have played tennis since the age of 14,” he started, before telling of a time when he was a line judge and Tilden disliked a call.  He concludes with the question:  “Am I the only one left with these memories?”  (To see Mr. Cummings letter, click here.) 

Others were not so appreciative.  Christopher Groff in Guadalajara, Mexico wrote seven months after the article first appeared:  “Just because Tilden was a great tennis player does not make him a good person. He was a convicted child molester, for godsake!  Erecting a monument to one of the scum of the earth is unthinkable. I am so disgusted with your article that I am thinking of canceling my subscription to Tennis magazine.  I assume, Mr. Starnes, your next great idea is to make a national monument to Michael Vick and ‘Pacman’ Jones.”

Tilden served two short jail terms for separate misdemeanor charges for molesting teenage boy hitchhikers in Los Angeles, and there’s evidence in Frank Deford’s excellent 1975 biography Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and The Tragedy that he probably was a serial pedophile. But it’s not perfectly clear.  You should read Deford’s exhaustive book and make up your mind.

For the record, (the essay is not available online or I would link to it) I didn’t argue that I wanted to build a monument for Tilden or even that he was a “good person,” only that his nondescript gravestone should acknowledge the accomplishments he achieved on the tennis court, records that still stand.  Tilden died poor and shamed 56 years ago and has served his time. Let the man have a grave worthy of a tennis champion.

Playwright A.R. Gurney also responded on my blog:  “…in 2004 I wrote a play called BIG BILL which opened at the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York and played for several months. John McEnroe came to the play and left promptly. Frank Deford came to it and stayed to admire it. The reviews were generally good, except for the N.Y. Times, but the play is rarely done today, suffering the same neglect as Tilden himself has suffered over the years. Somewhere in his story are the elements of true Greek tragedy, and perhaps somebody else will one day get it right.”

As evidenced by John and Patrick McEnroe’s babbling ignorance of Tilden’s history during the Federer match on Wednesday night, you aren’t going to hear any insightful discussion on ESPN’s coverage that gets Tilden’s story right. 

Related posts:

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