Olmedo, Alex

Alejandro Olmedo was born in 1936 in the Peruvian city of Arequipa in the family of a tennis coach. He received his first tennis lessons from his father, and in 1953, at the age of 17, he was already the best tennis player in Peru. At that time, Jorge Arten, who headed the Peruvian Federation of Peru, invited coach Stanley Singer for him from the USA. Singer, quickly appreciating the potential of the young tennis player, advised him to move to the United States, where he could develop further. In early 1954, Olmedo went to Los Angeles. His coach at the new location was Joe Changchi. Later, the talented Peruvian became interested in the coach of the University of Southern California, George Toli, who first identified him at Modesto Elementary College. There Olmedo studied, worked at a cannery and continued to play tennis, and in 1956 he entered the University of Southern California ^[3] .

Over the years of study at the University of Olmedo twice became the champion of the NCAA in singles and the same number in doubles ^[4] . In 1958, Perry Jones, the most influential person in California tennis, was appointed captain of the US national team in the Davis Cup and from the very beginning headed for the inclusion of Olmedo, who was not a US citizen, in the national team. This was made possible due to the absence in Peru of a national team participating in the Davis Cup ^[5] .

At the end of 1958, Olmedo reached the finals in the men's and mixed doubles at the U.S. Championship , defeating Ham Richardson and losing to Maria Bueno . At Christmas of that year, the US team played in the Davis Cup final with the Australian team , which had won the trophy four times in a row by then. With more than forty-degree wet heat reigning in Brisbane, Jones decided to save Richardson, who was the first racket of the national team, suffering from diabetes, for the pair game and put Olmedo in singles. He won both his bout and a doubles game with Richardson (with the score 10-12, 3-6, 16-14, 6-3, 7-5, which became one of the longest in the history of the tournament), having won the Davis Cup for the United States. After that, in Peru, he became a national hero, and President Manuel Prado awarded him the Peruvian Sports Laurel Wreath ^[5] .

Olmedo developed his success in the first half of 1959, winning first the Australian Championship and then the Wimbledon tournament . In Australia, he was seeded under the second number and reached the final, winning three five-set matches in a row (including recouping from the score 0-2 in sets in the quarter-finals against Ulf Schmidt ). In the final, he defeated the first seeded first Australian Neil Fraser in four sets and at the Wimbledon he himself led the tournament bracket. In this tournament, he lost in two rounds only two sets, in the final defeating in three sets the seedless young Australian Rod Laver . At the US Championship, where Olmedo was also seeded under the first number, he lost two sets in the first five circles, but in the semifinals he faced stubborn resistance from the American Ron Holmberg , who managed to break only in five sets; after that, he was no longer able to confront Fraser in the final ^[6] .

However, these undoubted successes alternated in the game Olmedo with inexplicable failures. One of them followed shortly after the victory at Wimbledon: at the U.S. championship on clay courts, Olmedo lost a crushing score to a little-known South African tennis player Abe Segal . He looked so bad that his loss seemed intentional; in the end, he was suspended from the doubles game, and the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) threatened to disqualify him. At the Davis Cup Challenge round match against the Australians, Olmedo lost two out of three meetings, the press wrote that he “was just serving the number” and he was declared the main culprit of the final defeat. According to Sports Illustrated magazine, Olmedo called him reckless and touchy, sometimes making him lose to the public and the organizers ^[3] . Olmedo himself, however, at least in his defeat at the US Championship on tennis courts blamed USLTA, which made him fly to America and play on clay courts immediately after winning Wimbledon’s grass lawns ^[4] .

According to the results of 1959, Olmedo took second place in the annual ranking of the ten best tennis players in the world , published by the Daily Telegraph newspaper , and in 1960 moved to professional tennis. In the first year in this rank, he became the winner of the US Championship among professionals in singles and doubles ^[6] . In 1962, after graduating from university, Olmedo joined the professional tennis tour of Jack Kramer , but only a year later left him, tired of the continuous moving ^[5] .

In 1965, Olmedo finished regular appearances in professional tournaments and took the position of tennis coach at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Among the clients to whom he gave lessons were actors Katherine Hepburn , Robert Duvall and Chevy Chase ^[6] . Olmedo worked at the hotel for more than thirty years; after the beginning of the Open Era in tennis , when professionals were allowed to participate in previously exclusively amateur tournaments, he resumed participation in them and performed with a low frequency until 1977 ^[7] . In 1987, his name was included in the lists of the International Tennis Hall of Fame ^[6] .

Singles (2-1)

Men's Doubles (1-1)

Mixed Doubles (0-1)

Singles (1-0)

Doubles (3-2)

• Olmedo, Luis Alejandro "Alex", "Chief" // Historical Dictionary of Tennis / John Grasso (Ed.). - Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2011 .-- P. 209-210. - ISBN 978-0-8108-7490-9 .

• Biography on the official website of the International Tennis Hall of Fame
• Singles Results in Tennis Archives Database
• Profile on ITF website
• Profile on ATP website

• Profile on the Davis Cup website