Story by Ron Cobb
Special to the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame
In anticipation of the 2024 opening of the new St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame at the Armory, 2016 inductee Ron Cobb has written a “What’s Up With” feature on every living Hall of Fame member. Ongoing, he is also writing regular features about the Hall of Fame and the Armory. And you can expect stories and other media about all our inductees, living and in memoriam.
Butch Buchholz has something going on with his health, but who wouldn’t at age 82? Earlier this month he had his aortic valve replaced and a pacemaker put in. But otherwise, he says, “I’m doing fine.”
His wife of 63 years, Marilyn, also has aging issues and is receiving care-giving visits from a woman who happens to be Tony Trabert’s daughter.
They live at The Plantation in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Butch and Marilyn have three children – Kathy, Kristen and Trey. Kathy is disabled with schizophrenia and has lived in a facility for about 25 years. “It’s an unbelievable place and she’s doing fine,” Butch said.
Trey, the youngest, had a mid-life career change and is now a teaching pro. He bought property near Charlotte, North Carolina, built a tennis court and works with about 14 kids there. According to Butch, “He said, ‘Dad, I’m never putting on a coat and tie again.’”
And so life goes on for a St. Louis native who arguably has had as large an impact on tennis as anyone in the history of the game – as a player once ranked No. 5 in the world, as player association organizer, head of WCT and commissioner of World Team Tennis, executive director of the ATP, and founder of the Lipton tournament in South Florida, all of which led him to his induction as a contributor into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
There’s no tennis for Butch these days. “Every time I try to play, (the elbow) just balloons up and I’ve got to get it drained and I’m tired of doing that. I can play golf OK.”
Growing up on Itaska Street, son of the great teaching pro Earl Buchholz Sr., Butch for a short while was called Little Earl, and his dad Big Earl.
“My mom didn’t like that at all,” Butch said. So it was “Butch” instead because of his burr haircut.
“Today if someone said ‘Earl’ I probably wouldn’t even turn around.”
It didn’t hurt that his father was a phenomenal tennis instructor, but Butch took to the game right away.
“I think winning was always fun,” he said. “I think I won the 13-and-under when I was 7 or 8. I think I won the 15-and-under when I was 9 or 10. When I won the Missouri Valley men’s title when I was 15, they gave me a beautiful silver tray engraved with instructions on how to make a Manhattan.”
Butch went to John Burroughs because his dad was teaching tennis classes there, but he got his diploma from Southwest High via Hadley Tech. It’s a long story.
A week before final exams in his junior year at Burroughs, Butch faced the decision of taking the tests or accepting an invitation to play in the French junior championships.
“I was the top junior in the country at the time. My dad said it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. My mom said I’d better stay in school. I was in a study hall and made the decision. I put my books in my locker, went outside and caught the bus to go home and went to Paris the next day.”
And so began a remarkable streak in which Butch won the French title, then the Wimbledon junior title, then the boys 18s championship at Kalamazoo, and then the Australian, completing a grand slam of junior tennis.
Barry MacKay, Butch, Chuck and Dennis Ralston leaving for the Davis Cup
Because Burroughs would have required him to redo his entire junior year, Butch transferred to Southwest High, where his younger brother Cliff was a student. But in his second semester at Southwest, Butch was invited to a State Department tennis event in South Africa.
“I think it was Hadley Tech or someplace where you could get your high school diploma in about a month,” he said. “I was there a couple of weeks and said to the teacher, ‘I’m leaving for Africa’ and he said, ‘OK, here’s your diploma. Go.’”
His time at Burroughs was cut short, but Butch remains loyal to the school.
“It changed my life,” he said. “The thing about Burroughs is they teach you to think, and it helped me through all the stuff I went through. You had to be thorough and think things through, and I got that from Burroughs.”
One decision that Butch made ran into bad luck. He turned pro at age 20 in 1960, thinking open tennis was just around the corner. He was wrong by eight years. And so he was ineligible for the four majors during his prime.
Meanwhile, others, including his boyhood and hometown rival Chuck McKinley, were taking home the big hardware. Chuck won Wimbledon in 1963.
Butch won’t say he was jealous or even envious, but he did point out that he had usually handled Chuck without much trouble. He and Chuck were doubles partners in Davis Cup and were ranked No. 1 in the country in doubles in 1960.
When Butch and Marilyn moved to Dallas, “Chuck was there and we got together quite often for dinner with the kids,” Butch said. “I talked to Chuck literally hours before he passed away. He couldn’t talk, but he was there with his sister and wanted to say goodbye.”
Would Butch have won a Grand Slam title if he hadn’t turned pro early? “You don’t know,” Butch said, “but (South Africa touring pro) Ray Moore used to say that Butch Buchholz was the best player that never won a major.”
Not that Butch has many regrets.
“I got so lucky that I got to do so many things,” he said. “In the ‘70s, tennis was booming. I worked for Sears for 10 years. We had the Lady Buchholz line, the Butch Buchholz line. I’m in a group of guys with Gordie Howe, Sir Edmund Hillary, Doug Ford. Ted Williams got into tennis and was our chairman … that was a whole part of my life that not many people talk about.”
Butch lists among his proudest achievements the Ashe-Buchholz Tennis Center in Miami’s inner city; a hard-fought, successful effort to have the Lipton tournament combine men and women; the creation of a pension fund for players when he was at the ATP; seven tournaments that he and his partner started in Latin America, plus tournaments in Buenos Aires and New Haven, Connecticut.
Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Butch and Pancho Gonzalez in Forest Park
Also on that list would be Town and Tennis, the WTT franchise he brought to St. Louis in the ‘70s and the tournaments in the ‘60s and ‘70s in St. Louis sponsored by Volkswagen and others.
Many of Butch’s achievements happened as a player.
“I was a good tennis player, and probably if I hadn’t paid as much attention to the politics … that started to take up a lot more time and you’re not on the court practicing as much.
“The politics weren’t easy, but we got it done.”
Butch Buchholz was inducted into the St. Louis Tennis Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1990.