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Ted Gross: California Torch Bearer

Highest Ranking Californian to Play Pro Circuit

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Oct 31, 2003, By Rob Dinerman © 2002 SquashTalk

Ted Gross - Berkeley Star

The only West Coast product to ever attain a top-25 WPSA ranking, let alone top-15, Ted Gross followed his future wife Deborah (who had been admitted to Columbia to go for a Masters in Art) to New York in the summer of 1978 and proceeded to single-handedly change the stereotypically condescending perceptions that the eastern squash establishment had previously had of west coast
squash with his rock-solid, error-free game and admirable competitive attitude.

At various times during his six-year WPSA career, he defeated such top-10 WPSA luminaries as Ned Edwards, John Nimick, Clive Caldwell, Jon Foster and Tom Page while also recording a series of praiseworthy secondary wins (he was remarkably upset-proof, rarely losing a match to an opponent ranked below him), reaching a number of WPSA quarter-finals as well as the semis at a tour stop in Toledo in 1983, and twice earning a spot on teams that represented the United States in international team competition.

The most noteworthy of these was the historic 1981 squad that placed seventh in the World Team Championships in Sweden and that consisted of himself, Bill Andruss, Stu Goldstein and Edwards. This (by a wide margin) highest-ever U. S. finish was keyed by an upset victory over a heavily favored Canadian contingent (with Edwards defeating Doug Whittaker and Goldstein doing the same to Dale Styner) that for the first time ever elevated America's standing in the world squash community.

Gross had saved several match-points against him when he played current U. S. 45-and-over champion Foster for the final spot on that team on the last day of the team trials.

Buoyed by that team experience, as well as by his participation on a U. S. team that competed in Pakistan in 1980, Gross promptly embarked upon returning on perhaps his career-best extended stretch when the 1981-82 WPSA tour picked up that autumn, successfully forging his way through the tough qualifying draws in five of the next six tournaments and knocking off both Nimick and
Foster on the same day at the prestigious Boodles British Gin Open. This latter tournament, a highlight of the WPSA tour at the time, was held in New York at the Uptown Racquet Club, where Gross was a teaching pro from 1979-83, when he moved 50 blocks southwest to begin a two-year stint as the head professional at Fifth Avenue.

He maintained this level of play for most of the remainder of that season and the following one, twice (against Frank Satterthwaite in '82 in Toronto and against Dave Johnson in '83 in Minnesota) eking out close fifth games after being down two games to one and exiting each season with a ranking just inside the top 15.

A San Francisco native who permanently returned there with his wife and two children in the fall of '94 at the end of his 16-year sojourn in New York, Gross had an off-court self-presentation that typified the image of the easy-going and laid-back Californian, but his on-court persona was something quite different, as was his game. Both had gritty determination and relentless execution as their foundation, and there was a distinctly blue-collar aspect to his playing style. He often seemed to be playing with a chip on his shoulder, perhaps as an understandable reaction to the skepticism that greeted his arrival on the east about the competitive prospects in WPSA play of a product of the Berkeley squash program and the Nor Cal tournament circuit. Though Gross lacked
the racquet firepower and shot-making precision of many of his extraordinarily gifted WPSA peers, he evinced a willingness to grind out long and wearing points that more than nullified whatever natural superiority an opponent might enjoy. And his up-and-down-the-walls production and ability to get good depth on his ground strokes were traits that fully conformed to the Jack Barnaby
fundamentals of classic squash.

Nowhere were these qualities more in evidence than at the virtual outset of his "rookie" New York season when in just his second tournament Gross shocked everyone by winning the Slazenger Open in Philadelphia, winning both his semi-final with John Bottger and his final with Peter Talbert in five games. Bottger, who earned the No. 2 USSRA ranking that season, came from the famed Merion Cricket Club, while Talbert was tennis and squash captain at Williams and the son of tennis Hall of Famer Billy Talbert-when Gross out-lasted both of them just hours apart on a late-September Sunday afternoon he thereby jumped into the consciousness of the squash establishment in a way that his several prior seasons' worth of multiple California tournament titles hadn't even been able
to approach.

His subsequent tournament wins the following season, first in the Boodles A-1 draw (featuring victories over Rick Woolworth, Bill Kaplan and Frank Brosens, with the first and last of these going five games) and later at the Park Avenue Squash Club Invitational, in which he defeated Foster and Edwards, both in five, before routing Juan deVillafranca in the final, only added to his reputation and set the stage for the productive run on the WPSA circuit that would follow.

Injury-free throughout his career, a considerable achievement in itself given his long-points playing style and full lesson schedule, Gross retired from active competition and his position at Fifth Avenue during the 1984-85 season, right around the time of his 30th birthday, to pursue a career in real estate. He remains to this day the only native Californian to put his game up against those of the best products of squash's major historical centers and make a significant impact on professional squash during perhaps its most celebrated era of expansion.

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