Chuck McKinley

Biography

McKinley was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a local pipe fitter, and grew up in a 'rough neighborhood' on the north side of town. As a boy, McKinley used to drop by the local YMCA where he was taught table tennis by volunteer instructor Bill Price. Eventually Price, who was also a tennis professional, took McKinley and some of the other boys to the public tennis courts. McKinley soon became so good that Price advised him to quit all other sports and concentrate on tennis.

In 1960 McKinley enrolled at Trinity University where he joined another leading American player, Frank Froehling, under the tutelage of coach Clarence Mabry, who also coached John Newcombe and other professionals. This gave Trinity arguably the best collegiate men's tennis team in America. However, during this period Trinity never won the NCAA championship because the NCAA scheduled the championship tournament opposite Wimbledon, and both McKinley and Froehling chose to participate in Wimbledon rather than the collegiate tournament.

McKinley’s decision to play Wimbledon was justified when in 1961, as a college sophomore, he reached the Wimbledon singles finals in which he was defeated by Rod Laver, one of the all-time greats, in straight sets. That year he won the singles title at the Eastern Grass Court Championships in South Orange after a straight sets victory in the final against compatriot Frank Froehling. He won the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championships in 1962 and 1963, defeating Fred Stolle and Dennis Ralston in the respective finals. In 1962 and 1964 McKinly was victorious in the singles event at the U.S. National Indoor Championships.

His intense desire to win, his habit of screaming, "Oh Charley, you missed that one," at himself after a bad shot, and the fact that he drew a four-month suspension for heaving his tennis racket into the crowd at a Davis Cup match, gave him the reputation of the, 'bad boy of international tennis.'

In 1963, with Laver in the professional ranks, McKinley won Wimbledon without losing a set. He was helped in this by the fact that favorite Roy Emerson was eliminated by little known German, Wilhelm Bungert. After McKinley eliminated Bungert the press asked the German if he had been tired. “I was tired,” said Bungert, "Tired from those five set matches earlier. And tired from watching McKinley run." According to Time magazine, McKinley played the tournament, "with an astounding lack of grace. He leaps, he lunges, he scrambles, he slides, he falls, he dives, he skins his elbows and knees, and he flails at the ball as if he were clubbing a rat. His nerves are as taut as the strings of his racket." In the finals McKinley met big server Fred Stolle who had beaten McKinley four out of six previous meetings. But when Stolle tried to blow McKinley off the court this time, "He knocked it down my throat," groaned Stolle. "In the end, I didn't know where to serve or what he was going to do."

In December 1963 McKinley and Dennis Ralston, who was both McKinley's rival, as captain of the University of Southern California tennis team, and his doubles partner at the U.S. Championships, played all of the matches for the U.S. in winning the Davis Cup from Australia. The Australians had not lost the cup for four years and would not relinquish it again for another four. In the decisive match McKinley defeated a young John Newcombe.

After graduation from Trinity, McKinley elected not to go into professional tennis and became a stockbroker in New York City. He died in 1986 in Dallas, Texas, of a brain tumor at the age of 45. McKinley has been elected to the Trinity University Hall of Fame and to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

The tennis courts at Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri, the school he attended, are named after him.

Playing style

McKinley was small for a tennis player, as a grown man he stood only 5’ 8” tall and weighed 160 pounds. McKinley did not use off speed shots but relied instead on a power game. He was able to do this because of an all-round athletic ability that would have allowed him to star in almost any sport. To succeed at tennis McKinley combined this athleticism with an all out style of play and an unquenchable desire to win. According to a contemporary Sports Illustrated article, “Not in years has an American fledgling combined so much box-office appeal with so much pure ability – or crashed the tight little world of big-time tennis with so much confidence. 'If I didn't think I could be the best tennis player in the world,' Chuck McKinley says, 'I don't think I'd want to play.'" Bill Talbert, a former U.S. doubles champion described the young McKinley by saying, "There is nothing he can't do on the court. He has all the strokes. He's fast. He's strong. He has marvelous reflexes. He has the eyes of a hawk—sees the ball as well as anyone in the game."