Dick Gould

Early years

Gould was born in Ventura, California in 1937. He attended Ventura High School with longtime tennis friend, Tom Chivington. He was the Student Body President and the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the Tennis Team. He also won the Ventura County Singles and Doubles Championships in 1955..

After graduating from Ventura High School in 1955, Gould enrolled at Stanford University. In the summer of 1958, he contacted the Southern California Tennis Association to provide two prominent players to run a kid's clinic in Ventura and was sent Mike Franks and Noel Brown, two outstanding nationally known players. Dick won three varsity letters in tennis and won the tennis team's Leadership Award. He graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor's Degree in 1959, and earned a Master's Degree from Stanford in 1960.

Gould began his coaching career at Mountain View High School in Mountain View, California, where he was Tennis Coach and Assistant Football Coach from 1960–1964. From 1963–1966, he was the Tennis Coach at Foothill Junior College in Los Altos, California, where his first champion player was Horst Ritter, who won the State Junior College Singles Championship, as well as the doubles with Rodney Kopp in 1963. His teams won consecutive State Junior College Championships in 1964 and 1965. He was succeeded by friend and another legendary coach in Tom Chivington. He was also the tennis professional at the Fremont Hills Country Club in Los Altos Hills from 1960–1966.

Stanford's men's tennis coach

In 1966, Gould was hired as the Head Tennis Coach at Stanford. He continued to serve as Stanford's Head Tennis Coach for 38 years from 1966–2004. At Stanford, Gould's tennis teams won 17 NCAA Team Championships. His National Championships were in 1973, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2000. His teams were NCAA Championship runners-up in 1972, 1976, 1984, and 1994. He is the winningest coach in Stanford Men's Tennis history with an overall record of 776–148 and a .840 winning percentage.

During Gould's tenure as Head Coach at Stanford, 50 of his players were selected as All-Americans. Nine of his Stanford players, including John McEnroe, Gene Mayer, Alex Mayer, Roscoe Tanner and Tim Mayotte, have gone on to be ranked among the top 15 in ATP World Singles Rankings. He has also coached 14 players who have reached top 10 in ATP World Doubles Rankings, including No. 1 Ranked Doubles Players, McEnroe, Jim Grabb, Jonathan Stark, Alex O'Brien, Jared Palmer, and Bob and Mike Bryan.

His 1998 team is regarded as "perhaps the best college team ever." The 1998 team finished its season with a perfect 28–0 record, lost only two singles matches and one doubles point during the entire season, and won all four of its NCAA matches without losing a point.

Gould's tennis philosophy focused on the serve-and-volley game. However, Gould continued to have success in the 1990s even as the game evolved with powerful, oversized, composite rackets and blasting topspin ground strokes.

Gould is also the author of the tennis instructional book, "Tennis Anyone?", one of the most popular tennis guides ever published.

Gould is also credited with developing the first personal seat license plan while coaching at Stanford. Seeking financing for a new tennis stadium, Gould in 1986 came up with the idea of selling the rights to seats, a licensing plan under which purchaser's name is engraved in the seat, and the purchaser owns the right to have first choice for tickets for any event held in the stadium.

Family and later years

Gould's wife, Anne, was the Women's Tennis Coach at Stanford and led the women's team to an NCAA Team Championship in 1978 – the first NCAA championship in any women's sport for Stanford. Gould and his wife have five children.

In 2004, Gould stepped down as the head tennis coach, but he has remained active at Stanford since 2005 as the John L. Hinds Director of Tennis. He was a close personal friend of Tennis Player/Promoter Barry MacKay, who died in 2012.

Awards, honors and halls of fame

Gould was twice named the Intercollegiate Tennis Association-Wilson "Coach of the Decade," first for the 1980s and subsequently for the 1990s. He has also been named to multiple halls of fame, including the Intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006, the Stanford University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2006, the San Jose Sports Authority Hall of Fame in 2008, the Ventura County Athletic Hall of Fame in 1990, and the Northern California Tennis Hall of Fame in 1992. The International Tennis Hall of Fame awarded its Tennis Educational Merit Award to Gould in 1982.