Kingdon Van Nostrand

Last updated

Kingdon "King" Van Nostrand (born June 4, 1934) is an American tennis player and coach. In 2022 he became the leader in seniors tennis competition by winning a 43rd world title. [1]

Contents

Early life

King Van Nostrand was born in Bay Shore, New York, and attended Bay Shore public schools. He began playing tennis at age 3, following his older brother to tennis courts. Through age 15 he played USTA Eastern section junior tournaments. [2] [3] In high school he played tennis and basketball, winning several Long Island tennis championships, 1949–1951. He attended New York State Teachers College, Cortland [4] (later called SUNY Cortland), where he also played tennis and basketball, and obtained a degree in elementary education. [5] After four years in the Navy he returned to Bay Shore High School [2] as a mathematics teacher from 1960 to 1989. He coached junior varsity high school tennis 1960–1979. During this time he had a stretch of 161 consecutive victories, and he was featured by Sports Illustrated for this feat. [6] His overall record was 223 wins and four losses. [7] While teaching and coaching, he continued to compete on a national and international level. In his brief experience in the open era of non-senior tennis, his most notable success was making the first round at the 1970 US National, the precursor to the US Open. [2]

Senior tennis

Close to his 35th birthday, a senior (age bracketed) tennis circuit started in 1968; also in 1968, the ban on professional tennis players was lifted. Van Nostrand took advantage of these changes and entered the world of senior tennis. [8] By July 1970, he was ranked second nationally in the 35-and-over bracket in senior tennis; [9] in 1970 he won his first USTA gold ball, signifying winning a national title. [10] In 1979, he was noted to be one of the top players in the country, at the time not having lost since entering the 45 age level and having a 40 game winning streak. Described as a "young" senior, it was opined that the "wiry, red‐haired 6‐footer...runs like a deer, executes his shots with textbook precision and produces an all round fluency that is reminiscent of ballet dancer." [11] By the early 1980s he was playing at the international level. [2] In 1991 The New York Times noted that "he has remained at the top of his senior division almost every year." [8] In 1995 he was described as being nearly invincible in American and international competitions, having won titles in 11 countries on five continents. [12] From 2000 to 2023, he had a No.1 world ranking in six separate years. [13] In 1998 he relocated to Vero Beach, Florida, [14] to take advantage of year-round playing weather and soft clay courts for his knees; he has had two knee replacements bilaterally. From 2002 to 2014 he won 52 consecutive USTA singles tournaments, compiling a record of 189–0, with only one match going three sets. [10] In 2016 he was awarded the ITF Seniors Award for Outstanding Achievement; as of 2020, there had been only four recipients of this award. [15] [16] He has represented the United States internationally in the Stevens Cup, Dubler Cup and Austria Cup. [12] At the 2022 Super-Seniors World Individual Championships Van Nostrand, at age 87, achieved a long-held ambition, becoming the outright leader in seniors tennis. [1] The late Lorne Main had won 42 world titles. Van Nostrand had been stuck on 41 titles when Covid hit and he had surgery for a ruptured tendon in his right arm; he missed two seasons. He was uncertain that he would ever play tennis again. He did three months of vigorous physical therapy and returned in time for 2022 championship events. [17] Win 42 was in a team event won by the U.S. In the 85-and-over singles final at the 2022 Super-Seniors, he was down 1–6 in the super tiebreaker. He came back to win the tiebreaker 10-7 and win his record-breaking 43rd world title. [1]

Personal

Van Nostrand met his wife in college. He taught her tennis and she became a tennis instructor; as of 2022 they had been married 67 years. [17] They had four children, all of whom played tennis in college; two were professional, John and Molly, both were coached by Van Nostrand [18] Molly reached a Wimbledon quarterfinal in 1985, but her career was cut short because of a back injury. John died in a 1984 car accident in Mexico, [19] on his way to a tournament, hoping to qualify for Wimbledon. [8] His brother, Allan, coached the varsity team at Bay Shore. He accumulated over 400 wins during his career, including a winning streak of 175 games over nine years. [20] Twelve members of the Van Nostrand family were inducted into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame in 1991; each was a player, coach or both. The family members included Kingdon, Allan, their wives and their eight children. [21] In 2009 both he and his wife, Boots, won 75-and-over national singles championships; this was her first singles gold ball. [14]

He is a member of the Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame, the Cortland C-Club Hall of Fame, the Long Island Sports Hall of Fame, and the Eastern Tennis Association Hall of Fame. [5]

Van Nostrand was featured in a 2023 documentary about super senior tennis players: Silver Servers directed by Dan Lobb. [22]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Althea Gibson</span> American tennis player (1927–2003)

Althea Neale Gibson was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brad Gilbert</span> American tennis player and coach (born 1961)

Brad Gilbert is an American former professional tennis player, tennis coach, and tennis commentator and analyst for ESPN. During his career, he won 20 singles titles and achieved a career-high singles ranking of world No. 4 in 1990, and a career-high doubles ranking of world No. 18 four years prior. He won a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics, and both a gold medal and a silver medal at the 1981 Maccabiah Games.

Jim Grabb is an American former professional tennis player. In doubles, he won the 1989 French Open and the 1992 US Open. He was ranked the world No. 1 doubles player in both 1989 and 1993. His best singles ranking of world No. 24, he achieved in 1990.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don McNeill (tennis)</span> American tennis player

William Donald McNeill was an American tennis player. He was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and died in Vero Beach, Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick Savitt</span> American tennis player (1927–2023)

Richard Savitt was an American tennis player.

Eliot Teltscher is a retired professional American tennis player. He won the 1983 French Open Mixed Doubles. His highest ranking in singles was No. 6 in the world and in doubles was No. 38 in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ilana Kloss</span> South African tennis player, coach, and commissioner

Ilana Sheryl Kloss is a South African former professional tennis player, tennis coach, and administrator. She was the World's No. 1 ranked doubles player in 1976, and World No. 19 in singles in 1979. She won the Wimbledon juniors singles title in 1972, the US Open juniors singles title in 1974, and the US Open Doubles and French Open Mixed Doubles titles in 1976. She won three gold medals at the 1973 Maccabiah Games in Israel. After her playing career, Kloss was the commissioner of World TeamTennis from 2001–2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ronald Holmberg</span> American tennis player

Ronald "Ronnie" Edward Holmberg is a former American tennis player who competed during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was ranked World No. 7 in 1959 and was ranked in the U.S. Top 10 for nine years. He is currently one of the USTA's select "Master Professionals" and devotes most of his time coaching, participating and directing charity events and clinics and other tennis related projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicholas Monroe</span> American tennis player

Benjamin Nicholas Monroe is an American former professional tennis player. Monroe was a doubles specialist. He reached a career-high ATP doubles ranking of No. 30 on 2 October 2017 and won four ATP Tour doubles titles and thirteen ATP Challenger Tour titles in his career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Powless</span> American basketball and tennis coach (1932–2021)

John Dale Powless was an American basketball and tennis player and coach at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a player on the international senior tennis circuit.

Mareen "Peanut" Louie-Harper is a retired American tennis player, born in San Francisco, California to Ron and Alice Louie.

Bay Shore High School is a public high school located in Bay Shore, New York. The school has about 2,000 students in grades 9 to 12. It is a part of Bay Shore Schools and an International Baccalaureate school.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taylor Townsend</span> American tennis player (born 1996)

Taylor Townsend is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked as high as No. 46 in singles by the WTA on 19 August 2024, and in doubles as No. 5 on 12 June 2023. Townsend won her first Grand Slam title at the 2024 Wimbledon with Kateřina Siniaková. In addition, she has won six WTA Tour doubles titles and also reached two other major finals, the 2022 US Open and the 2023 French Open.

John Van Nostrand was a professional tennis player from the United States. His sister Molly Van Nostrand also played tennis professionally. Both were coached by their father, Kingdon Van Nostrand.

Albert Ritzenberg was an American tennis player, coach and collector of tennis antiques.

Molly Van Nostrand is a retired American professional tennis player.

William Ewing Hester Jr., also known as Slew Hester, was an American tennis player and official. He was president of the United States Tennis Association (USTA) from 1977 to 1978, and the first USTA president from the Deep South. In spite of protests against the apartheid regime from African nations and civil rights activists, Hester let South Africa compete in two tournaments against the United States, first in Newport Beach, California, in April 1977 and next at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 1978. He moved the USTA out of the West Side Tennis Club into the USTA National Tennis Center. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1981.

Paul Alexander is an American football coach. He was the offensive line coach of the Cincinnati Bengals from 1994 to 2017. He also served as an assistant coach for the New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys. In March 2019 he decided to join the Potsdam Royals as an offensive line consultant. Since March 2023 he is the headcoach of the Dresden Monarchs.

Dan Pitcher is an American football coach who is the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals of the National Football League (NFL). He previously served as the quarterbacks coach for the Cincinnati Bengals from 2020 to 2023.

The Long Island Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1984 to honor sports figures who lived or played on Long Island, New York. The physical location was a small display on the lower level of the now "dark and dormant" Nassau Coliseum through at least 1994. Among the first inductees chosen were American footballers John Schmitt, Jim Brown and Ed Danowski, basketball's Julius Erving, polo's Tom Hitchcock, Yankee pitcher Whitey Ford, ice hockey's Mike Bossy, Dodger catcher Roy Campanella and bowler Andy Varipapa. The first induction was on November 30, 1984. Early induction ceremonies were formal events, with a 1987 report that a "black-tied crowd will be out in force."

References

  1. 1 2 3 "All hail the king". www.itftennis.com. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "ITF - ITFWorld Spring 2016". itf.uberflip.com. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  3. ↑ "Van Nostrand Eliminates Debany In Eastern Junior Tennis, 6-2,6-4; Summaries of the Tourney". The New York Times. December 28, 1950. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 10, 2024.
  4. ↑ "Marriage of Lyons / Nostrand". Newsday (Nassau Edition). January 18, 1955. p. 30. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  5. 1 2 Bay Shore alumni profile pdf
  6. ↑ Staff, S. I. "FACES IN THE CROWD". Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  7. ↑ "Kingdon Van Nostrand (1995) - SUNY Cortland C-Club Hall of Fame". SUNY Cortland Athletics. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 Ketcham, Diane (July 21, 1991). "ABOUT LONG ISLAND; A Family That Thrives on Athletic Competition". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  9. ↑ "Van Nostran seeded first". New York Times, 1970-07-21. Retrieved 2024-03-10
  10. 1 2 Admin (April 17, 2014). "MY VERO: King Van Nostrand - Vero's Hall of Fame tennis star". Vero News. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
  11. ↑ "A young senior runs up the score". December 2, 1979. New York Times
  12. 1 2 C-Club Hall of Fame Banquet, 1995
  13. ↑ King Van Nostran overview
  14. 1 2 Tennis: Vero Beach's Van Nostrand wins USTA National Women's 75 Clay Court event
  15. ↑ Peter Pokorny | Outstanding Achievement In Seniors Tennis | International Tennis Federation , retrieved March 9, 2024.
  16. ↑ Pokorny receives outstanding achievement award Iftennis.com, 2019-07-09. Retrieved 2024-03-09. "The ITF Award for Outstanding Achievement in Seniors Tennis, which was first presented in 2012, has also been given to Lorne Maine (CAN), Heide Orth (GER) and King van Nostrand (USA)."
  17. 1 2 Writer, Staff (May 24, 2022). "Vero resident wins record 43rd world tennis title". Vero News. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  18. ↑ "Dream Tinged With Tragedy". Washington Post. March 3, 2024. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  19. ↑ Gruson, Lindsey (April 21, 1984). "A MAN OF MANY GIFTS, AND HIS FLEETING LIFE". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  20. ↑ "Allan Van Nostrand (1989) - SUNY Cortland C-Club Hall of Fame". SUNY Cortland Athletics. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  21. ↑ joelando (February 8, 2018). "Van Nostrand Family". Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  22. ↑ "Silver Servers (2023)". The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 11, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.