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Stanley Roger "Stan" Smith (born December 14, 1946 in Pasadena, California) is a former world No. 1 American tennis player and two-time Grand Slam singles champion who also, with his partner Bob Lutz, formed one of the most successful doubles teams of all time. Together, they won many major titles all over the world. In 1970, Smith won the first year end championship Masters Grand Prix title. Smith's two major singles titles were the 1971 US Open (over Jan Kodeš in the final), and 1972 Wimbledon (over Ilie Năstase in the final). In 1972, he was the year-ending world No. 1 singles player.〔 In 1973, he won his second and last year end championship title at the Dallas WCT Finals. In addition, he won four Grand Prix Championship Series titles. His name is also used in a popular brand of tennis shoes. In his early years he improved his tennis game through lessons from Pancho Segura and the Pasadena Tennis Patrons. ==Career== Smith played collegiate tennis at the University of Southern California, under Coach George Toley, where he was a three-time All-American and won the 1968 NCAA singles championship and the 1967 and 1968 doubles titles. At USC, Smith was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. As a kid, he went to get a job as a ballboy at the Davis Cup but was turned down because the organizers thought he was too clumsy.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=50 Famously Successful People Who Failed At First )〕 Smith also holds the distinction of being the oldest youngest slam champion in the history of the Open era, aged 27 at the start of the 1974 Australian Open, subsequently won by 21 year old Jimmy Connors. This is considered to be very unusual in tennis as most players peak at the age of 24. This mark has only been seriously challenged once, by Juan Martin Del Potro, (until September 2014), and currently by Marin Cilic. In his 1979 autobiography, Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, ranked Smith as one of the 21 best players of all time.〔Kramer considered the best player ever to have been either Don Budge (for consistent play) or Ellsworth Vines (at the height of his game). The next four best were, chronologically, Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, and Pancho Gonzales. After these six came the "second echelon" of Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Gottfried von Cramm, Ted Schroeder, Jack Crawford, Pancho Segura, Frank Sedgman, Tony Trabert, John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Björn Borg, and Jimmy Connors. He felt unable to rank Henri Cochet and René Lacoste accurately but felt they were among the very best.〕 In 2005, ''TENNIS'' magazine ranked Smith as 35th in its "40 Greatest Players of the ''TENNIS'' Era". Smith was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. Following his playing career, Smith became active as a coach for the United States Tennis Association. He now has his own academy with Billy Stearns called (Smith Stearns Tennis Academy ), which is in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. In 1974 Smith married Princeton University tennis player Marjory Gengler. They later mentored South African tennis player Mark Mathabane, helping increase pressure on the South African government to end Apartheid. Today, Smith lives in Hilton Head with his wife and four children, all of whom competed in collegiate tennis. In Hilton Head he also is a co-owner of the tennis academy Smith Stearns. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Stan Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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