Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball

Transcription

Charlie Brumfield:
King of Racquetball
22-Time National and World Champion
By Steve bo Keeley
Free Man Publishing Co.
Published 2013 by Free Man Publishing Co.
Charlie Brumfield:
King of Racquetball
Copyright
2013 by Steven ‘Bo’ Keeley. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means
without written permission of the author, except for brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Available via Amazon.com and other bookstores. For reviews,
permissions, large orders, and other inquiries, please contact us
at: bokeely@hotmail.com.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover photo: 1975 Las Vegas Tropicana Nationals photo by Davey Bledsoe.
Editors: Janet Murphy, Brian Wright, Jamie Lawson, and Mike Anguille.
Dedication
This biography is dedicated to Charlie
Brumfield’s three coaches: Carl Loveday,
Bud Muehleisen, and Chuck Hanna.
Some are born great,
some achieve greatness,
and others have greatness thrust upon them.
— William Shakespeare
Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball—Testimonials
The ‘Holder’ was a multiple national champion in racquetball,
paddleball and outdoors in both singles and doubles. Charlie
Brumfield is the greatest rackets players ever! – Marty Hogan,
Six-Time World Champion
Joe Sobek may have invented racquetball, but Charlie
Brumfield perfected it! This book tells it. – Pro Jim Spittle
Wonderful Reading! – Charlie Brumfield
Outspoken, brash, entertaining. Brum knew for the game to
grow it had to be a spectacle and he never disappointed.
Watching him maneuver ‘within’ the rules was always
something to which I was tuned in, as it ultimately became my
job to enforce those rules. – Chuck Leve, IRA Director,
Racquetball Hall of Fame
As you know my Brumfield is one of a kind. I went into every
match with complete confidence we were going to win. Most
teams including the top pros at the time were intimidated when
we stepped on the court, which accounts for my satisfactory
performance. – Dr. Bud Muehleisen, Winner of 69 National
and International Titles, Hall of Fame
In a way, I think that Brum was motivated to work hard and
become good enough to gain his father’s attention and praise.
That’s the first insight that I got out of this great book. – Davey
Bledsoe, World Champion 1977, Hall of Fame
As a kid I could not wait to receive my IRA magazine and read
about the game in SI. I wanted to read what the true superstar
of the game was doing- Charlie Brumfield. There were other
stars but there was only one Brum. – Dave Fleetwood,
Touring Pro
I appreciate as a historian the eyewitness reports and many
anecdotes in this wonderful sports biography. Keeley’s writing
is gifted and excellent. When Charlie Brumfield dislocated his
finger playing handball, racquetball’s gain was handball’s loss
of this intense Dark Knight. Brumfield ‘Ali’ got many of his
outlandish sayings from George the wrestler. What made
Charlie great in his fiery quotes in advanced degrees was he
added intellectual polish and clever wit. – Andrew Hollan,
Sport Historian
We ran around and always bumped into each other. There
were no avoidable hinders except among gentlemen, and
there were few gentlemen in the sport on close calls. That’s
what Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball is about. – Mike
Zeitman, Three-Time National Doubles Champion
Brumfield was the grand master, Keeley his former racquetball
nemesis who gets inside the master'
s mind. This is a sensitive
biography. – Brett Elkins, LA Racquetball, WOR Hall of Fame
Committee
Charlie Brumfield looked like the Prince of Darkness, moved
like Groucho Marx, and had the flawless arsenal of a platypus
on steroids. – Brad Kruger, Canadian National Three-Sport
Champion
In ten minutes it was obvious that the referee was very drunk,
loud and obnoxious, and I motioned to have him removed. It
succeeded, and that’s how I met Charlie, went on to win the
tournament, and we became drinking buddies. The rest is in
the book. – Rodan Pucallpa, Contemporary Pro & Attorney
With a slower ball, I don'
t think anyone would have been able
to compete at his level. With a fast ball, he would be one of
many close to the top. Keeley is writing cover to cover in both
spheres. – Jerry Hilecher, National Champion, Hall of Fame
I am proud of having played with and won multiple National
Doubles titles with Charlie, and Keeley has written a biography
of my partner that is of that quality also. – Steve Serot,
National Doubles Champion, National Junior Champ, Hall of
Fame
Brum was able to implement the Tour of the Court against
anyone, and Keeley has put it excitingly into a Tour de Force.
– Rich Wagner, NRC Top 8
Yet I still recall how he held forth for an hour or so before a
group of Vermont instructors on the dynamics of the grip. He
had more faith in himself than the average movie hero, and he
wrote his own script as he went along. – Art Shay, Official
Racquetball Photographer, Official Olympic Photographer,
Racquetball Hall of Fame
Interesting and entertaining reading. – Doug Ganim, US Open
Founder
Steve bo Keeley wrote the ultimate instructional The Complete
Book of Racquetball and now the biography of the sport’s
ultimate machine Brumfield, whom we both beat in national
competitions. – Charlie Garfinkle, 12 Hall of Fames, Touring
Pro, and Buffalo sports writer for 35 years.
The biographer is known to me as a champion of sport, an
acute observer of racquetball, a historian and superb analyst
of the game, and its protagonist. Charlie Brumfield is also
known to me as the most outlandish player I ever saw take the
court. Keeley fleshes out the People’s Champion, and the fans
are the winners! – Cathy Williams, Top Four Pro, Cofounder
WPRO Tour, National Paddleball Champion
Steve bo Keeley is a gift to the game with either racquet or
pen. He has already written the best-selling book on the sport,
The Complete Book of Racquetball, and this biography of his
enfant terrible rival is another treat. – Rick Frey PhD, Sport
Psychologist
Reading this was for me like taking a step back into history
during the most exciting time in racquetball—the formation
and foundation of the Pros. Brumfield was a unique and
charismatic personage, who comes alive in this telling. – Bo
Champagne, Six States & Multi-Regionals Champion, The
‘Spirit of Racquetball’
It is such a struggle to do justice to Charlie as a player
because he was so great with the small-head racquet that had
our careers overlapped into my large-head era it would have
been tooth and nail in the tiebreakers of many finals. His
biographer Keeley, the best sport writer and Brum'
s nemesis,
will kindle an urge to old time racquetball and using forehand
and backhand in this page burner. – Cliff Swain, Six-Time
World Champion
Keeley taught me the backhand frisbee stroke and Brumfield
the backhand golf stroke that turned me into a pro. I love
reading Keeley on Brumfield. – Hank Marcus, WOR Director
No one has accomplished so much in a sport relative to his
natural attributes. Amazingly he was like Poncho Gonzales in
tennis. Able to be the best without a backhand. – Victor
Niederhoffer, World Squash Champion
Charlie Brumfield was the master ‘psycher’ of all times.
However, he had the game to back up his ‘psyching’ ploys. –
Charles Garfinkle, Pro, Author, Coach
What’s it like to know Charlie Brumfield? Suddenly the court
becomes smaller as he comes closer. Who has been with
your game since day one, trained harder, practiced more, and
will keep driving as though he’s fresh in the tiebreaker. Charlie Brumfield King of Racquetball
!
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The son of a US Marine Corps officer and a former chemistry
teacher, Charlie Brumfield’s first home was on base at Camp
Pendleton in Oceanside, CA. There are threads to support his
rise to Racquetball King during this period. His sister reports
he ‘drove’ a TV antenna around the house at night
‘sleepwalking in search of something.’
His father put young Charles on a raft in the middle
of a lake and told him to swim for shore. On
jumping in, Charlie decided he couldn’t make shore
until dad stepped on his fingers to prevent him from
clawing onto the raft. At high school recess, he
remembers, ‘I was the last picked for every sports
team, and it hurt. I was determined to be the best at
some given game.’
Hence, the Holder of All Titles was born to
racquetball in 1962 on a Mar Vista Junior High
School outdoor court. He hit the cement court hard,
daily, at lunch, PE, and before and after school. The
sport was pink ball handball, the painful predecessor
to pink ball paddleball that gave rise to pink to black
ball racquetball, which is where I stepped into
Charlie’s life.
‘I started playing pink ball in 7th grade while in
junior high at Mar Vista in 1960. We moved to San
Carlos, in the south of the county in 1963, and I
played my first paddles after dislocating my finger in
early ’64. Then, in 1965 in the eleventh grade, I won
the San Diego City Schools pink ball doubles
championship with DC Charleston.’
1: Born on an Outdoor Court
Brumfield: King of Racquetball
The next threads of championship came quickly in
graduating magna cum laude from the University of
San Diego (USD) with degrees in economics and
business administration. He then went on to earn a
degree in law from USD, all during the period he
was playing championship amateur, and thereafter
professional racquetball. Unfortunately for his
opponents in both courts, sport and law, he has by
his own admission a photographic memory to
catalog everyone’s moves.
This, however, does not make a world champion. It’s
said dragons lurked in the dungeon courts at the San
Carlos Racquet Club just down the street where
Charlie teethed and lived Unfortunately for his
on black ball racquetball. opponents in both courts,
A single bulb hung from sport and law, he has by
a ceiling cord illuminated his own admission a
the
action.
Charlie photographic memory to
catalog everyone’s
Brumfield, 6’, 175 lb. moves.
and built like Jim Thorpe
with a ducktail haircut slayed everyone in sight.
When the ball rattled around the in-court pipes and
returned, it was playable. The Donkey Kick of
lunging for shots while kicking the rival out of
center court was born. There was no such thing as an
avoidable hinder; you risked getting hit with the ball
or paddle. Late in the day, as the hours of games
wound down, someone flipped the High Sign – a
signal to warn by raising the hand to the chin and
wiggling the fingers at the opponent. The loser of the
final match, after the high sign, would bend over,
grab his ankles, and his victor would line up behind
him and blast a point blank kill shot.
Many years later, 1977
NRC National Champion,
Davey Bledsoe, recalled
playing doubles against
Charlie on those San
Carlos courts in a close
match. ‘The courts were dungeons with concrete
back walls and ‘California Cut-Outs’ meaning an
open area on the side walls of two adjacent courts.’
Bledsoe and partner Randy Stafford (curator of the
US Racquetball Museum) took it to a third game and
went to the wire. Randy takes up, ‘Davey hit a
rollout and we were to serve for the game, but right
as the ref was calling the point, Charlie pointed on
the floor to a ball that magically appeared, yelling,
‘Ball Hinder!’ We had to replay the point and lost
the next point and game. After the match, we found
out there was no one playing next to us. I am not
saying that ball came out of Charlie’s pocket, but
from then on we always checked to make sure
Charlie did not have any balls in his pocket. I put
Davey in charge of that.’
It’s said dragons lurked in
the dungeon courts at the
San Carlos Racquet Club
just down the street where
Charlie teethed and lived
on black ball racquetball.
In 1964, his play came to the attention of Bud
Muehleisen who would become a lifelong friend. Dr.
Bud had been a Navy badminton champion where he
was tagged ‘Birdy Basher Bud Muehleisen,’ and
later was a college tennis star at Berkeley,
participating in that school’s national tennis title in
1953. Muehleisen dominated paddleball when
Charlie, overwhelmed at 15, first met him at the
Kona Kai Club in San Diego. The hotshot kid was a
handful, and in two years they adjourned up to the
real competition in San Diego at the Pacific
Paddleball Association (PPA). The one-court facility
was built in 1966 on private land of sport aficionado,
Jim Skidmore, on a hill overlooking present day
Charger Qualcomm Stadium. It’s a shrine, as the
first court club in the US for paddleball, and soon
racquetball. Paddleball is the beautiful older sister of
racquetball, and some of the best players in each
sport graduated from the court of hard knocks on this
hill. Brumfield, Muehleisen, Carl Loveday, and Dr.
Chuck Hannah played daily doubles in paddles, and
later racquets, for wagered steak dinners and beers in
the balcony lounge next to the well-stocked trophy
case.
The gate to championships via Brumfield,
Muehleisen and Loveday in the early 1970s was out
of the PPA. It became a racquetball mecca in
attracting the future world champs Jerry Hilecher,
Steve Serot, Dave Peck, myself, and Marty Hogan
blasted a few there. At the PPA these young
gentlemen were tactfully taken apart and put back
together in losing to Muehleisen who gave each
player about 20 years, whereas Loveday gave 30 to
each of them. Brumfield’s uncanny ability to move
forward to the ball came from outdoors, and his
coverage was honed in these daily doubles matches.
Brum and Muehl became the best-record paddleball
and racquetball doubles team of the 20th century, and
both won dual sport National Singles titles multiple
times. Carl Loveday, a former world badminton
champion, was about to become another key figure
in Charlie’s life of racquetball.
The traits to become #1 in sport may be abridged as:
1- Genetic gift without which no one gets to a
competitive #1.
2- Inclination and time to practice long hours.
3- An organized, analytical chess-playing
mind.
4- A strong coach or role model helps.
5- A strong competitive field is useful.
6- The secret to being #1 in a strong field is
an edge, a tiny advantage repeated over
and over to defeat the rest.
Now, Brumfield had all the traits to become #1 AND
the coaches, but was yet to find the winning edge.
It was all coming together to make Charles royal.
That’s where I stopped in his way. Despite my
beating every national racquetball champion during
the Pioneer Era of the 70s, Charlie Brumfield had
my number. Our monthly battles at tournament
finals around the country for ten years are summed
in one ratio: Brumfield 3, Keeley 1. He had my
number, but it took him a long ways around the
courts and country to get it. I saw him coming in
1970 for the first time. I had hitchhiked jacketless in
the dead of winter to the Fargo, ND, paddleball
Nationals to get my buttocks kicked by Dr. Bud who
had a broken foot in the semis. But the high point of
the tournament was a sight to behold: A lanky, thick
legged player in a visor over coke bottle spectacles
dropped and hit a dozen forehand kills from the
service box like a Gatling gun. It was beautiful. Over
and over, the ball rolled back to his waiting hand like
fetch. He never hit a backhand in the one-minute
reconnoiter, but I could tell from the forehand drill
there was none, and trotted away to get kicked by
Muehleisen.
The next year at the Flint, MI, nationals, I met
Brumfield in the semis and got my first dose of the
‘A Stuff’ including donkey kicks, blocking,
intentional long serves, and a constant banter.
Finally, he threw off his visor and screamed at the
gallery, ‘All right, you Michigan farmers. Stick a
fork in him, he’s done!’ And I cooked him. Under
the Gatorade jug, lying supine with an open mouth
under the liquid, he sputtered, ‘No one remembers
#2.’ He slinked back across the country to the PPA
to the surprised glares of Muehleisen and Loveday.
What should he do? ‘Go live with him, Babe,’
advised Loveday. ‘Learn his secrets,’ counseled Dr.
Bud.
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During that summer, fresh from surrendering his paddleball
title but determined to earn it back. Charlie Brumfield and I
lived together on University Ave. in East Lansing, MI, in a rock
n’ roll band’s house called the Woolies that backed up Chuck
Berry during the American age of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.
Once there, Brum was on a mission. He ordered up
paddleball, racquetball, and beer, day and night.
My priorities were veterinary grad school, dogs, and
horses. We came together every afternoon on court 1
at the Michigan State Intramural building to play
paddles, and later in the summer for racquets. And
most evenings, I met him at the Lizard’s
Underground bar to amuse ourselves. He drank
about 20 beers nightly, but I got drunker on the
fumes. Once he assured me I could develop ‘a taste
for beer’ if I drank two nightly for a month. I
complied and then stopped.
He drank only beer, and after the first six, got
playful. In the middle of the barroom stood a
Foosball table, first come first serve, where Charlie
and I walked up to. Across the table, rocking on their
heels, stood a pair of hulking hockey players back
when the MSU team was ranked country high.
Brumfield’s dark eyes glare and are magnified by
glasses staring at you across the court, and so he out
mad-dogged them. ‘Gentlemen,’ Charlie said matter
of factly, ‘this is the first rule of Foosball,’ and he
jammed the player rods into both of the gorillas’
privates. They recoiled and started around the table
at Brum, who braced, until I intervened with a stride
2: Summer of Ceiling Balls
and inserted, ‘He’s a California newbie,’ and stepped
aside knowing nothing about Foosball. It was a joke
because he beat them one on two.
At home, we fell into a peaceful coexistence which
did not extend to the court. I showed him how to
cook flank steak, and he ate it every night for three
months. He practiced We fell into a peaceful
paddleball and basketball coexistence except on the
hard all day, drank hard court. I showed him how
into the wee hours, and to cook flank steak, and
went to bed playing the he ate it every night for
three months.
same Bob Dylan song
Lay Lady Lay night after night. I had been warned
that at nighttime under tournament or practice stress
the High Sign (Fair Warning!) would flash in a
nightmare. From sleepwalking at night as a youth
with the rabbit ears, he had graduated to pouncing on
his sleeping housemates shouting, ‘Twenty-one!’
You could see the dreamy eyes were not quite
focused, and we would gently ward him away as the
referee instead of opponent.
During that time, I was full course into vet med
spaying dogs and castrating cats in the morning,
followed by two hours of court time with Brum at
noon, grooming and trotting horses later in the
afternoon, the bar, and venturing out on nights and
weekends to make barn calls to pull calves from
dystocia mothers. Charlie’s daily routine was to
sleep late to rise without a hangover, basketball for
three hours, paddleball for two hours, practice an
hour, hit the weights, and if he ever did any running,
I didn’t see it. In basketball, he threw elbows among
players who were bigger and shot well from inside
the key. Our matches drew a crowd where he was
perturbed by the fans hooting against him and
assuming by his backhand and noisy footwork that
he had lost, when actually he had won one in three
games of paddleball. Once, he ran so fast into the
front wall to cover a shot that he disappeared, and
reappeared on the floor laying on the ball he had rekilled. He was the quickest court coverer I had ever
played.
One day, in the dim underground hall that accesses
the nine MSU courts, Brumfield sang out of the blue,
‘Dr. Bud thinks the sport of the future is
racquetball.’
‘Who’s Dr. Bud.?’
‘The guy who kicked your ass in the 1970 Fargo
Paddleball Nationals.’
‘The one I hitchhiked to without a jacket in winter
after having played for only three years?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s racquetball?’
He lifted his Loveday autograph wood paddle and
tapped the face, ‘It’s like this but with strings.’
‘We don’t have any racquets.’
‘Muehleisen will send them’
‘We don’t have any balls.’
‘YOU don’t have any balls.’
So we played racquetball.
The racquets and a batch of black Seamco balls
arrived a week later, and while opening them,
Charlie explained, ‘Respect for Muehleisen runs so
deep in the West that when Dr. Bud shifts sports,
many follow, myself included.’ With that, we
jumped on the courts and started hitting. The
transition from wood to string took about one day for
me, since those early balls were slow. Our daily play
throughout the last month of his summer stay was
racquetball, out of respect to Dr. Bud. Even my fans
could see Brum was superior, and started rooting for
him.
The result of our workouts was the birth of three
shots in one month that are still used in modern
racquetball. In the beginning, there was no sound
defensive shot to answer deep court situations. The
inadequate options were a lob that was
uncontrollable off the strings, a pass which was
unsuited for balls struck above the chest, a risky
overhead, or a ceiling shot that was out of the
question. The 18’’ long, early small-head racquets
and dead balls left us exhausted after three shots to
the ceiling. Brum and I sensed that the first player(s)
to develop a sound return from chest high in deep
court would win a season’s trophies. It fueled a
crazy battle. I ‘invented’ the Around-the-World ball
that players would race after each angle of flight in a
circle like a hamster in a wheel before ending up in
the original spot. Also in
The result of our workouts
solo practice, I perfected
was the birth of three
the Z-ball return that
shots in one month that
are still used in modern
wasn’t as useful since it
racquetball.
had to be struck over the
service line. Charlie picked up on both shots, and we
used them sparingly against each other as hole cards
should the sport actually storm the country. A
sneaky thing I did was to contrive an answer to the
Around-the-World ball, and I never used it once that
summer against Brumfield thinking it would be my
tournament edge to win. My invention was the
volley return before the ball bounced and carried to
the back wall.
Meanwhile, Brumfield put his muscle into practicing
the ceiling shot. I never saw Charlie practice, but his
gun arm got bigger each day, with a tremendous
grace that modeled an upward full body golf swing.
And NOW he had a backhand shield to go with the
forehand sword to shortly begin an unprecedented 57
tournament win streak. Later he admitted, ‘I
commenced my effort to incorporate the ceiling as
my principal defensive shot. This was in the summer
of ’71 when I stayed with Steve Keeley in Lansing,
MI. I hit a thousand a day while Keeley was
attending veterinary school in the mornings, and
then I would play him using the ceiling ball system
in the afternoon. Keeley did not like the ceiling
game particularly as he felt it took the excitement
out of the rally, not to mention as a shooter he
preferred my defensive shot to be somewhere other
than ‘wall paper’ at 39 feet.’
One afternoon, Charlie summoned me with an index
finger to a desk where he was writing on a legal pad,
‘The Serve,’ and next to it, ‘And how to Return it.’
He said, ‘I think we should co-author the first
racquetball instructional article for Ace magazine.
Bob Kendler’s handball group in Chicago thinks the
wave of the future is racquetball, and Ace is the
mouthpiece. It would be good exposure for you.’ So
he wrote the first half, and I the second half of the
dual-article, and only after it was published, I
realized he had picked my return serve strategies dry
off the page for the more important aspect of the
game.
A Sports Illustrated story (‘He Found his Racquet’,
Nov. 19, 1979) covered, in part, our summer of
racquetball. ‘At that point in his career, Steve was
the best offensive player there ever was,’ says
Brumfield. ‘He could kill the ball from any position
on the court with a high degree of accuracy. The
shots that we worked on were really reactions to his
offensive advantage over me.’ It dawned on me as
Charlie returned to the West coast that the summer
visit had been a setup to inoculate me to racquetball
for his fodder, as well as to see what I could show
and tell. Charlie fondly recites, ‘It is actually a point
of pride as to how well I was able to compete during
my vacation at law school and ‘studying’ for the Bar
exam.’ It was my introduction to racquetball, and I
was ignorant at the time that he was second in the
nation at the sport behind Muehleisen.
The tables eventually turned, and upon graduating
from veterinary school in a Michigan blizzard in
1972 I was California dreaming. I followed
Brumfield out to San Diego. Of course, coaches
Muehleisen and Loveday, and their point man
Charlie, had been playing a sporting game of Risk on
the West coast trying to annex the Midwest
paddleball stronghold. Others followed me from
MSU—Mini-Hippy, Wristman, Baldori, Alder,
Kathy Williams, Bionic Woman, Orham and Behm,
to name a few. Charlie gave them all a ‘tour of the
court’ and frequent donuts (games in which the
opponents score 0 points) singing a jingle at 20-0
called ‘The Heavenly Donut Truck’ to rub it in.
Nonetheless they lined up to play him until he got
hoarse.
I watched, began a thickening scrapbook of notes on
other players, and started a daily regimen that would
endure. My decade in racquetball of running 6 miles,
biking 30 miles, one hour of weights, two hours of
play, and an hour of practice. My California state
board passing grade came back just in time for the
inaugural 1973 NRC pro tour where I defeated
Brumfield at the second event in the October Long
Beach ProAm. The Golden Era of racquetball began,
and Charlie Brumfield was teed off.
(
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Brumfield and I hit the California coast swinging. A good
gamesman like Brumfield carried an eight-point spread going
into a game, if he wanted it, against a fuming pacifist. A
conversant ref could halve it, but few in the country were more
versed and willful than the touring pros, and particularly the
eloquent Brumfield. NRC director Chuck Leve was, but could
not be on top of every game at once.
The fans in general loved an embroiled battle of the
wits with a little pushing and shoving on the court,
and during the 70s as the sport spread so did the
level of gamesmanship. A newbie entering the pro
ranks faced two choices that sooner or later everyone
in business, love, and life must decide: Do I want
war, or do I want to be a square shooter?
Of the two philosophies, war was more prevalent.
There'
s a beautiful rumor going around that the first
two national racquetball champions were won by
cheating. At the 1968 Milwaukee national ‘Paddle
Racquet’ event, Bill Schultz admits in his
autobiography that against
The fans in general
Bill Schmidtke at 18-18 in
loved an embroiled
battle of the wits with a
the final tiebreaker he was
little pushing and
tired, and Schmidtke was
shoving.
‘strong and hot.’ Bill
stepped in front of Schmidtke’s forehand and got hit
on the arm to ask for an injury timeout. He took the
full ten minutes and returned to win 21-18 for the
championship. In 1969, it was Bud Muehleisen
against Brumfield in the final at 20-14 with Charlie
3: Rules of Engagement
serving for game, match and championship. This
point deserves some backing up to set the scene.
In 1969, there were only 50,000 players in Y’s, J’s
and campus courts across the nation. A letter went
out from the St. Louis JCC of the upcoming IRA
nationals, and Dr. Bud and Charlie decided to
compete only six weeks before the event. Since both
were experienced paddleball champions, they got
racquets for a crash course in the new sport. A few
weeks later, Dr. Bud used the Dayton ‘Steel’ string
racquet against Charlie and the wooden ‘Clunker’
Sportcraft in the final.
‘For the record,’ says Dr. Bud used the Dayton
Muehl, ‘For my match ‘Steel’ string racquet
with Charlie Brumfield in against Charlie and the
the 1969 Nationals in St. wooden ‘Clunker’
Sportcraft in the final.
Louis, I used a Dayton
Steel Racket which was double strung with a
corrugated smooth wire. The racket was very light in
the head but would wear out quickly, because at the
throat of the racket the single-tube steel would bend
(back and forth) and finally give way and break.’
‘For the record,’ counters Brumfield, ‘I preferred the
Sportcraft wooden Clunker, and the 17-year spot
Bud gave me.’ Going into the tiebreaker that day the
ball was so dead that a ceiling ball was impossible to
execute. A lot of maneuvering brought the pair to
match point.
‘I won the first game easily and then in the second
was leading 20-14 and was serving to Dr. Bud,’ says
Brumfield. ‘There ensued a disputed referee’s call
that so upset me that I lost that game and ultimately
the title. Someone in the gallery muttered within
earshot, ‘For your first national champion would you
rather have Dr. Bud or THAT?’ Marty Hogan was
there. ‘I saw the match, an 11-year tot with Joe
Zelson and Mike Zeitman. I will never forget Joe’s
comment, ‘That ref’s call was the worst cheat I ever
saw.’
‘My feelings were hurt,’ lingers Charlie. ‘So please
never talk to me about the meaning of ‘homered’
(home conditions, referee or crowd favorites).
However, maybe the spectator was right and it was
‘for the best,’ both in my case and Schmidtke’s the
next year. Then Serot, and Hogan. Things work out
for the best, even between us.’ The ‘kid’ got robbed
in ’69 and set the tenor for gamesmanship and
championship racquetball throughout the golden era.
‘I am certain Dr. Bud has
long forgotten how it was he
won that ‘first’ nationals.
Almost everyone who saw it
is now dead. Even after all
these years, I have not. But Bud has been a GREAT
champion and has done more good things for the
players and for the sport than anyone in history. He
worked with me for years and helped me financially
and otherwise.’
My feelings were hurt,’
lingers Charlie. ‘So
please never talk to
me about the meaning
of ‘homered’.
It begs the question why, after Dr. Bud broke three
Dayton racquets in the finals and his protégé’s heart,
the two of them according to each remain lifelong
friends. The answer is it was all in the game, the
wonderful game. Charlie had been no angel before
the avoidable that stole his crown. As he admits,
‘I’ve been thinking a LOT about my loss and I have
reviewed the conduct of the ‘69 nationals PRIOR to
the finals. In at least one of the matches and maybe
two (Steve Schneider in the quarters and Ken Porco
in the semi’s), I would not have won the match to
advance without employing unsanctioned tactics.
Porco was a beast and faster than his size should
have allowed. In those
I fully understand as well a
days, I played very close
robust reluctance by my
contemporaries to ever
and when an opponent
consider me as a victim.
jacked me with a pass, I
But to be sure, the calls
pushed off aggressively
and the pranks did not
with my left arm to go
always go in my favor.
back and make the
opponent pay for the temerity. Porco bitterly
complained in all three games. It is improper for me
to hold others to a higher standard than I myself
employed. I fully understand as well a robust
reluctance by my contemporaries to ever consider
me as a victim. But to be sure, the calls and the
pranks did not always go in my favor.’
Mike Zeitman, who went down in the quarters to
PPA’s Chuck Hannah, effuses, ‘Yes, we ran around
and always bumped into each other. There were no
avoidable hinders except among gentlemen, and
there were few gentlemen in the sport on close calls.
With wooden racquets it was a different game,
breathing down each other’s neck the whole match.
The pinch wasn’t available because the racquet made
it impossible to hit. Strategies were primitive. There
was rare deliberate use of the ceiling because home
town light fixtures delivered freak balls that could go
in 20 different directions, leaving you exhausted.
Plaster courts got chipped and balls took weird
detours that caused players to collide. Doors weren’t
flush. Refereeing without static rules was chaos.
Cheating, not calling the skips, serving wet balls,
taking away your opponents’ shots by deliberately
standing in the ball’s path, was everyman’s game.
Everything, everything, was in transition, and it, like
the early nationals, was a messy birth.’
The High Sign in racquetball was on, and it began
with Charlie Brumfield. The ante up throughout the
70s made the professional sport more interesting to
television, Hollywood and betting to polish or
tarnish the Golden Era (depending on how you look
at it) from 1971-80. The pro tournaments during that
growth and boom were all about the three different
game
styles
of
honesty,
cheating,
and
gamesmanship. I was too ignorant to cheat and too
graceful to get hurt except for one fractured finger,
broken nose, and a dislocated knee. Yet, unlike
Brumfield, I refused to succumb through a dozen
national titles in paddleball and racquetball to
develop a formula against any rival who cheated.
Immediately, the first slight was let slide; the second
cheat was politely pointed out; and after the third, it
was tit-for-tat and I kept a running credit. In the 70s,
when Charlie started flipping the high sign to herald
a match, and was about to come to blows, the entire
racquetball scene was anxious with weak refereeing,
‘homering’ and gamesmanship.
Gamesmanship is bending the rules, manipulating
the ref, and hypnotizing the crowd to gain an edge
on the court. The best gamesman in racquetball
history was my nemesis Charlie Brumfield, a genius
attorney who applies his techniques in the court of
law and routinely gets thrown out by judges with
stiffer spines than racquetball referees. A straight
player gave away a point a cheat or shenanigan
which added up to about eight points in each 21point game. There are a hundred tricks. Intentional
long servers control the game pace and double the
length. Charlie’s lob serve into the back wall came
gently to rest at the front wall for a stroll to get it for
the second serve. You Gamesmanship is
squeeze or wet the ball bending the rules,
before serving to make it manipulating the ref, and
knuckle and slide. A hypnotizing the crowd to
sweating receiver lingers gain an edge on the court.
in one spot until a pool forms, and the next time
serves into it. Physical intimidation includes
blocking opponents, or shots, striking with the
racquet, or ball, thrown elbows, and all the
combinations. Charlie donkey kicked with a jump
and thrust backward into the foe’s midsection to
propel himself to front court to cover shots.
The best strategy against a Yankee operator, given a
shrinking referee and a conscience not to fight him,
is stoicism. A strong stoic cuts the gamesman’s edge
by 70% by not engaging him. ‘Silence is the perfect
repartee.’ But sooner or later the luck of the draw
brings on the cruelest strategist, and you get fan
support. They heckle the clown to fair play or
threaten him during timeouts. There’s no need for
that. An opinionated girl in the San Diego gallery
once sat through the glass in the left rear corner and
flashed her underwear every time Charlie went for
my passes. Ah, the golden era.
Crafty Brumfield developed a dedicated following of
screaming, drinking Brum’s Bums who lined the
front row bleachers, and next to the referee where
alcohol fumes sank heavily into the court that stunk
it up like a dance hall. Sooner or later, the high sign
would go up in the court from Brum, the Bums
would whoop and place their bets, and inside the
court the opponent was guaranteed a grind to win, or
even survive. Three specific instances come to mind.
The first was in 1969 at the Ames, Iowa paddleball
Nationals against former champion Paul Lawrence.
Charlie was getting thumped when Loveday
thumbed his chin for the High Sign from the gallery,
and yelled, ‘Hit it though him, Babe.’ The next
deadly shot changed the town name to Aims and
nicked Paul’s ear lobe, and the following straight
into it, to knock Lawrence out of the game point
wise. The second episode ignited a string of 25
straight tournament game wins against blooming
Hall of Famer Steve Serot. Charlie rocketed a shot
into Serot’s agape mouth as he concentrated, and it
stuck in the braces. Throughout the career winning
streak that followed,
Brum had only to hold up The next deadly shot
changed the town name to
the game ball, stare at it Aims and nicked Paul’s
and murmur, ‘Where are ear lobe.
the railroad tracks?’
During a racquetball match, all sorts of psyching is
permitted. It was perfectly common, if not ho-hum,
for one player to threaten to kill another. Brumfield
once stuck a racquet under young Hogan'
s chin,
pushed him a few inches and threatened to bop him
if he didn'
t back off. Brumfield was penalized one
point… and won going away. Later he predicted, ‘I
believe that as Hogan matures he will lose his nasty
edge and be more beatable.’
‘Outspoken, brash, entertaining’, recalls IRA’s
Chuck Leve. ‘Brum knew for the game to grow it
had to be a spectacle, and he never disappointed.
Watching him maneuver ‘within’ the rules was
always something to which I was tuned in, as it
ultimately became my job to enforce those rules.’
Racquetball Museum curator and fellow pro Randy
Stafford reflects, ‘One thing stands out about Charlie
when I saw or played him. After a hard fought point
or match he would look up at the audience or at the
ref and yell out, ‘God’s Will!’ He would usually
raise his hand as if pointing or his arms in an
overhead ‘V’ thanking the court gods for his
triumph.’
That is how I remember him also, as Brumfield and
racquetball steamrolled into the Golden Era.
)
%*
! +"
!&&
The 1971 National Singles Invitational in San Diego for the
first time brought all the top players together. The reason is
that for the first time the 16 invitees were getting our plane
fares paid for. The initial thing you noticed on walking into the
Mel Gorham'
s Sports Center is Miss San Diego in a small,
tight bikini, throwing a kiss. Next in line, Bud Leach with a
Swinger racquet—the first fiberglass prototype—freshly forged
in his garage with a $20 bill wrapped around the handle
shakes each player’s hand with it.
Then my attention fell onto the first glass side wall I
had ever seen on an exhibition court, and I wondered
if it would help my backhand against the best in the
nation. Next you shook hands with the smiling club
owner Mel Gorham, and everyone was pointed into
the French fry men'
s locker room. There was a soda
machine that sold cold 7Ups on that hot day for 25
cents.
Brum’s Bums hit the stands! They clapped hands
and stamped feet like an old tent revival bobbing
signs ‘Brumfield #1, God #2, Keeley #3.’ The only
match in His life that his father, the Marine Colonel,
saw him play was against me in the semis. Charlie
wore a Yuba City Disposal shirt for the occasion, as
the beer guzzling Bums
sang twisted odes to their Brum’s Bums hit the
hero on my back wall stands! They clapped
hands and stamped feet
setups. I hit a drive to like an old tent revival
Brumfield’s
famous bobbing signs ‘Brumfield
forehand on his game #1, God #2, Keeley #3.’
point that flailed, and the
4: Roots of Pro Racquetball
ball vaporized from the court—it disappeared. The
gallery hushed as we discussed a second ball, and
exited for a drink to await the ref’s decision. I
stooped and pointed at his racquet where the ball
wedged in the throat! The champion stomped back
into the court with his arms upraised in a victory
salute, the unseen ball dangling in the racquet from
his wrist, and he screamed, ‘Tell Bud Leach to string
the crotch!’
Bud Muehleisen and 15-year-old Steve Serot came
up the other side of the draw. I had beaten #1 seed
Bill Schmidtke in the first round, and Garfinkle in
the quarters, and then I passed Serot to take 3rd.
Brumfield defeated Muehleisen for the first
invitational championship. Bathing beauties handed
out awards, the Pacific lapped five blocks away, and
the tournament set the tenor and seeds for future
racquetball, and many future champions were
produced.
This was the beginning of professional racquetball,
and equipment would mold the future game and its
champions. Starting in 1971 and continuing to 1986,
virtually every top player in the sport was sponsored
by one of two San Diego-based racquet
manufacturers: Ektelon and Leach Industries. Both
companies were the brainchilds of retired elite
athletes. With the help of racquetball pioneer Dr.
Bud Muehleisen, Ektelon was founded by Bud Held,
an Olympic Javelin Thrower and Pan Am Games
Gold Medalist. Leach was started by its namesake,
Bud Leach, a multiple National Trick Water Ski
Champion. The two companies had similar roots but
very different cultures, and both inspired fierce
loyalty from their players. The most well-known
from the Ektelon and Leach camps in the 70s and
80s were:
Ektelon: Bud Muehleisen, Bill Schmidtke,
Steve Strandemo, Jerry Hilecher, Mike
Yellen, Dave Peck, Ed Andrews, Ruben
Gonzalez, and Cliff Swain.
For Leach: Charlie Brumfield, Steve Keeley,
Steve Serot, Rich Wagner, Davey Bledsoe,
Craig McCoy, Marty Hogan, Benny Koltun,
Bret Harnett, and Gregg Peck.
(Later on, Wilson signed 1977 National Champions
Davey Bledsoe and Shannon Wright… and pro
racquetball rookie Dave Peck in 1978. Vittert signed
multiple National Champions Bud Muehleisen and
Peggy Steding. Head signed Canadian National
Champion and top pro Steve Strandemo and Junior
National Champion Doug Cohen.)
My little place in the pioneer companies began at the
’71 nationals when, with a nervous walk, I entered
Ektelon and shook hands with the sole worker, Bud
Held, in what was little more than a machine shop
with metal benders and a couple stringing machines.
However, Held greeted me with a warm smile, and
after explaining that I was the incumbent paddleball
champ and a participant in the ongoing invitational,
he gave me a new Muehleisen metal racquet that
henceforth was worth ten points per game. But I
dared not use it in this tournament without practice.
The only way to get an Ektelon racquet at the time
was to visit the factory or to know someone. Bud
Leach, who had put the first fiberglass racquet in my
hand the day before, courted me after the Ektelon
visit with a steak dinner and explained that he ran his
car tires over his trick skis overnight to bend them
into the shapes that had won him world
championships. He predicted that he would take over
the industry with fiberglass racquets designed in the
same way. During dessert he offered me a verbal
contract for equipment plus expenses paid to the Big
Four tournaments (National Singles and Doubles
Opens, and National Invitational Singles and
Doubles), which I shook hands on, and remained
loyal throughout my ten-year playing career while
using a 312-gram orange Bandido. It was an honor
getting to know the Buds Leach and Held over the
years, and I remained fairly immune from the rivalry
between the two player camps in San Diego.
Canadian star Brad Kruger migrated to San Diego
late in the Golden era and threw in with the Leach
group, portraying the two camps as the innovators
and the executors. The innovators were Loveday,
Brum, me, and in fact, most of the Leach group, who
challenged every rule, examined and modified every
approach, and changed the game radically—these
were the outlaws, imaginative and inventive, whose
reward came not only with winning, but with
creating. Our reputation was as point men of the
sport, its captains of industry focused as much on the
game'
s progress as on our own careers. We were
unpredictable, the wild card innovators who shocked
the crowds with the crack of an ace or grace of an
overhead. We were mavericks, and proudly
unmanageable. In the other camp were the executors
with Peck, Strandemo, Yellen, Hilecher—essentially
the Ektelon camp. Our alter-egos were
unimaginative but calculating, literally reducing,
concentrating and optimizing what had come
before… not to expand into new, complex and
fascinating territories of discovery, but working the
odds, working them over and over and reducing the
fields of error until each developed a relatively
simple and exceedingly effective game. These were
the sport yuppies, who took what they could from
what had been and developed an approach that
rewarded reaction. They were the scavengers but
nobody could tell because they looked the part, they
wore the right clothes, lathered on the cologne and
joined the right groups. They were predictable,
absolutely, and whereas in earlier days the sport,
with its long rallies and exhausting strategic
requirements, originally rewarded the innovators,
now with increased ball speed, improved equipment
and decreased length of rallies, the sport evolved to
the point where imagination and thinking was not
only triumphed by reaction and instinct, but thinking
on the court was becoming a detriment to the game.
In 1972-3, as the ball livened and racquets improved,
the innovators slowly, grudgingly gave way to the
executors, until only Charlie Brumfield among us
was our champion for the innovators.
‘I AM the People’s Champion!’ he began to shriek
after wins.
It echoed up and down the hall of America’s first
court club, Mel Gorham’s Sports Center of San
Diego. Built in 1971, a five minute jog up Turquoise
Street from the Pacific beach where the players used
to run 6.8 mile laps between Crystal Pier and the
Jetty before returning to the Sports Center for
racquetball, Gorham’s
became the training
and proving grounds
for young promising
players from around
the country. Mel
Gorham was a mild
mannered
grocery
store and construction
boss with handball
hands in California,
where dreams come
true to the willing. As
a mecca, Gorham’s
produced
more
national champions
during
the
20th
century than all the
rest of the clubs in the country combined. Kruger
describes, ‘A typical day at Gorham'
s began like
Darwin'
s Origin of Species, moved through
Nietzsche’s ‘That which does not kill me makes me
stronger,’ and ended with us exhausted; we moved
like extras in George
Romero'
s Night of the A typical day at Gorham's
began like Darwin'
s Origin
Living Dead. But it was of Species, moved
OK because we were through Nietzsche’s ‘That
practicing in the Hall of which does not kill me
Fame: Brumfield and makes me stronger,’ and
Loveday would stun me ended with us exhausted.
and a hundred others, over and over, with shots.
There was a rest, and then back into the Hall to go
through each point stroke by stroke that at first the
young players thought was a ploy designed to awe
them into submission of their intellectual skills, but
we soon realized they were really doing a point by
point analysis. As time went by, the disciples began
to do the same on a new level of focus, to ‘move up.’
Brumfield was the marquis player for Leach
Industries, the leading manufacturer of racquets at
the time. From ’71 to ’76 Leach produced several
Brumfield signature rackets including the very
popular ‘Graphite Brumfield’ which was the first
graphite composite. A full-page Leach ad in the
trade magazines vaunted Brumfield posed in a
classic forehand at contact with the ball wired to the
strings of his new signature Graphite Brumfield. The
banner headline surged, ‘Get the Feel of the Best.
Charlie Brumfield did, and he’s a National Champ.’
I had no signature racquet, but learned a lot living
with Leach President Charley Drake for three years,
and in traveling with him and plant foreman Ray
Bayer to Taiwan with a 4’ long racquet posing for
photos and meeting Mr. Kunnan to forge the
Kunnan-Leach Co. that became Pro-Kennex.
For a brief time, Brumfield had his own sports brand
label with pal Ron Starkman, known as BrumStar
which marketed rackets and sports apparel.
‘Something went wrong with the molding,’ is
Charlie’s rundown when the first BrumStar racquet I
tried bent back like a tinker toy on the first few
shots. When stuck in the back window of a car on a
California afternoon, by sunset the racquet would
warp like a leaf and was used for handicap matches.
Later Brumstar models were better quality and,
according to Ron Starkman, the sponsored players
who won tournaments include Craig McCoy,
Shannon Wright, Jeff Larson, Steve Dunn, Hank
Markus and Mike Yellen. After a couple of years,
Brumfield returned to Leach and the former
company became known as StarMaster.
San Diego attorney, Rodan Pucalpa, used his black
Brumstar state of the art carbon as an introduction to
Brumfield at an early tournament at the Helix Court
House in San Diego. ‘I was playing C’s in about my
third tournament, and Brumfield was a hero of mine
for his cerebral play, and I had shelled out $20 to use
the racquet that I didn’t particularly like the way it
hit but it had Brumfield’s signature, and was an
icebreaker to approach the star for an actual
autograph. It was the quarterfinals, and matches had
run long, and ours started at 2:30 in the morning
when the only one in the gallery was Brumfield
drinking. I was ecstatic to have an autograph and a
hero of mine to referee the match, and we began. In
ten minutes it was obvious that the referee was very
drunk, loud and obnoxious, and I
… it was
motioned to have him removed. It
obvious that the
succeeded, and that’s how I met
referee was very
drunk, loud, and
Charlie, went on to win the
obnoxious, and I
tournament, and we became
motioned to
drinking buddies.’
have him
removed. It
succeeded, and
that’s how I met
Charlie…
In 1973, when Brumfield returned
to Leach, sober things were taking
place
in
racquetball.
The
International
Racquetball
Association (IRA) saw chief Bob Kendler leave to
form an amateur US Racquetball Association
(USRA) and the professional National Racquetball
Club (NRC). The three groups continued to grow
throughout the nation and then the world in the
1970s and early 80s. In 1979, the IRA changed its
name to the American Amateur Racquetball
Association (AARA), and again in 1997 it took its
present name USA Racquetball (USAR). All of the
groups except USRA went belly up in the 80s with
the decline of the sport due apparently to the rise of
the health and fitness industry.
But Brum’s 1973 reconnection with Leach
foreshadowed the greatest advance in the sport’s
history to date. The September 1973 Volume 1 #1
National Racquetball Magazine inaugural issue
announced ‘Pro Racquetball is Here!’ The green
cover shows Charlie in the rich paneled Leach office
signing the first long-term equipment contract in
history under a life size poster with sardonic grins on
both faces while looking up and away from the paper
at me cut out of the photo.
The first year of pro ball literally did not run true to
course of the photo. The first three pro money
winners in history are surprises:
1. Steve Serot def Bill Schmidtke in Houston,
TX—September 1973 NRC Houston Pro Am
2. Steve Keeley def Charlie Brumfield in Long
Beach, CA— October 1973 NRC Long Beach
Pro Am
3. Charlie Brumfield def Steve Serot in
Milwaukee,
WI—March
1974
NRC
Milwaukee Open.
Prior to these events we were playing for T-shirts
and trophies… hitchhiking, busing, freighting and
carpooling across the country to the Big Four annual
events. The initial prizes were about $1000 to the
winner, $500 runner-up, and $250 third. Serot used
his purse to get his first St. Louis date with a top
female player who worked the JCC cage and became
his wife. I bought a ´74 Chevy van with a 7’ stuffed
rabbit named Fillmore Hare riding shotgun and
drove players to tournaments in the southwest. And
Charlie Brumfield bought a new luxury Cadillac
Seville and took his father around the block.
The first two years of pro ball from were all about
Brumfield, Keeley and Serot. The Brumfield-Keeley
matches ran at a rate of about three per year
throughout the 70s decade (after Muehleisen ducked
into the Seniors and beyond to win 69 national and
international titles!). These contests were model play
for the pioneer era, and the shots and strategies
remained in the young players’ form after we left
tournaments, and were disseminated by the media. It
made sense that our shots and strategies developed
the winningest games in town after town. Each rally
was scientific and interesting to the analytical mind:
A player serves a lob or garbage, the other returns to
the ceiling and a ceiling rally ensues. After five hits
one shot comes up short or off the side wall, and a
brief rally commences low to the hardwood ending
in a killshot.
My problem against Charlie was the same as other
players had all the time. Like Alice, Brumfield often
speaks of ‘getting small’ to move past an opponent
and into proper court
Like Alice, Brumfield often
coverage, and ‘getting
speaks of ‘getting small’ to
big’ to prevent the
move past an opponent
opponent from moving
and into proper court
coverage, and ‘getting big’
into
proper
court
to prevent the opponent
coverage. This style
from moving into proper
executed to eloquence by
court coverage.
him was effective, as he
tends to sacrifice technical swing mechanics when it
allows him to move his opponent out of position, or
when he can use his own body to block his
opponent'
s view of the ball, particularly while the
ball is traveling between Brumfield'
s racquet and the
front wall. Even in ceiling rallies where Brumfield
had the best game going, he was as pestiferous as a
google-eyed fly touch and go repeatedly. This forces
a dramatic reduction in the opponent'
s ability to
anticipate the shot, to go forward to the ball, broke
my concentration, and allows Brumfield numerous
options. As such, I won one in three matches over
the years, and fared poorer in the bigger pro stops
and gala events where he upshifted the
gamesmanship in relation to the import of the match.
When you went into a final against Charlie you
geared him down by sending him chocolates, as Bill
Schmidtke did, or dates the night before per the
Michigan subterfuge, or hired a Californian to take
him drinking.
Even with these handicaps, plus a weak backhand,
he governed racquetball with back-to-back IRA
National Singles championships in 1972 and 1973,
and again in 1975 and 1976 with IRA/IPRO and
NRC pro National Singles championships. How did
he do it? The traits to become #1 include a repeating
edge over the competition, and for Brumfield it was
as simple as hitting the ceiling. The thousand a day
ceiling drill he had practiced in the summer of ’71
had been further refined by the time he started
stacking on the championships in ’72-‘73. The result
was the best Sword and Shield of the early
racquetball conquistadors—you wouldn’t think it
deadly but it was. In sword and shield, the forehand
is the sword used to kill all setups and to administer
the royal torturous tour of
In sword and shield, the
the court to those willing forehand is the sword
to run down shot after used to kill all setups and
shot and die a slow death to administer the royal
via a racquet. By design, torturous tour of the court
virtually
all
offense to those willing to run
down shot after shot and
comes from forehand die a slow death via a
shots, so to employ this racquet.
regal attack the forehand
sword had better be sharp, and Sir Brum owned the
sharpest. The backhand had better be thickly
defended, and it was. The backhand is used as a
shield of constant deep court ceiling shots, and when
the foe erred with the dead balls it allowed a step
around a backhand for the sharper forehand. The
backhand was only used as an offensive weapon in
advance of the short line where it'
s a high percentage
put away. To cap it, Brumfield often sprang
offensively from a defensive position with a slashing
overhead.
‘No one has accomplished so much in a sport
relative to his natural attributes. Amazingly he was
like Poncho Gonzales in tennis. Able to be the best
without a backhand,’ praises the usually removed
world squash turned racquetball champion, Victor
Niederhoffer.
Brumfield also committed the least number of
Mental and Physical errors in a game, to which I was
nearly his equal, and so may comment... Physical
errors occur when you miss a shot due to bad
footwork, a poor swing, or anything not having to do
with a mistake in shot selection. Players make
physical errors each rally and it’s no big deal, they
say. It’s true that corrective instruction plus practice
diminish the chance of repeating physical errors. On
the other ledger, mental errors are faulty brainwork,
usually in shot selection. You should have taken a
specific shot from a certain court position, but for
some reason did not. These mental errors may be
corrected instantly by an assertion of will, even
during a match. However unnoticed or uncorrected,
mental slights become losing habits. Among club
players every rally is fraught with both physical and
mental errors, and the general rule is that the first
player to correct them via lessons and practice
advances to a higher division. There at the Open
level he’ll still make a few correctable physical
errors in progressing on to the pros, where the rule is
no physical errors, period… it’s all mental there.
Physical vs. mental errors is about delayed
gratification, and Charlie Brumfield had learned
early on at the raft’s edge from his dad, and then
against Muehleisen when just one point away from
winning the ’69 championship, just how to wait. He
played hundreds of hours of practice games where
his opponents/pupils agreed beforehand to pause
after each rally to reflect, analyze and correct each
other’s mistakes. The ideal game—the Brumfield
Way—was zero pauses with no physical and no
mental errors.
If both players in a high stakes match make zero
physical and mental errors, what is the deciding
factor? This is where Charlie steps up and few may
follow. The professional level of any sport is all
about intentions. Locke said, ‘Intention is when the
mind, with great earnestness, and of choice, fixes its
view on any idea.’ In sport, you study the opponent’s
face, hands, gait and grace to quietly determine how
he will act the next split-second. What is his design?
How soon does the scheme dawn on him, and how
long before he physically reaches a point of no
return and executes it? Observing these signs is to
predict his first intent, and make a counter even as,
or before, he moves. The opponent, of course, is
looking you up and down the same. Hence, second
intent evolves during first: a counter to a counter.
Intention is stretching the mind toward an object,
and with practice you will anticipate a competitor’s
actions before he does. How far intentions reach is
problematic: 1st… 5th… in chess predicting ten
moves ahead blindfolded. Keep grounded that
second intention is reference to signs, properties,
guesses and relations among first intentions.
Sequentially, third intent is established during the
second, and so on. Then decide how far you can or
want to go. Brumfield went at least one intent further
than all his opponents.
If Gamesmanship, Sword and Shield, plus intentions
weren’t enough to win… Charlie lost. I always
questioned the rare occasions when I beat him that it
was in a grander scheme. By 1973, all the top 16
players could hit two perfect ceiling shots, I could
hit four, and Brumfield about eight in a row that
clung to the left side like wallpaper. His body torque
and stiff arm backhand
That’s how the ceiling
stroke
became
the
game started, to my
standard throughout his
knowledge, and was
propagated up and down
first two National Singles
the court walls around the
Titles in 1972-3 owed
country.
mostly to the ceiling.
That’s how the ceiling game started, to my
knowledge, and was propagated up and down the
court walls around the country. Then the evolution
of equipment shifted the focus from the ceiling to
close to the floor. Charlie comments, ‘As the ball
sped up in the ‘73 season, I converted my game back
to the passing method as my ceiling ball did not
reliably stay short of the back wall. Also, I had
signed with Leach and the ceiling ball sticking to the
wall was not easy to hit with a fiberglass instrument,
which was less firm at the edges of contact.’
The reason the ball livened and at the same time
racquetball became popular in the pivotal year 1973
is because the livelier ball had a shorter learning
curve for a wider audience including kids,
grandparents, the sedentary and, then the true
motivating reason, females. Where the girls went,
the guys followed. Thousands of clubs sprung up
like mushrooms across the country. Charlie married,
selecting for genes and love, ‘The second fastest
Caucasian girl in San Diego County, Pat Ritter.’ And
the sport got so big that the players went outdoors.
The invasion of the indoor pros to outdoor started in
1974. The Nationals the first two years were at the
Orange Coast College outdoor three-wall courts a
lob north from the San Diego home of the indoor
champions. A couple weeks prior to the tournaments
the four-wall pros typically left indoor practices for a
couple weeks tune up outside before the opening day
of the outdoor contest. They arrived with visors and
sunburns and the fans pressing question was, who
would win: Indoor Shirts or Outdoor Skins?
Top indoor pro Steve Keeley arrived on a local bus
late to his match at Orange Coast and stepped onto
the court against his first-round opponent and the
three-time national wrestling champ Myron
Roderick. Roderick was already serving 3-0, and
Keeley asked for a warm up having never played the
sport. Roderick lifted him over his head like a
propeller on a beanie in a dizzying airplane spin, and
served him on the court to make the point, ‘Get to
the court on time!’
Roderick lifted him over
his head like a propeller
on a beanie in a dizzying
airplane spin, and served
him on the court to make
the point, ‘Get to the court
on time!’
The southern California
fans began lining the
sidelines.
The
other
problems in adapting to
the
outdoor
game
included no side walls to
reflect passes in deep court, no ceiling, and sunshine
instead of fluorescent lights. During the age of small
racquets and slower balls, outdoors was truly a
specialty talent. The court in those days was huge by
indoor standards, there were no side service lines
and the slower ball invited the three-wall players to
torment the pros with lobs into the sun, Z-serves off
the court, and three wall ball ‘out the door’ shots
onto a side court.
At the first 1974 Outdoor Nationals, Charlie beat
Steve Serot in the Open Division Finals. He teamed
with Muehleisen to win the doubles that year. ‘As
you know my Brumfield is one of a kind. I went into
every match with complete confidence we were
going to win. Most teams including the top pros at
the time were intimidated when we stepped on the
court, which accounts for my satisfactory
performance,’ says Muehleisen. The next year he
beat Barry Wallace in the singles final, but lost with
Muehleisen in doubles. Indoors had gone outdoors,
and while Charlie was no virgin outdoors, he had
surprised everyone. Brumfield had won the outdoor
National Singles Championships in 1974 and 1975
in his only attempts at that title. Many were shocked
to remember that he had been born to the sport on
the Mar Vista Junior High outdoor court. In addition,
there was only the sword and no shield required.
You can step over the side line and hit a forehand at
any time. Remember no side walls deep in court to
stop a righty with a strong forehand to step to his left
and put it away. When the opponent tries to play the
weakness they are playing right into the sweet spot.
The 1974 Outdoor was rough for Charlie after so
long indoors. He says, ‘The first national in ‘74 at
Orange Coast was an unbelievable test. A large
percentage of the pros lost in the first round, playing
3-wall players who looked like C-players but took
most of us down to Chinatown. I and Serot were the
best indoor-go-outdoor pros at the sport, for different
reasons. He was extremely mobile and could shoot
from sixty feet, where the four-wall player habitually
found himself. I was able to survive the draw
because I made few errors (i.e. kept the ball in the
court), and stopped the Z-serve from getting wide
when possible. The three wall god was Barry
Wallace. He was kind enough to schedule the pros
when the sun was cresting the cement front wall.
Then came the blizzard of lobs and three-wall up and
outs—Three Blind Mice.’
Indoor pro Rich Wagner competed and was in awe
of Brumfield’s outdoor prowess. ‘Charlie crossed
over to outdoor very well because he started in
diapers on outdoor and knew how to analyze the
differences in outdoor versus indoor racquetball. He
followed the angles and was able to hit the shots that
would move his opponents ‘out the door’. He also
had the ability to hit amazing overhead corner kills
from deep court, and he could hit the ball on the fly,
and even developed a front court dump shot. In
essence, Brum was able to implement the ‘Tour of
the Court’ four-wall strategy into the outdoor game.’
During the next year, the 1975 National was a
similar performance on wide, hot courts except
Charlie defeated Barry Wallace in the final. ‘My
opponents often played without shirts to try to stay
cool. I was accurate and willing enough to take
advantage of that fault.’
Veteran player, Jim Spittle, who watched him in
1975 observes, ‘He ran his challengers ragged from
side-to-side and somehow hit inches from the
sideline without hitting the ball out. When the
opponent was in the front court, he punished them
with nearly perfect lobs into the sun. With the small
fiberglass racquets and He ran his challengers
slow balls he couldn’t ragged from side to side
rely on tricky serves like and somehow hit inches
today’s outdoor players. from the sideline without
hitting the ball out.
He didn’t get free points
on cheap aces on a wide court, but he gave free
points to an exhausted opponent at the right moment
by hitting it out.’
Marty Hogan has described Brumfield as ‘the best
outdoor player ever to play the game.’ Charlie won
both the singles and doubles titles at the 1974 and
1975 Outdoor Racquetball Nationals teaming with
trusted partners Muehleisen in 1974 and Wallace in
1975. Brumfield would never again play the outdoor
events leaving him unbeaten outdoors. Brumfield
and Hogan are the only players to ever win the
Triple Crown of singles championships in indoor
racquetball, outdoor racquetball, and paddleball.
Brumfield also won the triple crown of doubles
championships, a feat unlikely to be repeated.
, '& Charlie’s game was indoors when racquetball went pro in
1973, with an increased action and heat born of the feminine
influence. Southern California was the early women’s
racquetball hotbed. Sex happened, which set the pace for
racquet and health facility development that sped across the
nation.
Women interested in racquetball filled their courts,
so the industry responded by constructing thousands
of fresh racquet and fitness centers in the US and
then the world! Rock, Hollywood, and political
chiefs smiled at you from glossy covers, while
holding wine glasses and racquets in poor grips, as
Brumfield and I sweated it out in dozens of wellattended contests at grand openings, exhibitions, and
tournament finals. The game went glitz.
It is easily said it all
started with the belly
dancer. Brumfield won
her annual hug with his
trophy at the Queen Mary
tournaments in Long
Beach throughout the 70s. Stephanie Cordimas
jiggled in an exhibition before the finals, usually
between Brum and me, and was herself an entrant in
the Queen Mary. In ’75, she won her first round with
ex-Olympic gold medal winning diver, Pat
McCormick, before being ousted. Brumfield used a
sword and shield of sharp forehand and defensive
backhand, and with each ensuing tournament came a
stateroom for the King of Racquetball on the Queen
… as Brumfield and I
sweated it out in dozens
of contests at grand
openings, exhibitions, and
tournament finals. The
game went glitz.
5: Glitz
Mary docked off Long Beach. The rest of the best
occupied space in the hold.
The Playboy Doubles Invitational was another
sensuous perennial in Century City. The tournament
offered little purses and a bevy of pretty girls in long
ears strolling about the club before all-night parties.
Brumfield fondly recalls the first Playboy
Invitational. ‘I have the group picture with my arm
around the playmate at home along with the
champion trophy. Ah!’ says Brumfield, ‘the good
old days.’
In
1977
Davey
Bledsoe
shocked the
racquetball
world
by
drubbing
Marty
Hogan
at
the
San
Diego Atlas
Nationals.
The
6’1”
wiry athlete
his
fans
called ‘The Golden Retriever’ for his curly blond
hair and fiery footwork had inroads with Playboy
too, and nearly eclipsed Brumfield’s spotlight. ‘We
put together a bigger deal with Playboy than Century
5: Glitz
City. We signed the contracts with all parties for 10
pro stops at $50k per stop with one national
championship at $100k. I wanted the girls in the
stops, but the sponsors didn’t. Christy Hefner
wouldn’t sign with no girls in, so the tour aborted.’
I was also in Charlie’s shadow during the racquetball
sexual revolution, except one time. In 1973, Leach
Industries wanted a cover shot for the annual catalog
to really attract attention. Pro player and shutterbug,
Mike Zeitman, was called to photograph it with his
wife, who by his own admission had, ‘The best
heinie to stop a racquetball match.’ One morning, I
was summoned from the Leach factory to a local
outdoor court for the shoot. Mike’s wife arrived, and
stepped out of her underwear on the court, and into a
small Leach T-shirt. She wrapped her arms tightly
around and gave me a big hug, with her best asset
toward the camera. At the click, Leach president
Charlie Drake drove up in the company van and out
jumped with his six-year old daughter. She skipped
to the court and slipped out of her underpants where
she hugged the pro holding a 3’ trophy in the other
hand for the greatest rear end collision with a camera
lens in history which became the most popular cover
at the peak of the sport.
5: Glitz
In 1975, racquetball ‘went Hollywood,’ and the top
four pros in order were: Brumfield, Keeley,
Strandemo, and Serot. These four players were
invited by Voit to act in racquetball’s first big time
racquetball production for their new ball called the
Rollout. The video opens in Hollywood with
Brumfield answering a phone in an attorney’s office
with a snappy, ‘Brumfield!’ ‘I’m busy.’ as he
slammed the phone down. It was the only ad-lib of
the movie. Later Serot forgot his lines in the shower,
Strandemo kept fussing with his hair during our
lunchtime doubles match, and I missed a behind-theback shot right before the rolling camera. It took
three days in different locations around LA to make
5: Glitz
the six minute film, with the director shouting during
each from a high-chair, ‘Get the talent on the ball!’
It’s interesting to see the smaller racquets, slower
balls, and the 70s clothing in the movie. At the end
of the clip, as the credits roll, a rain of hundreds of
Voit Rollout blues pours onto the court and players
for their match point. Cut, it’s a take.
The balls livened going into the late-70s, and
Charlie’s chess-like strategy of pushing his opponent
around the court like a pawn after the just-out-ofreach slow ball demanded a change… or else. It was
all about the ball, he knew from long experience. His
first schoolyard ball in Junior High in 1962 had been
the ‘Pinkie’, or on the East coast called the
‘Spaldeen’ for Spalding in stickball and outdoor
handball. His next ball was one of the first out-ofthe-mold black pressurized Seamcos in the package
with racquets that Muehleisen sent to MSU for the
summer play of ’71. That ball hit like black mush
until we ‘doctored’ it with 3cc of air via a veterinary
needle and syringe. In the early 70s, tournament
game balls were routinely baked before matches for
twenty minutes in the saunas, or, lacking them, the
tournament directors plunged them into scalding hot
water for five minutes. Players, who enjoyed
especially fast games, kept syringes in their gym
bags to pump the balls on the sly, while those
preferring slow ones secreted a razor blade in their
shoe tongues to slice the balls while kneeling to tie
their shoes during a timeout.
5: Glitz
In ‘74, it was the opposite, and the over-pressurized
balls began to break at alarming rates. Hundreds of
thousands prematurely bit the dust across the country
and, if the Logo was still
intact, Seamco replaced I saw the most perfect
killshot ever hit when Bud
them at great expense. Muehleisen wound up his
Hard hitters (100mph) famous signature Ektelon
Steve Serot and Mike forehand for a booming
Zeitman split a record 10 shot that split the ball in
balls in their three-game exact halves.
Detroit match. In another instance over at the PPA, I
saw the most perfect killshot ever hit when Bud
Muehleisen wound up his famous signature Ektelon
forehand for a booming shot that split the ball in
exact halves, sailing over the service box, where
each half rolled off in the respective front corners.
Dr. Bud blew on his racquet handle and announced,
‘Two points, babe.’
Out of this a peculiar thing resulted. The early,
lanky, string bean champs with sweeping broom
strokes like Brumfield, Schmidtke, Muehleisen, and
I began to grudgingly yield to the fireplugs with
power swings like Hogan, Mike Yellen and Dave
Peck. The incoming crew adapted by gripping longer
racquets lower on the handles, contacting the ball
deep in the stroke off the rear foot, and with a snap
like Zorro.
The 1975 season saw a fresh batch of thousands of
the tour sponsor Seamco balls that were as out of
round as the planet earth. The lopped balls were
5: Glitz
quickly blinked off that year when the first green
superballs came bouncing out the cans. It was then
that Marty Hogan’s scorching kills with the 18’’
small head racquet were clocked at 142 MPH before
his Burlington first pro win. The slow game was
definitely out, and Power Racquetball was soon seen
and heard in every court across the nation. The Big
Game, like tennis, was born with aces and kills in 24 shot scrambling rallies that emphasized the
physical and mitigated the mental. Charlie was still
King, but his days were numbered… unless he
adjusted.
In the in mid-70s Challenge of the Racquets Charlie
drew the cool Björn Borg, an odds-on favorite. John
McEnroe and Jimmy Conners believed Björn had
nerves of ice, nothing could rattle him. At four-four
in their squash match, Björn hit a shot and took
center court, unmoving. Brumfield wound up with
one of the hardest hit forehands of his career into the
crack, in the small of the back of Borg. Björn looked
around in astonishment, and Charlie yelled, ‘Get the
fuck out of the way! I’m here because I need the
money, and I’m going to win!’ When that happened
Borg couldn’t compete with Brumfield any more in
squash, and then lost to him in badminton.
Charlie also found secret solutions in laboratories
like Dr. Frankenstein in a penchant for his ‘science
experiments’ of racquetball. They can involve a
novel way of gripping the racket, or a variation on
footwork, or an unusual modification of a racquet,
5: Glitz
and so forth. Each of these science experiments often
takes weeks or months, but when he has learned
what he wants from them he may go on to the next
experiment and never look back
Charlie also found
at
that
variation
again. secret solutions in
Suddenly, he’d come out with a laboratories like
new shot or variation that Dr. Frankenstein.
mystified the field for a few
months before they learned a counter, and then he’d
sequester again for the next science experiment. This
was a cycle I observed for years dating from our
summer of ’71 together when he invented the ceiling
game. In all the forty-five years, I’ve never seen him
practice once; it was always in secret either in the
early morning, at night, or at the private PPA.
In 1974, he had not won a national singles or
doubles indoor title for the first time in his career. In
1975, he emerged from his science chamber with a
magic wand and a new wave to dominate us all
again. The exact adaptations were an ingenious jam
drive that reflected the lively ball off the side wall so
sharply into the defenders unprepared backhand that
he was forced to step back or get ‘handcuffed’ by the
shot. When that happened, like a boxer following a
forced opening, Brum went in for the kill. He began
a relentless campaign back to the top of the ranks,
and in 1975, captured the IRA/IPRO National
Singles, NRC Pro National Singles, and IRA
National Doubles Championship with Craig McCoy.
5: Glitz
He brought out that year a secret weapon that few
saw until it was too late. This was the nefarious
ingenuity of Charlie. He used it primarily against
early round opponents on back courts while the other
pros were involved in their own matches, or in the
final, after all the pros except he and the other
finalist had gone home. Even then, it was applied
only to a crucial point so it wouldn’t be memorized
and talked up. Then, suddenly, crack, it came out of
nowhere to win the game. The famous Loveday
Crack Ace! I was beating Charlie in the Miami stop
final that year when he hit three Loveday crack aces
in sequence to take the game, match, and
tournament. It was the most embarrassing defeat of
my career, and I would prefer to leave it at that.
The Loveday crack ace is the only serve that is
officially ‘good’, yet never really puts the ball into
play. It rebounds off the front wall, and squeezes
into the sidewall crack next to the floor just behind
the short line, trickling out without a bounce. It is the
Ego consumer, a serve that screams at opponents,
‘You are powerless!,’ and Chas had the sense to hit
it at just the right moment. Brumfield had tailored
the crack ace to the fitting angle and true spin to
make it irretrievable unless one stood on top the
service line. And he had practiced it to a perfection
of 8:10, where one in ten yielded a weak return, and
one other in ten equalized the players.
There was another King in racquetball in the mid70s. Elvis walloped the ball around the court like he
5: Glitz
was strumming a guitar for the fun of it. He looked
like he was on stage except with the racquet, the
moves in the court comparable to his moves on
stage, and to work the audience with his physical
performance. His guitar became more of a prop, and
so did his racquet.
Elvis Presley and his Memphis
Racquetball Mafia loved the sport.
E’s main contenders at Graceland
were touring pros Davey Bledsoe
(National Champion 1977), Randy
Stafford (Intercollegiate Champion and touring pro),
Steve Smith (Intercollegiate and Tennessee State
Champion 1975), Mike Zeitman (Three-times
National Doubles Champion with three different
partners), David Fleetwood (National Collegiate
Doubles Champion and never ranked out of the top
16), and Dr. Fred Lewerenz (Elvis’ sport physician
and Michigan Racquetball Hall of Fame with two
years on the pro Tour). Other members of the
racquetball group were the bodyguards Red and
Sonny West, actor Dave Hebler, harmony singer
Charlie Hodge, and road manager Joe Esposito.
Linda Thompson also played.
There was
another King
in racquetball
in the mid-70s:
Elvis.
Elvis was introduced to racquetball in 1968 by his
physician, Dr. Frederick Nichopolos, who told me, ‘I
started playing racquetball in 1955 at the Nashville
JCC by sawing off the handle of a tennis racquet.
That is just five years after Joe Sobek is credited
with inventing racquetball in Connecticut. I showed
5: Glitz
Paddle Rackets, as we called it, to young players
with ambition and talent, and then in the mid-60s
moved the game with my medical practice to
Memphis, and was still looking for young talent to
coach.’ Dr. Nick also taught his son Dean to play,
who soon teamed with a young Marty Hogan in a
Junior National Doubles. Dr. Nick began treating
Presley in 1967 for ‘saddle pain’, and a year later
prescribed racquetball. That blossomed into a
lifelong friendship lasting thousands of racquetball
games.
Elvis wore white tennis shoes, shorts, and his safety
goggles which were huge because Dr. Nick didn’t
want anything to happen to his eyes. His headband
was white and he always wore a glove. He played
daily, or nightly before heading out into the
darkened Memphis streets on motorcycles with the
bodyguards and the Racquetball Mafia in sidecars to
movies and nightclubs. ‘The week before going on
music tour, E wore a tight rubber suit with tight
wrists to sweat off five pounds per racquetball
session to look good to
Elvis wore white tennis
the fans on tour,’
shoes, shorts, and his
describes Bledsoe. ‘He
safety goggles which were
huge because Dr. Nick
thought a quick weight
didn’t want anything to
loss would make him
happen to his eyes.
look better.’
He had a strong forehand as an extension of karate, a
standard club backhand, and hit the gamut of serves.
The sport was a workout and a release from the
5: Glitz
pressures of being the King of Rock and Roll. ‘To be
honest, Elvis wasn’t much of an athlete,’ Bledsoe
recalls. ‘He was very rigid. He just wanted to move
around, get him some
David Fleetwood
exercise. He’d get in the compares Elvis’ game to
court and bang the ball his own singing voice. ‘It
around. I’d try to teach was horrible! He was a
him
the
rules
or pro singer and I was a pro
orchestrate a formal player. But E loved the
sport and that’s what
match, but he wasn’t muttered.’ (sic)
much interested in that.
He did like the game though, and wound up building
a $250,000 racquetball court in back of Graceland.’
David Fleetwood compares Elvis’ game to his own
singing voice. ‘It was horrible! He was a pro singer
and I was a pro player. But E loved the sport and
that’s what muttered.’ ‘He got a couple points most
of the time,’ hints Bledsoe. ‘And once he got eight
on me to 21.’ Fleetwood says, ‘I tried to give E the
Donut (zero points), and sometimes did, but against
Linda Thompson, who cares?’ Steve Smith chimes,
Elvis loved the game like he loved gospel, just
belted it out.’
Elvis didn’t attend any tournaments outside
Graceland. ‘It would have been mayhem with the
fans,’ tells Smith. ‘We didn’t throw any tournaments
at Graceland either, just fierce competition among
the entourage and visiting pros. The best player at
Graceland after the pros went home was bodyguard
Red West who fell just short of Open play. Dr.
Lewerenz describes Red as a ‘great athlete who
5: Glitz
brought those talents to the court.’ Yet, if they
wanted to, the pros could hold any Graceland
bodyguard or musician to under five points, but
didn’t because the purposes were exercise, coaching
and fun. ‘I once challenged seven of E’s bodyguards
to one game to 21 for $100 per man,’ relates
Bledsoe. ‘It was against Red, Sonny, Dave Hebler,
and others. I played with an antifreeze bottle and
they used their racquets. I went home that morning
with $700.’
Racquetball boomed across the nation from 1975-6
as Bledsoe and the others ‘ran’ with Elvis at
Graceland, and riding the night streets of Memphis
on motorcycles with sidecars. Memphis was the
second racquetball capital (after San Diego) of
America. Dr. Nick knew Jerry Lee Lewis and got his
DC-3 14-seat plane to fly the Racquetball Mafia to
the Atlanta Southern Regional. The group included
Nick and his son Dean, Stafford, Bledsoe, Zeitman,
Smith, Steve’s brother Stuart, Jack Fulton, Gary
Stephans, Larry Lyles, IRA President Bill Tanner,
and pros Sarah Green and Steve Strandemo. ‘Elvis
didn’t go because he was mobbed wherever he went
outside Graceland, and besides, the tough old geezer
Colonel Parker wouldn’t let him out to play in
tournaments,’ amends Fleetwood. Randy Stafford
remembers, ‘Our plane was an old DC-3 with twin
engines, and the interior had captain’s chairs and
couches around. It sat about 14. Under the center
table used for drinks was an 8-track tape player that
was huge, and next to it a file of 8-track tapes. All of
5: Glitz
them were Jerry Lee Lewis tapes, and we partied to
his songs all the way to Atlanta.’ Zeitman agrees that
it was a unique way to travel to a Regional, and that
the old DC-3 could have been the same Jerry Lee
Lewis 14-seat DC-3 that, in 1985, Ricky Nelson’s
pilot radioed again, ‘Smoke in the cockpit!’ Then the
plane disappeared from radar. The DC-3, previously
owned by notorious widow-maker, Jerry Lee Lewis,
crashed, killing Nelson and the entire band.
The ‘star’ pro with the
most access to Elvis
Presley was his wardrobe
manager and Tennessee
State
racquetball
champion Steve Smith.
Steve had grown up best friends and playing
racquetball with Dr. Nick’s son Dean. Steve had
seen me pull up to a Tanner IPro Memphis stop in
1975. ‘You were in an old van with a beat up bicycle
strapped to the back that you rode to the tournament
instead of driving like everyone else.’ I recall Steve
as slight and as quick as a deer, always a threat to
upset me by his pure athleticism. Brumfield too had
played the smooth Southern mover ‘without a
backhand.’ Following one of their matches, Brum
quickly corrected the backhand, if not by Christian
charity then by rubbing salt in the wound. ‘After the
match,’ continues Smith, ‘Outside the court we made
up and were surprised to find that each of us
professed to be a golfer. ‘I don’t believe it,’ we said
at nearly the same time. Then Brumfield told me,
The DC-3, previously
owned by notorious
widow-maker, Jerry Lee
Lewis, crashed, killing
[Ricky] Nelson and the
entire band.
5: Glitz
‘Steve, all your backhand needs is to swing like it’s a
golf club. Keep your elbow close to your body, and
you’ll get control. When the elbow is tight to the
body the forearm and wrist don’t waver, and your
control increases substantially.’ It worked, and later
in the year he took #3 Steve Serot down the wire
before losing by four in a 21-point tiebreaker.
Charlie Brumfield in 1975, on the dual pro circuits,
picked up multiple national titles including the NRC
Pro Singles, IRA/IPRO Singles, IRA Doubles with
Craig McCoy, and National Outdoor Racquetball
Singles.. He toured with a dedicated contingent of
shouting, drinking Brum’s Bums, even as Elvis
maintained the equally rowdy Memphis Mafia of
bodyguards, musicians, girlfriends, and pros. The
associates were there for camaraderie and also filled
practical roles. Brumfield had a designer of signs
and monogrammed shirts, plus a wine fetcher, and E
had his bodyguards, road and stage managers, and
‘floaters’ like Steve Smith who produced whatever
was needed on the spot. In each case, after the
tournaments and music gigs ended there were
enough people to party deep into the night.
Brumfield, the King of Racquetball, and Elvis, the
King of Rock, surrounded themselves by these
supporters who truly cared for them, and the Kings
cared back.
I was Brumfield’s popular nemesis and
complimented that his Bums looked like the stinking
winos I saw on skid rows. Colonel Parker said the
5: Glitz
members of the Memphis Mafia (excluding the pros)
looked ‘like a bunch of old men.’ The Colonel
wouldn’t let the pros take pictures of Elvis, and tried
to pen him up in six-star Graceland whenever there
wasn’t a music tour. ‘Colonel Parker was sharp,
shrewd, and merciless’ accuses Smith. ‘No, he didn’t
play racquetball. If it didn’t pay, he didn’t play. Yet,
Elvis owned Parker, not the opposite.’ In one deal
reported by Bledsoe, ‘Dr. Nick, Elvis, his guitarist
Joe Esposito and I were breaking ground on Presley
Center Courts with plans to build an American chain
of clubs starting in the Southeast. There were already
a few clubs in Nashville and Memphis when Colonel
Parker made us take E’s name off of it. He had all
rights to Elvis’ name. Parker was a greedy old
bastard!’
Memphis and San Diego were the two warring
racquetball capitals during the Golden Decade, clear
across a country of crazed Elvis, Disco, and
racquetball fanatics. Racquetball was the fastest
growing sport in the
Memphis and San Diego
world.
Before
the were the two warring
Graceland court opened racquetball capitals during
in 1975, the Memphis the Golden Decade, clear
Racquetball
Mafia across a country of crazed
Disco, and
worked out at Memphis Elvis,
racquetball fanatics.
State,
the
Memphis
Athletic Club, and a single court facility that may
have been the model, as well as the impetus, for the
eventual construction of Elvis’ private court at
Graceland. For there was another man about town
5: Glitz
who was as moneyed as Elvis, with nearly as much
clout, and adored the sport of racquetball just as
much. Bill Tanner in 1975 was called ‘the most
prestigious man in Tennessee’ by the press that he
controlled. He was one of Memphis’ most prominent
businessmen and racquetball promoters who had a
court on top of his 7th story office building on Union
Avenue Extended. Elvis and his group played there
often because it was private, and Tanner would open
up at night. I was up there once on the outside
running (18-laps to a mile) track around the outer
perimeter of the top floor where the sliding glass
doors of Tanner’s office opened to a panoramic view
of Memphis, as joggers swept by. We had climbed,
each by habit, the couple hundred stairs to the top
track, and then Tanner swept his hand down across
the city offering, ‘The key to the city is yours,
Keeley, if you play ball with the Tanner team.’
William B. Tanner was the President of the
International Racquetball Association (IRA), and
had just started a competing IPro Tour that was
taking the whack out of the National Racquetball
Club (NRC) monopoly. Tanner brought me up here
to play a game, and of racquetball, and then to make
the proposition. I jumped out of the way of a jogger,
returned to face Bill, and told him point blank that I
was die-hard Leach, the opposing tour’s sponsor.
‘Come move to Memphis,’ he cajoled. ‘Play with
Randy Stafford, Bledsoe, Zeitman, Fleetwood, and
see the girls. There is nothing San Diego has that
Memphis does not except an ocean, but San Diego
5: Glitz
doesn’t have Elvis Presley.’ That wasn’t true; Marty
Hogan was my present roommate in San Diego, and
on seeing that I was squared away, Tanner went for
Hogan. ‘Well, tell your boy Hogan that the same
offer is open to him.’ So, I missed a chance to play
Elvis, but between 1974-77 I visited Memphis five
times to compete against members of the Memphis
Racquetball Mafia in the Tanner ProAm, and to visit
the Memphis media mogul Bill Tanner.
Kicking back late one night after the matches at the
Tanner Penthouse Suite, Elvis and the Racquetball
Mafia sank into a circle of cushion chairs like tennis
shoed capitalists in the large boardroom, and the
King put his feet up on the boardroom table. Steve
Smith who was there describes, ‘Elvis put his legs
and tennis shoes up on the ornate table, and someone
in the group mentioned that Tanner would not like
that, and he’d better put them down. Elvis didn’t like
rules, so he cursed a streak, and word got back to
Tanner about this.’ E hadn’t been kicked out yet.
‘But then,’ rejoins Bledsoe, ‘Elvis had this three-foot
flashlight that he used to flash at everybody… which
actually blinded you where you stood. A few nights
after the boardroom incident, Tanner was in his
private shower when E walked in and started shining
his 3'light into everyone'
s face. When he shined it
into Tanner’s face, that was it. The irrepressible
force of Elvis Presley met the irresistible object of
William Tanner, and they glowered at each other.
Bill’s face turned purple, and he kicked Elvis the
5: Glitz
hell out. Presley was banned from the building, and
the Mafia loyally stayed away with him.’
Short one court, Nick persuaded Elvis to build one
behind his house. Now, ‘Elvis had this three-foot
in 1975, when a cry went flashlight that he used to
up in the middle of the flash at everybody…
night, ‘Everybody up! which actually blinded you
where you stood.’
Let’s play racquetball!’
everyone just walked out the back door and to the
Graceland court. Dr. Fred Lewerenz describes, ‘The
racquetball building was posh. There was a viewing
lounge behind the back wall glass, weightlifting gym
on the same ground floor, and a dressing room and
Jacuzzi upstairs. Elvis liked gold, and while the
players’ dressing room had standard stainless steel
showerheads, the one in the King’s private stall was
with solid gold 360-degree swivel showerhead.’ The
only one he would allow in his private dressing area
was Linda Thompson. The pros admired that the
facility cost $250,000 to build, and for the times, it
was a premier court. Mike Zeitman describes,
‘Behind the glass wall was a sunken area with a
monster curved leather couch at the wall where you
could sit back and watch the games. Also in the
viewing area was the biggest, most expensive stereo
outfit money could buy. I'
d never seen anything so
cool.’ The action inside the four-walls was like any
other club, with a lounge with a bar outside where
people sat and drank, watched and kibitzed, until
their turn to play came up. Some of them drank
beers, but the focus was on racquetball. It was just a
5: Glitz
small club with a select group of some of the best
players and musicians in the country who all
happened to know the owner, Elvis Presley.’
‘A typical afternoon at Graceland went like this,’
takes up Steve Smith. ‘Everyone would be sitting
around the house, and one of the group would want
to motivate the rest to action, to get off our asses.
Elvis or I would jump up and shout,
Elvis or I
‘Everybody out here! We’re playing
would jump
racquetball.’ We’d play and play.
up and
We’d play for two, three hours. Elvis
shout,
‘Everybody
would laugh while he played and
out here!
have a good time just blasting the
We’re
ball. Then we’d shower up, and
playing
someone would yell, ‘Hey, let’s go to
racquetball.’
We’d play
the movies. We’d get on the
and play.
motorcycles and six or eight of us
We’d play
would ride downtown to the
for two,
Memphian or two other theaters that
three hours.
Elvis liked. It was crazy, night after
night. One evening I sat between Eric Clapton and
the King who he’d come to pay his respects to.
That’s when the movies were still reel-to-reel.’
‘How he played! He had a mind of his own. He had
a big forehand and moved around the ball to hit with
it. He liked the intensity of being in four walls for
sport. He let go, and could have a blast,’ observes
Smith. ‘In the early 70s, Elvis used the Ektelon
Muehleisen racquet because it was the best at the
time, and the connection was that Dr. Muehleisen
5: Glitz
had given Dean Nichopolos racquetball lessons.
Elvis could hit with the Muehleisen model. It wasn’t
until about 1974 that Charlie Drake at Leach sent
him a green Leach Serot and a pair of sweats with
Elvis’ name embroidered across the back, and from
then on, he used the Serot model. He was in good
shape, but got on the court in the Leach sweats or a
rubber suit to sweat off about five pounds a workout
for his fans on tour. Davey Bledsoe was the player
rep for Leach at the time, and Drake had told him,
‘Anything Elvis wants, he gets.’ Elvis was playing
his best racquetball from 1974-6 when the pros were
stopping by, and he was enjoying the game nearly
daily when we didn’t leave for two week music
tours.’
On June 11, Davey Bledsoe shocked the racquetball
world and especially Marty Hogan by defeating him
in the final of the Leach/Seamco National
Championship in San Diego by scores of 21-20, and
21-19. The day before he had edged by me in the
quarters, and afterwards in the locker room, came
over to console me, putting his thumb on my temple
and uttering, “My Daddy did this when I was a
young man, and he spoke, ‘One day you’re going to
be a champion.’” The Bledsoe victory is recognized
as one of the most unexpected results in racquetball
history. Two weeks later, on June 26, 1977, Elvis
gave his last concert at Market Square in
Indianapolis, IN, for a crowd of 18,000. Back on the
Graceland racquetball court, Elvis appeared pale,
weak and overweight, but there was nothing to
5: Glitz
suggest impending death. Indeed, there was nothing
unusual in his verve once he took to the stage or
court. ‘He looked gray in 1976, is all,‘ portrays Dave
Fleetwood.
What follows is the untold story of the death of Elvis
Presley… and of the Racquetball Mafia. Graceland
was shut down very quickly. The court wasn’t used
again after the Mafia left, and it was converted to a
trophy room. Hundreds of thousands of tourists per
year travel to stand in the last place Elvis Presley
stood in the Graceland court that is now the trophy
room, with the walls of the court covered with
platinum and gold records, and with the Steve Serot
racquet on display under glass next to an old blue
ball. Elvis died in the racquetball building, not the
mansion upstairs bathroom. You probably know that
Elvis loved gospel music, peanut butter and banana
sandwiches and karate, but did you know The King
loved racquetball to death!
You will never, as far as I know, see another story
about Elvis in racquetball, or about the Memphis
Racquetball Mafia. This is because, although it was
the time of glitz racquetball, when other Hollywood,
rock, and political stars made the monthly covers of
the only publication, National Racquetball, in the
chess game for political control of the burgeoning
players, the Chicago based NRC (and close tie with
San Diego Leach) put an embargo on Elvis. NRC
Executive Director Chuck Leve explains, ‘Elvis was
Memphis and Memphis was Tanner and IRA, and
5: Glitz
well, you know the story...So we chose to pretty
much ignore Elvis, although I thought whoever did
the ‘damage control’ when he died on the court was
brilliant. Elvis never was covered in the NRC
magazine because the time when racquetball ‘went
Hollywood’ Elvis would have been prime material
for our magazine, however the National Racquetball
Club owner Bob Kendler sensed Elvis was in the
Tanner Memphis camp which was opposing our
NRC pro tour with a tour of their own, so while
Batman, Lana Wood, and Governor Thompson of
Illinois got coverage, Elvis in racquetball remains a
secret.’
Bobby Fischer also played racquetball. It is little
known that the world-wide search for Bobby Fischer
ended on a racquetball court. In 1971, Bobby had
become the first official
It is little known that the
Chess
Federation world-wide search for
number-one rated chess Bobby Fischer ended on a
player in world. He spent racquetball court.
54 total months at
number one, and in 1972, he captured the World
Championship from USSR’s Boris Spassky. In 1975,
Fischer declined to defend his title when he could
not reach agreement with FIDE over the conditions
for the match. He became more reclusive during the
man hunt and did not play competitive chess again
until 1992. However, he played racquetball. There
was a religious college affiliated with the World
Church of God tucked in a three block square
campus of very expensive property in the wealthiest
5: Glitz
of districts in Pasadena. They had a beautiful, very
private Racquetball complex of three courts with a
plush upstairs lounge. ‘I was asked to come up, give
a little clinic, play a little doubles with them, and
then go to dinner,’ relates Dr. Bud Muehleisen. At
the time, in the late 70s, Bobby Fischer was World
Chess Champion and had ‘disappeared’ in the world.
Here comes the 4th player, and they introduce me to
Fischer as my partner. He was a total recluse at the
time and holed up secretly at the college and had
taken up racquetball. He was a C player, about like
my chess game. After the match, everyone went
upstairs to the lounge and started drinking tap beer
and munching on pretzels around a gorgeous chess
set on the table with the pretzels in between them.
Fischer had a tiny portable chess set in the lapel
pocket of his coat jacket. It was quite obvious that he
was not there to take part in the conversation, be it
racquetball or anything else, so I asked, ‘What’s that
little portable chess set in your lapel pocket?’
Fischer took the time to take the chess set out, and
mater of factly explain how it was played and
utilized. His general countenance was what I would
imagine sitting across from Albert Einstein who
wouldn’t need to speak a word for his brilliance to
show. There was a knock at the lounge door and it
opened. There stood the LA player with the crazy
helicopter swing in Opens. In those days he did a lot
of racquetball promoting in the LA area. He sat and
soon marveled at the gorgeous chess set on the table.
‘Do you play chess?’ I asked the newcomer, who
5: Glitz
replied, ‘Oh yes, I not only play, but I’m currently
the faculty champion at UCLA.’ A hush, and a
hustle was arranged. After a blitz loss for words, the
red-faced learner was introduced to Bobby Fischer.
As Fischer rose, he nodded back, and his lanky
frame disappeared through the door, and again he
was searched for, for many years to come.’
The mainstream pros of
Small Head racquetball
dipped into the New Age
techniques of the 70s like
TM, floatation chambers,
endless
loop
tapes,
Ektelon and Leach sports
psychologists, power of positive thinking, and at a
few tournaments, you could see players silently
mouth a mantra like ‘Mickey Mouse’ before a tough
shot or serve. Brumfield favored the power of ‘ABCAlways Believe Carl.’ He always carried a Loveday
autograph paddle or racquet, and the only time I ever
saw him overly nervous at a match is when someone
snooped in his gym bag and touched his Loveday
model. It was always signed on the handle, even in
Loveday’s death. The secret power lay dormant for
hundreds of thousands of shots for months or years
until a time, a time usually of rage in a losing
situation, when Charlie calls a timeout, and reaches
deep into the bag for the racquet. Slowly, he used to
unwind the grip. As each letter appeared, he calmed,
and read between the lines in his ABC’s a comeback
The mainstream pros of
Small Head racquetball
dipped into the New Age
techniques of the 70s like
TM, floatation chambers,
endless loop tapes,
Ektelon and Leach sports
psychologists…
5: Glitz
plot on the spot, and he rose barehanded on the
handle often to recover and triumph.
The age of glitz dead-ended into the decade of the
80s. The cheers for Brumfield rebounded against
thousands of walls around the world, assuring he
who was the King, with an IQ as high as Fischer’s,
that he was the greatest show on earth.
.
/
' &
!
‘What was the best racquetball match of the 70s?’ someone
asked. The answer: ‘Every match I saw Charlie Brumfield play
in.’
The Golden Era of racquetball is defined as
beginning with the 1971 National Singles
Invitational that Charlie won, and lasting through his
Killer Dog title match with Marty Hogan in 1978. It
is also King Brumfield’s reign which coincided with
the greatest number of millions of players, when the
pro field was the crème de la crème, and even the
regional tournaments ran deep and strong. Local
tournament draw sheets lined the walls from lobbies
to locker rooms with upward of a thousand entries.
This is a rundown of a representative handful of the
major and most interesting events of the Golden Era,
aka Age of Small Heads, from 1971-1978, and they
all involve Brumfield.
After winning the first I defeated him in the final
1971 National Singles at the first Gorham’s
Invitational
in
San Christmas Classic wearing
Diego, I defeated him in one red and one green
Converse tennis shoe.
the final at the first
Gorham’s Christmas Classic wearing one red and
one green Converse tennis shoe. I had the first
apparel contract in the country, and part of the deal
was to parade the ‘Chucks’ at various holiday
tournaments; another pair was a brown and yellow at
the Halloween Spook-out. When Charlie lost it, the
standard retreat was into seclusion with coaches
6: The Golden Era
Muehleisen and Loveday. They tinkered with shots
and formulated new strategies as the equipment
evolved to help keep Brum on top. Soon after the
Christmas loss, he blasted back into the court with
an overhead killshot from the back wall—straight in,
pinch, down-the-line or cross-court—to profit his
ceiling barrage. No longer could a rival rest on his
heels awaiting another ceiling shot; he had to study
the stroke in motion that was cleverly disguised, and
often being unable to guess correctly, was then
forced to lean forward and backward at once. It was
Loveday’s overhead shot, a gift from world class
badminton, that Charlie drilled relentlessly before
using prudently in the field. The Loveday overhead
kill became a staple in the 1970s pro racquetball, and
even today mouths go agape when a ball shot from
9’ feet above the floor trickles out one of the front
corners.
The following year in 1972, Charlie Brumfield
captured his first IRA National Singles title, and
with Bud Muehleisen won the IRA National
Invitational Doubles. This Brumfield was the
recipient of the Seamco Ring for winning the first
1972 Seamco National Racquetball Championship.
Muehleisen, a southpaw with multiple singles and
doubles titles in paddleball and racquetball before
Brumfield’s game matured with his help, would
remain his partner, rival and confidant throughout
life. A trend of ‘shared championship phenomena’ of
dual paddleball and racquetball titles was just
starting that would continue throughout the decade.
6: The Golden Era
The winners of the first ten national racquetball
tournaments all started as paddleball players. The
1968 first Paddle Racket champion was Bill Schultz
a Wisconsin paddleball player; 1969, Open
Racquetball winner Bud Muehleisen a San Diego
paddleball player; 1970, Craig Finger from
Michigan paddleball; 1971, Bill Schmidtke of
6: The Golden Era
Wisconsin paddleball; 1972, Charlie Brumfield of
San Diego paddleball; 1973, Brumfield again; 1974,
Schmidtke; 1975, Brumfield; 1976 Brumfield; 1977,
Davey Bledsoe of Knoxville paddleball. Also, the
first two professional National Racquetball Runnersup started in paddleball with 1973, Steve Serot a St.
Louis paddleball player; and 1974, Steve Keeley
from Michigan paddleball. The conclusion is that not
only was paddleball racquetball’s older ‘ugly sister’,
but that if one starts, or at least cross-trained at
paddleball, the championship racquetball courts
draw nearer.
1972 was a great year for Charlie, and a good one
for me, across the draw, often in the finals, and
usually losing to him. The matches leading up to the
final were better than byes to stay in shape, but then
after them in the final, it was like running into a hard
wall. This year, Charlie won nearly all the small
purse tournaments that were popping up and down
the California coast, and he took the National
Singles Invitational. Our early battles of his ceiling
rally concoction vs. my Z and Around-the-World
recipe was studied by the gallery in two early
mutually exploratory matches that decided in favor
of his ceiling game, as he learned to step up and
volley my favored return. I was forced to the ceiling
with him. To prevail, this year I created the
‘Offensive Theory of Play’ that encouraged players
to always take the most attacking shot. It forecast
racquetball strategy as the ball enlivened to embrace
it. In another theory, I expounded ‘Positional Shots’
6: The Golden Era
of
repeating
the same shots
form invisible
X’s on the
court despite
the opponent’s
position. I felt
and
proved
against all but
Brumfield that
a
strong
consistent
attack
in
getting on and
off the court as
quickly
as
possible turns
into
more
finals finishes.
I
became
racquetball’s first freelance author in Racquetball
and International Racquetball magazines with
hundreds of tutorials, and Keeleyisms of racquetball
vernacular that were actually mined from the
Brumfield enormous wit. Yet on the court he dusted
me in the 1972 National semi-finals, after I’d
defeated two former champions at Memphis.
1973 was bigger and better for racquetball and for
Brumfield than even the previous year. According to
manufacturers’ estimates, there were 200,000
players in the US that year Charlie passed the
6: The Golden Era
California bar to practice law. The inaugural NRC
professional tour commenced which drew him out of
attorney work and me out of veterinary medicine.
Brumfield prudently chose racquetball after strict
cross-examination from his parents. ‘Why should I
practice law?’ he replied, ‘when few attorneys make
what I’m making.’ Most of his early income which
came from promotions and endorsements could only
go up. He won the 1973 IRA National Singles, IRA
National Doubles with Steve Serot, and the IRA
National Invitational Doubles with Bud Muehleisen.
The 1973 Nationals in St. Louis are a hallmark in
racquetball. Marty Hogan is proud to share a few
moments he remembers as ‘The Holder’ strolls in his
Leach
sweats
into
The 1973 Nationals in St.
Marty’s home JCC club Louis are a hallmark in
when he was backhand- racquetball. Marty Hogan
is proud to share a few
less at fifteen.
moments he remembers
‘He looked like a as ‘The Holder’ strolls in
racquetball God straight his Leach sweats…
out of Ace Magazine.’
Charlie appeared of less stature to me, but
nonetheless defeated me for the championship.
Brumfield considers, “After I advised you before the
singles finals, ‘No one remembers second place,’
Serot and I followed by defeating Hilecher and
Wong for the doubles crown. I am very proud of
having won dual titles in paddleball and racquetball
when the singles and doubles were conducted at the
same time. It was very difficult to do in that time
6: The Golden Era
when my singles opponents are resting while I’m
playing a number of doubles matches.” In 1973, he
won the IRA National Singles, IRA National
Doubles Champion with Steve Serot, and IRA
National Invitational Doubles Champion with Bud
Muehleisen.
The inaugural pro tour kicked off in 1973 sponsored
by Seamco and silently by Leach. Brumfield was a
slow starter, and Steve Serot won the first event, and
then at the second Long Beach ProAm I defeated
Brum in the final. Charlie retreated, adjusted, and
came out shooting in the second half of the season to
finish #1 on the NRC tour with Serot #2 and me #3.
I could see the players, and the key men in the
factories, plus the tournament directors were
growing dollar signs in their eyes. Something new
was in the air about racquetball. Soon, in 1974, the
announcement rang out, up and down the halls, and
into the courts that a second pro tour was underway.
The IRA organized its first professional tournament,
a year behind the fledgling NRC. If there can be a
second tour, we thought, perhaps a third will
follow… and many of the pros intensified their
practices with priority over jobs, alcohol and drugs,
dates and their families. The new IRA tour did well,
especially around racquetball boom town Memphis,
but the prestigious NRC tour jammed every draw
with the Leach stable while Seamco; the official ball,
paid a dollar royalty to NRC for every dozen balls
6: The Golden Era
sold, in exchange for advertising and being the
official ball of the NRC and USRA.
Leach Industries took a giant step in racquetball
history this same year in sending president Charley
Drake, the plant foreman Ray Bayer, and me with a
4-foot demo racquet, to Taiwan to meet Mr. Kunnan
of Kunnan Industry, the largest manufacturer of
squash and racquetball racquets in the world. This
was oddly possible because Bob Drake, Charlie’s
younger brother, was on LDS mission to Taiwan at
the time, and was the only round table translator. In
one day, and a long night at the nightclubs, KunnanLeach was forged, which later became Pro-Kennex.
Back stateside this year, I won the Canadian
Racquetball Singles Title and Doubles with Bud
Muehleisen, and my third paddleball National
Singles Championship. On another day that year,
inside the Leach Kearny Villa bastion, Brumfield,
Charley Drake and I organized and became part
owners of National Racquetball Clinics (NRC to
cloud the acronyms) to promote our instruction.
Charlie continued his winning ways, and I, on the
losing end, began running hundreds of clinics,
camps, grand openings and exhibitions across the
country and into Mexico, Central and South
America, to eventually become the sport’s leading
instructor. It was lucrative only for the times. There
was always a full pocket exchange for lessons that
ranged from waitress tips, to organic vegetables
from the student’s garden, and at one time or
another, I traded my racquetball secrets for medical,
6: The Golden Era
dental, ophthalmic, accounting, drum lessons, direct
marketing company tours like Garden Way, a palate
of cardboard boxes, 100 lbs. of granola, and about
500 lbs. of Purina Dog Chow for my Dobermans
Corn and Flake. However, it was becoming more
apparent year by year that the big money was in
endorsements, which came hand in hand with
finishing in the top three on the pro tour. At the end
of this season, Brumfield ranked #1, Keeley #2, and
Strandemo #3.
In 1974, Sports Illustrated, for the first time sent a
full contingent of reporters and photographers to the
IRA Nationals in San Diego and covered it in a
colorful feature titled ‘The Game plan is to avoid
getting waffle faced.’ Brumfield in a fury, after
speed reading a poem I’d written, ‘Charlie Mighty
Brumfield’ after the fashion of ‘Mighty Casey’ who
struck out, was about to face Schmidtke in the semis.
Posted to draw the crowd’s attention away from him
and psych out Brumfield in the locker rooms and
along the halls next to the draw sheets, the poem
became worryingly prophetic. Three hours into the
grueling slugfest the score evened at 18-18 ‘With but
two points more to play.’ Schmidtke scored three to
win 21-19, one point off the ballad’s tiebreaker
prediction. Yet, even from the cheap seats,
racquetball was on the verge of a sport explosion
like no other, and Brumfield rode it on the crest.
Rising star David Fleetwood depicts, ‘I, like the next
1,000,000 players, immediately became hooked, and
as a kid I could not wait to receive my IRA
6: The Golden Era
magazine and read about the game in SI. I wanted to
read what the true superstar of the sport was doing—
Charlie Brumfield. There were other stars but there
was only one Brum.’
We, the top three in the world were lambasted by the
magazine: ‘Brumfield, a bearded, bespectacled,
silver-tongued San Diego
I drove my Chevy van that
attorney whose belief it had become the Leach
was that nobody would team bus with the 7’
beat him ‘unless they stuffed rabbit in the
pull down my pants.’ passenger seat, with an
invisible fishline attached
‘Steve Serot, the 18-year- to his hand waving down
old wonder boy of the fans…
game playing for,’ as he
said, ‘all left-handed Jews everywhere.’ ‘Blond and
beautiful Steve Keeley, a lapsed veterinarian who
lives alternately in a garage with tie-dyed sheets for
walls and in a van with ‘worse freaked-out grubs
than me, by far.’ In the final, Serot took it to the wire
vs. Bill Schmidtke who pulled it off in the tiebreaker
and waved his Ektelon XL Schmidtke racquet and a
painter’s hat, and said he would most likely, ‘get me
a case of Coors and pass out.’
He had one more loss that year at my hand. I drove
my Chevy van that had become the Leach team bus
with the 7’ stuffed rabbit in the passenger seat, with
an invisible fishline attached to his hand waving
down fans to combat the obnoxious Brum’s Bums.
The full bus and rabbit arrived in Dallas for the most
bizarre racquetball event of the 20th century. It took
6: The Golden Era
place at the Ray and Clare Stern Health & Racquet
Club. The Greatest Racquetball Show on Earth was a
three-ring circus, and in first ring was Lana Wood.
Lana was a famous American actress and producer,
and is the younger sister of Natalie Wood. She
appeared in the April 1971 Playboy issue, along with
her poetry, and the publicity was a major reason for
her being asked alongside other celebrities who
played racquetball at the tournament. All I wanted
out of the tournament was to be paired in doubles
with Batman, the only hero without superpowers,
certainly, but he became Brumfield’s Robin.
Because of that, I won in vengeance the pro division
by defeating Bill Schmidtke in quarters, Strandemo
in semis, and won war with Serot in finals to win
Dallas.
Mighty Charlie was down but not out. Brumfield
had
won
back-to-back
national
singles
championships in 1972 and 1973 (winning 20
consecutive tournaments), and would again in 1975
and 1976. He continued playing world class
racquetball for the next 10 years. However, the
official ball became much faster in the latter part of
the 70s, and this did not suit his game style.
Brumfield'
s early contemporary, the later World
Champion and Hall of Fame Jerry ‘The Shadow’
Hilecher, said, ‘With a slower ball, I don'
t think
anyone in the world would have been able to
compete at his level. With a fast ball, he would be
one of many close to the top.'Despite not winning
6: The Golden Era
the Nationals in 1974, Charlie finished #1 at the end
of the NRC pro tour, and I was #2.
When the 1975 season rolled around, I was living
with Bud Muehleisen and sharing his old and my
new secrets of the sport. The rumor of television
coming to pro ball was in the air and, thinking it
would mean a slow ball to my advantage, I trained
with a daily six hour grind of games and practice,
running, bicycling and weights. One night, Muehl
arose in the only fit of temper that I’ve witnessed in
the White Knights career to chew me out for banging
barbells around in the back yard at 1am. He had to
rise to go to his dental practice in four hours. ‘And
now,’ he concluded, ‘I’m going to go back to bed
and count backward from 10, 9… and before 5, I’ll
be asleep.’ He had taught me patience, and how to
teach racquetball, and had gotten me the first pro
teaching job in the country at George Brown’s on
76th Street, San Diego. In return, he absorbed the
lesson of the volley return of the serve from me.
There was a money tournament somewhere nearly
every weekend that year, and the sixteen pros, who
more or less had their expenses picked up by Leach
or Ektelon, traveled the country on the companies’
tab to ‘steal’ the purses in smaller prize tournaments
from unsponsored players, who happily aspired to
beat them and climb the ranks to better seeds.
Throughout the 1975 season, Charlie Brumfield
refined the enfant terrible protagonist while I the
agnostic antagonist became the first recipient of the
6: The Golden Era
Most Christian Player of the Year award presented
by a player named Bobby Bible.
Charlie became all the more dedicated to learning
the sorcery behind the faster ball, as I became more
free spirited. During his year I walked 40 miles from
San Diego Gorham’s
I rode a Peugeot PX-10
bicycle from San Diego to
Sports
Center
to
St. Louis to compete in
Gorham’s Oceanside to
the nationals, lost to Craig
teach a lesson. Charlie
McCoy in the quarters, so
then got on the bike and
estimated that I lost one
continued a total of 2400
IQ point for every mile
miles to Lansing, MI.
that I ran daily on the
beach from Crystal Pier for seven miles to the Ocean
Beach jetty. I rode a Peugeot PX-10 bicycle from
San Diego to St. Louis to compete in the nationals,
lost to Craig McCoy in the quarters, so then got on
the bike and continued a total of 2400 miles to
Lansing, MI to visit my family. Marty Hogan,
Leonard Baldori, the Debby ‘Bionic’ Ravens,
Olympic wrestler Don Behm and I returned to San
Diego in a ‘58 Caddie with a ‘suicide knob’ and red
fins on a Jack Kerouac three-day fevered pitch, and
abandoned the ailing vehicle on a cul de sac to walk
away to train with the best in the nation. Charlie was
the #1 player on tour for the third straight year, and I
was third due to a prominent match in history that
forever eclipsed everything else that occurred in
1975.
Smokin’ Hogan got his name at the Burlington event
going into the final never having made a previous
6: The Golden Era
pro quarters. He was famous only among his first
four fans in the red Caddy going across the country,
where to this day, he claims that somewhere in the
Corn Belt he was ‘born again’ a racquetball player
just a few months before surprising everyone at
Burlington. He entered the tournament glass
aquarium court never having shaved, and spun like a
tornado waving both hands at the packed bleachers.
He slapped off a dozen jumping jacks in the service
box, and raced around all four walls making clown
faces at the amused spectators. He popped a dozen
push-ups on the short line, rose, and sprinted to each
corner, stopping, leaping in the air with a yell, '
Win!'
‘Win!’… I was warming up with kill shots in the
center court. As he marked his territory around me,
the gallery clapped hands to his struts. Through the
glass, darkly, quarter final victim Charlie Brumfield
gave a weak smile, and sitting next to him, semifinal victim Steve Serot, signaled thumbs up. Hogan
had thrashed Brumfield, squeaked by Serot, and now
eased by me in the final to launch power racquetball
across the nation with a blazing career.
By 1976, across the
nation’s hardboard, the
game had advanced so
that jam passes were
defused while everyone
started holding ground
with ESP (early swing
preparation) to volley the
jam. Ceiling shot setups
The sport exploded across
the country with
thousands of new courts
and newcomers, with
more tournaments and
draw sheets that
wallpapered clubs from
the entrances to the locker
rooms.
6: The Golden Era
off the back wall were called ‘pumpkins’, and put
away. One couldn’t rely on crack aces alone…or
could he? The Big Game sneaked into the
vernacular, and for a decade would, like tennis, be
the only winning game in town. Jerry Hilecher
introduced the camouflage drive serve that was
copied coast to coast, alongside the Jeff Leon
‘walking screen’. The years 1976 and 1977 were the
heyday for both manufacturers and players. The
sport exploded across the country with thousands of
new courts and newcomers, with more tournaments
and draw sheets that wallpapered clubs from the
entrances to the locker rooms. Brumfield, in 1976,
bearded and likened by some to fellow Californian
Charles Manson, had given up a law career to lead a
cult of serial semi-crazed followers known as Brum'
s
Bums. Along the way, he had won five national
titles. The law career of Charlie Brumfield is long
ago explained away in an interview from the
Sunday, June 6, 1976 Eugene Register: ‘Even
Charlie Brumfield is surprised. Lean and bearded,
Brumfield is #1 player in what may be the fastest
growing sport, racquetball. He also happens to be an
attorney who doesn’t practice law because he can
make $75,000 doing what he likes.’ On the day the
interview came out, the day before the tournament
started, Charlie and I were in a boat on the
Willamette River with the court club owner.
Charlie’s first forehand cast flew over my head,
curled lazily, and hooked in the screaming owner’s
6: The Golden Era
right nipple. Only the fish were safe that day, and the
next.
By this time, I had lived with a succession of
intriguing characters in racquetball beginning with
Brumfield, Charley Drake of Leach, Muehleisen,
and then Hogan, who had Marty [Hogan] dumped all
an incorrigible style off his worldly possessions in
the court. Hogan moved the center of the floor, with
in with Charley Drake a shout of joy, ‘Yah!’ over
and me at a fashionable them. Over the ensuing
months while living there,
home on the La Jolla he picked from the pile a
‘Wish they all could be thing at a time, as needed,
California girls’ shore. and he tossed items back
One day, he struggled on the heap for reuse.
into the La Jolla house from St. Louis under a huge
gym bag balanced on his head, and entered his new
room across the hall from mine. Marty dumped all
his worldly possessions in the center of the floor,
with a shout of joy, ‘Yah!’ over them. Over the
ensuing months while living there, he picked from
the pile a thing at a time, as needed, and he tossed
items back on the heap for reuse. The routine
mirrored his court methodology of taking every shot
into the court and with knee jerk response in shot
selection, hitting and saving what was beginning to
prove valuable. Marty was the antithesis of
Brumfield: He never drank, swore, smoked, and
loved his family; he dated, little but frequented the
Ocean Beach card rooms for pickup games of poker.
Where Charlie was an attorney, Marty’s former
6: The Golden Era
work had been as a clown twisting balloons into
animal forms for $5 an hour at Jacks or Better.
Marty spent most of his time at Gorham’s Sports
center which was still the center of the racquetball
universe when he rolled from the 1974 St. Louis
clown job into San Diego. There Charlie leaned
heavily into the glass wall—the same one his father
and Brum’s Bums had watched him win the 1971
Singles Invitational—and studied, and thought, and
analyzed every projected situation in their sure to
come matches. He must have recognized great
potential because he immediately went to task to
psychologically disable the rookie’s rocket serve and
crushing backhand. He
Where Charlie was an
made fun of Marty’s jock
attorney, Marty’s former
size
and
outlandish
work had been as a clown
backhand, always about
twisting balloons into
the backhand that started
animal forms for $5 an
hour at Jacks or Better.
with a treetop backswing,
descending
like
a
pendulum, and struck the ball a bullwhip out from
the navel. We used to teach the stroke honing in on
the target and then adding degrees of power, but
Hogan was just the opposite. Over the months, as the
muscular shots went from spraying all over to come
closer and closer to the bottom board target,
Brumfield admitted, ‘I have been inconvertibly
mistaken about Hogan’s abilities.’ Marty was the
first clocked on radar at over 100 mph with the small
head racquet, while the rest of us maxed in the low
90s. Over the months, as Hogan’s power and
6: The Golden Era
accuracy mounted, so did Brumfield’s backhand
improve on that model, until they deadlocked for the
top honors of the year 1976. Charlie finished #3 on
the pro tour behind Hogan and Tennessee Wonder
Davey Bledsoe, but he remained the national
champion by capturing the 1976 NRC Pro National
Singles and NRC Pro National Doubles Champion
with Steve Serot.
In 1977 Charlie was 30-years old and worked harder
on conditioning for racquetball than any other
player, except Steve Strandemo and his protégé
Steve Mondry. Strandemo would literally run until
he dropped, fall on his face and keep moving
forward. His buddy Mondry had two long-legged
Dobermans named Practice and Workout that he
took wherever he went in an old VW Bug with the
passenger seats removed, so they could look and see
where he was going. Charlie trained with all four at
one time or another, with a few unique twists.
'
Exercise programs should simulate movements of
the activity for which training is designed, wherever
possible,’ wrote Gerge Dintiman in Sprinting Speed,
about specificity in sport. A conditioning program
must approach actions closely related to those in an
actual game situation. In training for racquetball,
running windsprints is better than striking a
punching bag. Two drills Charlie did were Scurrying
and the Pan Drills. In Scurrying you play a frantic
game of no-bounce racquetball (i.e. no limit on ball
bounces) for five minutes, or until one of you drops.
6: The Golden Era
Then take a breather and do it again. In Pan Drills he
placed six small objects—he used Frisbees stenciled
with ‘ABC’—about five feet apart down the center
line of the court from front to back walls. Slalom
sprint in and out the pans until you feel a slight
burning in the thigh muscles, and then run one more
lap. Brumfield, the best court coverer of the Pioneer
era, owes it all to these drills.
He sustained, ‘The best training for racquetball is to
play racquetball,’ and yet he and I invented countless
variations to beat the boredom. A great conditioner
is Touch and Go played by touching the short line
after each hit with a partner trying just to keep the
ball in play. How about a little Chinese Racquetball
where the ball strikes the floor twice before a return.
Side Walls Out is the best training for straight in
kills, a la outdoor one-wall. Serve and Kill generate
the Big Game of drive serve and kill return. At the
end of the day, the best conditioner is Moving
Racquetball in which the players must stay in motion
even if it’s just a shuffle while awaiting service. You
may play Singles Doubles with two balls at once,
making it possible to score more than one point per
rally. If ambidextrous, you may play against
yourself, and try to win in the final.
Partying as hard as he played, at the end of 1977
Charlie ranked second behind Marty on the NRC
tour, and won the IRA/IPRO National Doubles
Championship with Steve Serot. Charlie reflects,
‘My memory says that Jan Pasternak and her father
6: The Golden Era
were from the Houston ‘J’. The dad was rich and got
me a car to drive in a subsequent tourney in
Houston. On the eve of the finals, I partied and was
unable to remember how I got ‘home’ or the
whereabouts of the car. I played Steve Serot in the
finals the next morning and my training program
again proved successful. I and a partner beat down
Serot and Valier later that memorable day. Unknown
if and when the car was recovered.’
In 1977, I won the Dallas
and Houston NRC pro
stops,
and
a
fifth
paddleball
National
Singles title. I began
entering
racquetball
tournaments righty, and
lefty under an alias, and
once in Michigan came close to meeting myself in
the finals but lost southpaw in the semis. There was
a lot of court hustling going on in those days, and we
played handicap matches with 4’’ head racquets,
bleach bottles and even my Complete Book of
Racquetball that had become the sport bible with
200,000 sold. I was the first player to defeat mano a
racquet handball champs Paul Haber, Gordie Pfier
and Fred Lewis in hands vs. racquets exhibitions. I
organized with the first racquetball camp in the
country with Steve Serot in San Diego, and opened
the nation’s premier month long Steamboat Springs
Racquetball Ranch. I lagged behind Brumfield in
dollar earnings by a factor of about 10, but had fun,
There was a lot of court
hustling going on in those
days, and we played
handicap matches with 4’’
head racquets, bleach
bottles and even my
Complete Book of
Racquetball…
6: The Golden Era
and this was my peak money year with a total of
$25,000 including $5k prize money, equal in per
diem, $3k endorsements, $6k book royalties, $10k
clinics, and $1k betting.
As I diverged wildly into racquetball escapades and
tried to get Charlie to loosen up about the game, he
became deeply serious. Charlie and I had a mutual
psychiatrist friend in southern California named Joel
Sheinbalm who didn’t necessarily shrink us, but
tactfully and probably honestly, expressed that both
of us were on our correct career paths. This year, I
began a 40-state tour mainly by freight train, bus, the
Chevy van, and thumb to clinics, tournaments and
exhibitions, and sometimes arrived sensing the game
needed the spice of various attire including a Bozo
haircut or overalls like Farmer John, and I won the
first Davidson, MI, ProAm wearing a clown suit and
makeup which got hot inside in the tiebreaker final. I
wrote and self-published two racquetball books in
one day: It’s a Racquet and The Kill & Rekill Gang
(Service Press). Finally, there was a 2500-hour study
of ball spin in a Michigan garage and a SI Club a
thirty minute bicycle ride away.
Going into the Fall start of the 1978 NRC tour,
Charlie Brumfield ranked second behind #1 Marty
Hogan. Brum didn’t win the season openers and was
fighting for position in the top four. The sport was a
bit full of itself thinking old school slow ball was
inferior to the new Big Game, and tickets to the 1978
nationals in Detroit cost up to $250 for the full eight
6: The Golden Era
days, and as much as $50 for a single night'
s action.
No wonder most of the fans were players and their
friends. The irony can be found in today'
s
competitive racquetball that is scarcely fit for anyone
else'
s viewing. Racquetball’s surge through the ‘70s
coincided with the disco era, Elvis, Fischer in hiding,
celebrities like CBS newsman Bill Kurtis, Jim
Thompson Illinois governor (1977-91), Adam
‘Batman’ West and many Hollywood stars, and I
beat Miss World Runnerup with a shoe in a Sports
Illustrated club exhibition. With an estimated 5
million players at the peak of popularity in 1978,
there were eight trade magazines, a thriving pro
circuit, a potent women’s tour. The top pros’ income
topped six figures, and with Brumfield at #2 that
made him surly.
Hogan had taken to calling himself Killer Dog.
Going into the nationals this year, Charlie was the
four-time national singles champion and two time
doubles. Hogan, the upstart, had won seven of the
eight tournaments on the 1977-78 tour, and he had
just been named co-winner (with Chris Evert) of
Racquet Magazine'
s Athlete of the Year award.
Sports Illustrated covered the event at Belleview,
MI. The simple question was: could new power
defeat old finesse for Marty Hogan’s first World
Championship? Hogan came out shooting, and
Brumfield controlling pace with lobs and stalls.
‘Marty can’t take the pressure,’ Hogan heard
Brumfield say in a pre-game wire-up, and murmured
it again into his ear like an echo. For the occasion,
6: The Golden Era
Brumfield, middle-aged at 30 by racquetball
standards, had outfitted his beer swilling, rabid fans
in Brum’s Bums T shirts. As expected, Hogan came
out biting with nine aces and hitting winners with
increasing power. The first game went to Hogan 2112, but Brumfield had not lost a single point on a
forced error.
Hogan, still cruising at the
psych artist’s rants, built up a
14-7 lead in the second game,
before the strangest turnabout
of the tournament. Brumfield,
apparently stripped of his
psyching tactics by Hogan'
s
sheer power or fatigue,
changed his mode of play. He slowed everything
down, hitting soft serves and recalling Loveday’s
adage. (‘Always change a losing game, Babe.’)
Hogan unraveled. He lost his serve and his
concentration crumbled. Brumfield, on top of
Hogan'
s errors and setups, ran off five points to take
a 20-16 lead. Hogan made it 17-20 on a backhand
kill, a forehand kill from the Neiman painting made
it 18-20. Finally, the best player never to win a
nationals was serving at 20-20 for all. Why prolong
it? He won the shot that made him famous, a kill
from deep in the backcourt. Charlie, instead of
sweeping his arms up in a victory salute to the
crowd, for once raised Hogan’s arm.
Brumfield, middleaged at 30 by
racquetball
standards, had
outfitted his beer
swilling, rabid fans
in Brum’s Bums T
shirts.
6: The Golden Era
You got it all wrong… The ball, not Hogan beat the
best. Thinking time was reduced to a fraction of a
second in the match, and Charlie admitted, ‘My
analytical prowess, and the ability to pinpoint my
opponent'
s weaknesses have been neutralized by the
raw power.’ Marty Hogan couldn’t agree more,
saying, ‘Absolutely, Brumfield was the best with the
slow ball, I couldn’t touch him on my best day.’
Brumfield and Hogan were the first players to have
earned fame and large incomes from the sport, and
their stature as professional athletes capable of
earning endorsements outside the game has not been
equaled by anyone who has since followed them. In
1978, the Leroy Neiman painting of Charlie
Brumfield and Marty Hogan from the ‘78 Pro
Nationals gained nationwide scrutiny, along with
reflection on their big match. A photograph from the
same match at a very similar moment appears on the
cover of Marty Hogan'
s Power Racquetball. The
painting in a splash of colors depicts the great rivalry
of the late 1970s between Charlie Brumfield King of
Racquetball and Marty ‘Killer Dog’ Hogan.
0
"
!
"
The golden era of racquetball belonged to Charlie. He was the
#1 player on the men'
s professional racquetball tour for most
of the 70s, winning four championships and dominating most
of the tournaments he participated in.
This was extraordinary at a time when racquetball
was the fastest growing leisure activity in North
America. Brumfield won two consecutive singles
championships in 1972 and 1973, having won
twenty consecutive tournaments, and then racked up
two more consecutive titles again in 1975 and 1976.
Throughout the decade, I was his competition,
ranking second in ’73 and ’74, and then Serot
uprooted me. I took my irritating second and third
places in losing to Brum in the final or semis of
countless tournaments in the mid-70s. Marty Hogan
became Brumfield'
s primary rival in the late 70s, but
I often beat Hogan only to stumble into Brum. He
won 25% of the tournaments he ever entered. He
made the finals of another 11 of his career 64 pro
tournaments, meaning that he made the finals of
42% of the tournaments he ever entered. He'
s in the
top 10, still in 2013, in terms of career tournament
wins, despite not playing nearly as many
tournaments as the players of today. Once the fast
ball came around, only Hogan really had his number;
Brumfield was 6-11 lifetime against Hogan, but it
would have been 16-1 with the original slow ball.
His last tournament win on tour was in January
1978, the only tournament that season that Hogan
7: On Court and In Court
didn'
t win. Brumfield beat Hogan in the final in a
tiebreaker. His final match on tour was a round of 32
loss to Scott Hawkins in the 1981 DP/Leach
Nationals in Tempe. True to the end, Brumfield took
him to a tiebreaker.
He transitioned after that into a part-time law
practice where his opponents find him even more
obstreperous and dominating. He pushes his law
career with the same obsessive passion for mastery.
'
Frankly, the pressure to perform in law is far greater
than in racquetball. In racquetball, the odds are
always against me. I'
m not gifted in any way as an
athlete. In fact, I'
ve always been the underdog THAT
nobody expected to win. In law, however, the exact
opposite is the case. I feel a great deal of pressure to
perform at the levels others undoubtedly expect of
me, which I expect of myself.'
One magistrate balked at Charlie’s whacky
disclosures, shouting, ‘Where did you learn this
nonsense?’ Brumfield’s retort, ‘I saw it on Perry
Mason.’ Another judge placed a blackboard between
him and the jury before last summation so they could
not witness his obscene gesticulations. Brumfield
earned his Law degree while winning his back-toback national singles titles on the court during 1972
and 1973. He once told me, ‘I love the theory and
practice of law, and use the same techniques applied
from racquetball to the court of law.’ Brad Kruger
(aka Rip Mackenzie) was a Canadian three-sport
(racquetball,
handball, Another judge placed a
swimming)
national blackboard between him
champion who, in 1980, and the jury before last
traveled to San Diego for summation so they could
degrees in politics and not witness his obscene
gesticulations.
journalism from USD.
He took post graduate work in the fledgling law
office of Charles Brumfield and Associates for one
year doing due diligence, and they played
racquetball on breaks. According to Rip, “On the
court he was a menace, but in court he resembled
John McEnroe only a lot smarter, and a lot funnier.
His sense of outrage over even the slightest
perception of injustice had no limits. And all that
was before the night sessions: the hefty stack, the
sports slumlord, society and its discontents, and the
Voice of God ringing, ‘Get the racquets, we’re going
to the PPA.’ I can’t remember how many times I was
fired for bad shots an typos, but I know it was one
less time than I was rehired and quit.”
The legal stint coincided with the first Catalina
Invitational Tour, a disruptive phase for racquetball
from 1981-3. The tour omitted some of the top
players, including Brumfield and me, for political
reasons or because we were older and not suited for
the Catalina line. Or, it could be for the reason that
top seed Marty Hogan states, ‘Though the sponsor
Catalina had allotted enough for the prize money,
this was to be as much a touring Catalina fashion
show as a racquetball circuit. Each player was
required to wear Catalina apparel on and off the
court during the events. Unlike normal racquetball
attire, a full Catalina wardrobe cost $5,000 per
player. The bill to outfit the twelve full-time and two
alternate players was a whopping $70,000. To admit
and dress other players would have cut the prize
money and Charley Drake’s cut.’ Drake was
Hogan’s and my earlier housemate in La Jolla, CA, a
strong lefty doubles pro, and the first President of
Leach Industries. Our tie went actually back earlier
when Charley got his sociology PhD in record time
at Michigan State, even as he and I played
paddleball and racquetball. I introduced Drake to
Brumfield and later to Bud Leach, and that’s how
Leach got going. Charley Drake'
s new Catalina Tour
was limited to a dozen players of his choosing.
Brumfield was solidly in the top 10 the year of
inception (with a slow ball he was likely in the upper
three), and not only was he not invited to join, but
with all reasonable paths to qualifying for the tour,
was virtually shut out. ‘This makes me ill,’ he
complained, but it didn’t get him on tour. Drake,
Hogan, and all the top
players on the tour did The bottom line is always
simply that when sport,
well financially, and money, and politics collide
while it wasn'
t the evil it's usually the fans who
plot that some make it lose.
out to be, the closed tour
stunted the growth of the sport for two years. The
bottom line is always simply that when sport,
money, and politics collide is it'
s usually the fans
who lose.
Riding the crest of the sport boom in the late 70s, in
the hotbeds at San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago,
Memphis, and Michigan clubs had up to a thousand
members that were ample for huge in-house
tournaments. Maybe five players in each club read
the magazines and traveled outside to play in
sanctioned tournaments. I, among them, wherever I
was traveling by airplane, bus, thumb or boxcar kept
an eye peeled for a money tournament somewhere.
Life was a tour of weekend stands across the
country, and when the money was big, it brought the
big cats sniffing. Such was the politically famous
Chicago Cramp match.
Charlie Brumfield and I were edging toward
retirement in the fall of the decade, and Charlie
pushed me over in Chicago. There were no holds
barred between Brum and me, and so deep in the
bowels of the Circle Campus, there were no sour
grapes as he walked off the court while down in the
second after I had won the first game. I had trained
to a peak like Abraham Lincoln, ‘I will prepare and
one day my chance will come.’ The game plan was
to run him into the hardwood, and it was working.
He cramped hard in both legs and leaned a free arm
against the back wall, teetering and gazing bleakly
up at the ref, and muttered, ‘Injury time out.’ He
pulled himself out the door and into the labyrinth of
steam tunnels and swimming pool portals inside the
sports facility, where for an hour no one could find
him. It was nigh past forfeit time when he
reappeared through the court door. The gallery had
emptied, and NRC commissioner Joe Ardito peeked
over the balcony and intoned, ‘Play ball.’ By then, I
was in cramps from searching for the fresh shirted
Brumfield, and lost the match. I drove from Chicago
to live on a lake in Michigan working on ball spin
for a while, hopped freight trains to a few last
exhibitions, invented boxcar handball and
racquetball till my balls flew out the door, and
slowly transitioned out of racquetball into a world of
travel adventure.
Brumfield, however, used the lapse in his schedule
created by the 1981 Catalina Tour to go into another
scientific sequester to search for new answers to slay
the game. Brad Kruger helped him and for selfish
reasons. He respected, was even fascinated by
Charlie’s on and off court genius, and like thousands
of other aspiring North American players had been
cut out of pro racquetball by Catalina. Brumfield
called Catalina an ‘Invitational of newcomers and
wannabes.’ He launched his legal practice as a
smokescreen and to finance his comeback to become
#1 in the world. Kruger describes their daily grind in
‘San Diego Mecca: California Dreaming’.
‘Charlie Brumfield looked like the Prince of
Darkness, moved like Groucho Marx, and had the
flawless arsenal of a platypus on steroids. Match
after match covered in plastic bags for weight loss,
SCUBA weight belts to add spring, and maskingtape goggles with only pin-pricks to see through to
heighten focus. Then, repeat the analysis with sit-ups
and deep-knee bends in a steam room until you
vomit or collapse (but try not to collapse into your
vomit). Nothing was taboo. Flashback: Brumfield,
fetal, against the front wall, looking chubby in three
gray cotton sweat suits—his anti-killshot armor—but
in anguish, screaming at us again and again to hit
him harder! Having been repeatedly pelted in an
earlier tournament, Brumfield endured 15 minutes of
high-velocity torture—whatever it took to exorcise
the fear of ever being hit again. Flashback:
Brumfield'
s place six
Brumfield, fetal, against
months after arriving in
the front wall, looking
chubby in three gray
town. Loveday'
s there,
cotton sweat suits—his
Muehleisen too, and the
anti-killshot armor—but in
Super-8
projector'
s
anguish…
flashing
images
of
Hogan’s brutalizing forehand. Fast rewind and
analyze. Fast rewind and analyze. Twenty times at
least. For a laugh, we rewind the film through the
projector to watch Marty hitting in reverse... just for
a laugh. But the jokes on us: Hogan hitting his
forehand in reverse was a mirror image of his
backhand in full form. Hogan gets the last laugh.
And we call it a day. It was exhausting, but you got
up early the next morning because you WERE
DOING IT WITH THE GREATEST.’
Brad Kruger reveals privately for this biography,
’However, winning was only a part of it. His hunger
was to dominate all fields on all levels, and he was
greedy about it. In fact, his appetite for success was
insatiable. And in the pursuit, he constantly shocked
you by making the vastly impossible suddenly
possible, even commonplace. Nowhere is this better
demonstrated than in practice where, freed from the
necessity of playing the percentages at a level of an
astrophysicist, calculating the reductions of margins
for error against what he felt was his lack of natural
talent, he was able to play free and unencumbered by
fear, uncertainty and doubt. ‘The big cat sprawls,’ he
would drawl, executing a perfect reverse pinch as he
rolled out of a dive that began it. Though he
resembled more a sea lion with a flop, it isn’t worth
mentioning because otherwise it was divine. ‘Uh,
you forget something. Isn’t that your jockstrap I just
blew off with that pass?’ There was pain and
humiliation, but the humiliation never arrived,
because the wonder of what you had just seen and
heard was all-consuming. You were beaten back to
where you belonged, as he picked himself up from
his most recent collapse, and barking, ‘Get back to
the receiver'
s position where you belong.’ Over and
over, shot after shot, scene of scene of nothing less
than miracle balls. Charlie was the most tragic
player, but I cannot recall him ever complaining or
saying a discouraging word. He was one of the most
encouraging people I had met when everything I
lived was racquetball. And come to think about it,
thirty years later, he still is.’
Brumfield has written a
handful
of
books
purportedly letting out
some of his secrets. All
are incorrectly credited or
don’t give him his due. In
1972, Rollout Racquetball filled a void for
instruction as the game took off, and was transcribed
from Brumfield tapes. In September, 1978,
Brumfield’s Off the Wall: Championship
Racquetball written by Jeffery Barstow was a
strange brew of instruction and insights into his
peers’ play and minds. I peeped at my first line,
‘Keeley is an angular man who once spayed a
chipmunk on the kitchen table,’ and dropped the
book. In 1979, he was the ghostwriter of Marty
Hogan’s Power Racquetball. The book production
took place at poolside of the Steamboat Springs
Racquet Club where I was running a one month
camp. Tanned Hogan stood with a swim flipper
demonstrating the power strokes. Brumfield seated
with two fists of beers did an apt running
Brumfield has written a
handful of books
purportedly letting out
some of his secrets. All
are incorrectly credited or
don’t give him his due.
commentary for three straight days, and the actual
writer was Art Shay. It sold well as the first to
explain Hogan’s power stroke that was sweeping the
nation. The book also describes Brumfield as ‘the
smartest player alive’.
Charlie’s game has been self-described as a ‘finesse’
style, and he via the game hands of Loveday and
Muehleisen is regarded as the best finesse player to
have ever played racquetball. ‘Finesse is neither a
control game nor a power game. The control player,
usually exemplified by Steve Keeley, is able to
execute each shot precisely and score repeatedly on
that precise execution. The power player, portrayed
by Marty Hogan, puts pace on the ball, using that
pace to overwhelm the opponent. Brumfield'
s
‘finesse’ style has elements of both control and
power, but is most characterized by impeccable shot
selection and gamesmanship during play. Having
appropriate measures of control and power, without
requiring either to place the ball outside the
opponent'
s reach, and the wit to outwait his faltering
mind, this quality of play
has allowed Brumfield to Brumfield's ‘finesse’ style
has elements of both
compete at an extremely control and power, but is
high level all of his life... most characterized by
A player never stops impeccable shot selection
learning how to play the and gamesmanship during
play.
game,’ sums Charlie
Brumfield.
1
/
"
/
2
The true history of racquetball was declassified in early 2013
during a two-month long Email round-table discussion by most
of the fifty living professionals and movers and shakers of the
industry.
Muted, dirty secrets as well as the genius decisions
were presented that have contributed to the
development of the game since it was named
Racquetball at the 1969 National, and even before
that at the ‘first’ 1968 Paddle-Racket National. One
of the most interesting findings was the underlying
reason for the most pivotal time in the sport from
1980-81 when the game went from boom to bust
‘overnight’.
1979 was the best year racquetball ever had, and it
had been a great decade. During that year, it was the
fastest growing sport in the US and the world. A top
USRA/NRC official recalls, ‘By now Nielsen and
other big-name research companies were agreeing,
spouting 10 million players. ‘Court clubs’ were
growing like crazy, with amazing 12-court, 16-court,
even 32-court complexes. We had a few, mostly
positive, television experiences. A portable glass
court was a reality (if not financially feasible). It was
a beautiful world.’ And then the recession of '
81-82
hit and unless you'
re 50 years or older, you don'
t
know what it was like. Out of control inflation,
prime interest rates at 22%, unemployment
abounding. People did what people always do when
they'
re scared—they hunkered down. They cut out
8: The True History
unnecessary spending. Racquetball, like so many
other industries, was hit hard. That would have been
reboundable, except panic set in. The central figure
in racquetball, Bob Kendler was in poor health (he
died in December '
82), and even worse financial
straits as most of his wealth was tied up in real
estate, highly mortgaged. He couldn'
t pay. The mafia
bombed his house because he owed them. Seamco,
which had been playing both political sides for a
decade, had lost the market share battle to Penn, so
NRC/USRA and Kendler was bankrupt. Several
other racquetball associations went bankrupt, and
many racquetball courts were forced to close, with
the racquet companies headed in the same direction.
The Kendler top staff for ten solid years from 19701979 left the Chicago office, and on return in 1982
for a quick two years last line defense, found the
racquetball world had changed drastically in the two
years while they were gone.
‘So two decisions were made in the corporate board
room that sealed racquetball’s fate: 1) speed up the
ball; 2) make larger racquets. Both were made as a
means of generating new revenue to replace lost
revenue. The competing organization IRA that in
1979 had changed its name to American Amateur
Racquetball Association (AARA) did not have the
old ‘balls’ sponsor to stand up to the sport’s major
funders, so they went along with the plan, rewriting
the rules that had to be re-written in order to make
these two decisions legal. Essentially, the governing
AARA nailed the committed players with the have-
8: The True History
to-purchase-new-equipment-or-you-won'
t-be-ableto-compete policy. Overnight, the game became
faster and more dangerous—appealing to elite male
athletes and that was
about it. Quick profits Overnight, the game
became faster and more
almost never play well dangerous—appealing to
over the long haul. Good elite male athletes and
bye easy-to-learn. Good that was about it.
bye to anybody-can-play.
Good bye skill, finesse, and strategy. Good bye any
semblance of looking to the sport'
s future. Hello,
mine'
s bigger and faster.
‘We had our decade in the sun and then the fickle
American sporting public moved on to the next
thing. In 1979 the USRA/NRC ran 128-page
magazines with nearly 50 pages of ads in each. In
1982 it barely could publish a 32-page magazine
with 10 pages of ads, and half of them were fitness
companies. Agree or disagree. It doesn'
t matter
because we'
ll never know the roads not taken. Unless
the ball is slowed, and small head racquets come
back. I think common sense tells us the sport could
not have remained on the growth train that we all
experienced especially, after all the horrible
economic problems passed, it’s simply not possible
to have a club and make money. Club owners
realized that they were not in the racquetball
industry but in the fitness industry and had to
provide as wide an array of fitness activities as
possible to maintain their membership base even if it
meant converting racquetball courts to new fitness
8: The True History
areas. It'
s now an amenity for clubs, and it will be
difficult to make it more.’
The stubborn Brumfield had conserved throughout
his dynasty into the fall of racquetball in the early
1980s that his plan was to save the sport. ‘The most
important things: there should be television
coverage, produced by a slower and more consistent
ball, maintain the head size, and a slower floor
surface.’ It sounds like he was also trying to
conserve his reign. Racquetball still during the 1980s
was clamoring for television coverage. To get it,
every other credible source than Brumfield offered
these basic changes that must be made in the game:
The players have to clean up their act. There should
be strict rules of behavior, firmly enforced. It is a
good sign that racquetball has begun to train and
certify referees and lines people, and now, they must
begin to oust troublemakers A point should be
awarded after each rally. A way must be found to
lengthen the rallies. There should be one serve
instead of two, to cut out aces and stalling.
Charlie, also defended his position that the sport
needed glamour, not Square Jocks, who would
sustain his unique, sometimes dangerous plays on
the latter. Early racquetball was dirty fighting, in the
politics, and definitely on court where not fighting
dirty gave up about 8 points in a game to 21. In one
match I saw four-time national champion, Charlie
Brumfield, exhibit his signature middle finger sans
the Seamco ring when the gallery didn’t please him.
8: The True History
He has socked his opponents in the back with the
ball, stalked them into a corner like a boxer, and then
unveiled his underwear when a player retaliated in
kind. Charlie, with the ref in hand after a bad call
and the crowd support, once walked off the court
and showered between points as a future lesson to
the referee. For these transgressions, Brumfield
normally went unpunished. IRA professional referee,
Chuck Leve, recalls the 1979 Nationals in
Lemontree, MI. ‘Brumfield was playing Don
Thomas in the quarters. Don was handling the match
well and had Brum down with a particular lob Zserve. When it became apparent that Don was going
to take the second game after winning the first, the
Brum came up with a return that turned the match
around. Here came the lob Z-serve, and here came
Brumfield. He could have probably gone cross-court
and gained the advantage. However, he was thinking
bigger than gaining an advantage. He knew he had to
eliminate that serve as a possibility. So, he drilled
the return into the back of Don’s knee. Brum
continued to return the serve into that knee until Don
literally went to his knees in pain. Don then
conceded the serve going to another one. Charlie
won the match outright.’
Brumfield is often criticized for psychological play,
including intimidation and delays during the game.
‘But they didn’t know the sport,’ laughs Marty
Hogan. ‘Charlie cracked me in the elbow with his
racquet between games at the water fountain at the
1976 NRC pro finals. It hurt, but it was a
8: The True History
compliment. Brumfield did anything and everything
to win, and almost always won.’ You’d think it
couldn’t happen against a large, graceful opponent
but it is cat and mouse to Mr. Brumfield. He is the
omnipresent villain while pestering the foe,
ramrodding the ref, and fomenting the crowd. I
personally have leaped to his physical defense on
two events. The reason is because he invented and
refined the early rules of engagement on the
racquetball court that others were duped into
accepting before the fact. They were chaos, blind
skips, pushing, punching, blocking, wet balls,
stalling, and psychological warfare. I don’t see how
anyone could have won without agreeing in his own
mind to play by Charlie’s rules.
Leve and Brumfield were battling again at a San
Diego Atlas pro stop, where Brum had chewed off
and spit out the thumb of fellow pro Rich Wagner.
Wagner had to run for a
… Brum had chewed off
tetanus shot and forfeited and spit out the thumb of
the match. Leve recalls in fellow pro Rich Wagner.
another match at Atlas,
‘Probably the most well-known of my encounters
with Brum was when I had to assess him a technical
foul, a personal innovation to the rules that has given
me pride, and use against him over time, before the
match began. I don'
t think anybody has ever since
had to announce, ‘Zero serving Negative One!’
Brum didn'
t have the physical ability of his
contemporaries, but his strategy, guile, and guts
were unsurpassed. Of course, the evolution of the
8: The True History
game to the faster, nondrinking rewarded physical
ability—especially strength—and somewhat negated
the mental approach, which was a shame.’
What’s it like to be on the court with Brumfield?
Suddenly the court gets smaller. He darts about,
always on the fringe of being in the way, and then, at
the crucial second, IS in the way. The first rally
moves the opponent a bit out of position on the first
shot, possibly by an exaggerated swing or follow
through that causes the opponent to duck the paddle
and forces a slightly weak return and wobble to the
next shot, then moving the opponent farther out of
position on the second shot with a deception and
forcing
a
somewhat
He darts about, always on
weaker return and slower
the fringe of being in the
recovery, by holding the
way, and then, at the
crucial second, IS in the
opponent out of position
way.
with his body, and
freezing the opponent by denying him a view of the
ball, and then hitting a finishing shot or a pass which
can be hit with minimal precision under these
circumstances to end the rally. This style builds
momentum as the rallies or match go on, and places
the opponent under severe stress. The opponent
becomes fatigued by trying to understand what
Brumfield is going to do, and this prevents the
opponent from playing his own game that he has
practiced for years. Even players in better physical
condition find themselves physically and
emotionally drained after playing a match with
Brumfield.
8: The True History
He once told me before an important final,
‘Everything I’ve done in my life since my first shot
in 7th grade has been for racquetball.’ Our mutual
friend and psychiatrist Joel Sheinbalm, who invented
the cut-off ceiling shot return, once opined to
Charlie, ‘I think you’ll have more trouble adjusting
in retirement than Steve.’ Charlie protested. Joel
shrugged, and served in our doubles match.
3
/
&
4
Addictions and recovery are part of Charlie’s life like the cover
on a racquet. First it was racquetball, now law, and in between
it was multiple-substances including alcoholism. Brumfield’s
battle with addiction is discussed in detail in an article
published in the San Diego Union Tribune, February 4, 1997,
‘Lawyers aid parolees in building new lives.’
Even at the height of his playing career, Brumfield
disclosed that substance and alcohol abuse had
probably shortened his professional playing career,
and also that they had an impact on the early part of
his new law career. He admitted himself to a
recovery program and has remained active in
recovery programs and recovery networks. Some of
this work has involved using physical conditioning
and sports as a bulwark against addiction.
As a practicing attorney, Brumfield’s focus is in
addicted lawyers and trying to get them to switch to
racquetball. It begs a question which his former
player and paralegal Brad Kurger answers—is
Charlie better on court or in court? ‘In the
beginning, he practiced multiple fields of civil law
with the same sardonic sense of humor vs. the
highbrow lawyers he was apt to encounter. One
introduced himself as ‘Frederick Smith the Third,
Hawvard.’ Charlie replied without missing a beat,
‘Charles Brumfield, USD... I wasn'
t aware Harvard
had a cooking school.’ I was Charlie’s racquet
fodder while doing due diligence in his attorney’s
office on and in court. His level of accomplishment
was nothing less than brilliant in both ‘offices’. A
9: The Lion in Winter
level of brilliance that was blinding! His due
diligence was nothing less than accomplished,
demanding a level of reasoning and calculation
beyond most at the top of their class in each field of
accounting, economics and law. He was addicted to
both.
A few months ago the racquetball grapevine jiggled
nervously…The Holder has 4+4 Gleason scale
prostate cancer and ‘The outlook is dim.’ The
racquetball community rallied with efforts from
‘Please get better’ to ‘Good luck in the Happy Court
in the Sky.’ I was in the Peruvian Amazon catching
butterflies and studying medicinal plants for a local
green pharmacy pharmaceutical when the news
touched me. One of the successful products was a
natural blend of potent roots, leaves and a flower. I
had studied the paperwork of many of the fifty test
cases of prostatitis from Peru to America (where the
product has not cleared FDA), and that all fifty
showed remarkable shrunken prostates and reduced
cancers. My dilemma was, should I reach out to the
one who has cost me multiple titles and a million
dollars? ‘You probably are thinking after all these
years that I’m trying to poison you,’ I wrote Charlie.
‘But before chemo or the knife, try the conservative
treatment of this product.’ In a similar case this year,
a successor national champ has reduced a more
serious 4.8 PSA to ‘normal’ value 3.2 in five weeks,
and recently provided the supplier address to Charlie
the strategist.
Director of the US Open,
My dilemma was, should I
Doug Ganim, emailed at reach out to the one who
the same time, ‘I assume has cost me multiple titles
you know Charlie is sick and a million dollars?
and prognosis is not
great. I have decided to dedicate this year’s US
OPEN in his honor and have invited him to the event
to do some TV commentating and receive a lifetime
achievement award. (He does not know about the
award.)’ Then, in a letter dated April 1st, 2013,
Brumfield proffered his place on the Pioneer Hall of
Fame nomination committee to former USRA and
NRC director Chuck Leve with the following:
‘Chuck, due to my health, I would like you to take
over for me on the Pioneer Committee of the HOF.
There might be some issues as to ensuing
nominations, and NO ONE is more respected and
even-handed than you. And for most of the action,
you were there. – Charlie’. Leve answered, ‘I'
m
inclined to accept your most generous offer, subject
to your agreement to the following: 1 - that my
appointment is temporary and that I will relinquish
my seat upon your recovery; 2 - that the powers that
be are identified and that they accept my
appointment; 3 - that I am paid twice what they paid
you. – Chuck.’
Charlie expresses a deep belief in the relationship
between self-respect and recovery, and uses
continuous physical activities including golf, weight
lifting, and racket sports, as a means of building selfrespect for recovering addicts. After leaving the
racquetball circuit, Brumfield returned to paddleball
where he is a perennial force to be reckoned with.
The slower ball once again favors his game style and
natural abilities. He has won numerous National
Paddleball (NPA) age group titles both in singles
and doubles. In March 2012, he won his most recent
national singles title by defeating Andrew Mitchell
in the Golden Masters (55 and older) age group. In
April 2009, at age 60, Brumfield with partner Jamie
Lawson won the Men’s Masters national doubles
title. Succeeding Brumfield by ten years, Jamie also
started with Pensky Pink handball in junior high,
quickly added a paddle to his quiver, and won the
San Diego City Schools handball and paddleball
tournaments three times each, and racquetball once.
‘The names changed, but the scores remained the
same,’ reflects Charlie. Then, as a high school
senior, Jamie opened a copy of my Complete Book
of Racquetball and the pages fell open to an Art
Shay photo of Brumfield hitting his juggernaut
overhead. Jamie describes, ’The fingers of his free
hand signaled ‘V’ for victory before the ball left his
racquet. I blew this picture up as much as I could
with the copy machine in the high school library and
pinned it to my wall at home. I learned to execute
that overhead as well as anyone and probably
execute it as well as Brumfield today.’
Brumfield has won several Golden Masters (55 and
older) doubles titles with Eric Campbell (another
former racquetball pro), and Eric thought it an honor
to play with ‘The best doubles partner I ever saw.
His great ability was to hold the center court and
keep his man out of play. He handled any shot at any
score with a purposeful return. His intensity was the
best part of his game though—always focused in
every point from 1-21.’ At age 55, Brumfield won
the 2004 Senior'
s (35 and older) national paddleball
doubles title with Mike Wisniewski, giving nearly
20 years to some of his younger opponents in that
age group. Down 15-17 in the 2003 final against
RoboCop and Mike Schafer, Charlie leaned against
the wall in pain due to a back injury. Wiz says, ‘He
screamed at me, ‘I want to see some f@:/can
production! Take over!’ I was jump-started and did,
and we won the championship.’ Brumfield is also a
member of the NPA Board of Directors, and is the
founder of Paddleball Nation, a group of paddleball
players in Southern California. Members of
Paddleball Nation have won more than half of the
paddleball national championships since its
inception in 2003. The dominance of Paddleball
Nation in national competition was the subject of the
lead story, entitled ‘Racquetball and Brum get credit
for success of Paddleball Nation,’ in the NPA fall
2009 newsletter.
He still works dual courts, and at present is the inhouse counsel of Pure Bioscience in a San Diego
suburb, El Cajon, CA. At his home club in Sorrento
Valley Racquet and Fitness hangs the widely
distributed poster by Leonard Neiman signed by
both players. In 2003, he was the color commentator
for the Racquetball Legends Pro Tour, and in a
parallel Hybrid Racquetball event (wood paddle and
racquetball) involving the Legends he played with
Chris ‘The Giant’ Crowther but lost a close
tiebreaker to Hogan and Lerner in final. He ‘donkey
kicked’ the Legends around the court, cursed the
refs, fomented a new crowd of clean and sober
Brum’s Bums, and in the final, pointed at his blood
stained knees and hands from fifty years of
scrambles, and screamed, ‘Finally, the stigmata!’ A
torrid marriage of racquetball and paddleball took
place in 2003 with the first ever Hybrid Racquetball
Tour featuring the paddleball champs and
racquetball Legends on
the same court hitting for I was co-inventor in a
long-shot wish to find
money. I was co-inventor common ground between
in a long-shot wish to a sport that is too slow for
find common ground the masses and another
between a sport that is too fast for its own good.
too slow for the masses
and another too fast for its own good. The
matrimonial rule was to use wood paddles and a
racquetball. Every former national paddleball champ
had his way paid to coast-to-coast stops. When the
last shots echoed off the walls, the Hybrid Game
winners were the top racquetball champs, but from
third place down the paddleball champs took the
depth. Brumfield excelled at the Hybrid game, but
after the season ended, both parties racquetball and
paddleball preferred their pure sports.
Earlier this year, in 2013, Charlie read a text on his
cell phone, ‘Hey, There’s one thing we haven’t done
together. Let’s enter the 45+ doubles for our first
win.—Marty Hogan’ Brumfield replied, ‘When the
lion is young it hunts. When the lion is old it rests in
winter.’ The Lion in Winter, I explained to Marty, is
a play based on the life of aging Henry II, King of
England, and how he comes to terms with his
affection and gamesmanship after losing the throne.
A few months later, the racquetball community was
embarrassed and confused that Charlie Brumfield
was not in the Outdoor Hall of Fame. He was
quickly nominated by the World Outdoor
Racquetball (WOR) H of F, and Brumfield
responded typically as the only player in outdoor
history with double inductions into the Hall. ‘On the
issue of dates of induction into the HOF, a review of
the old magazines should disclose that I was
inducted in 1974. The policies changed later so that
applicants could not be considered so early in their
careers. I like the ‘new’ rule, and will bring myself
to be inducted a ‘second time’. That by virtue of
winning both singles and doubles championships at
the first outdoor national championship, his place in
the not yet conceived Hall was assured in 1974. In
other words, he earned it on the over-sized concrete
courts that weekend thirty nine years ago, and the
rest today is a formality.
At 3 a.m. on May 7, 2013, this flash arrived in all the
racquetball community inboxes. ‘None will be
surprised to learn that the Holder has been inducted
by unanimous fiat into the fledgling Outdoor
Racquetball Hall of Fame. The joyous confirmatory
ceremony itself is to be held at the outdoor nationals
in Huntington Beach on July 13th at 1:30. Out of
respect, all tournament play stops during the fateful
proceeding. The Holder should be introduced to the
throng by a dignitary of equal standing in the sport.
Mega-Shoes to fill. A coherent three-minute speech
of introduction would also be required. That latter
requirement may be too high a hurdle. – Charles
Brumfield’
Brumfield still draws large and boisterous audiences
when he competes and remains popular amongst
fans. He is the ‘Holder of All Titles.’ The Holder
was a multiple national champion in racquetball,
paddleball and outdoors in both singles and doubles.
Also beat Bjorn Borg in badminton and squash. He
was the first of two players in history, along with
Marty Hogan, to capture the elusive Triple Crown.
The goal of the top competitors in the early days of
the sport was to one day become ‘the Holder of All
Titles’—no player had never won national
racquetball singles, paddleball singles, and outdoor
racquetball
singles
championships.
Similar
accomplishments in other sports have turned athletes
into legends, such as Secretariat winning at various
distances on all three different racetracks, or Rod
Laver winning four majors on three surfaces in one
year to capture The Grand Slam of Tennis. In no
sport has this mastery of all competitions been
tougher than in racquetball. Charlie Brumfield was
the first to achieve this herculean racquets-paddle
feat and still quickly answers to his nickname, ‘The
Holder.’
Brumfield alone is the
only player ever to hold a
career Triple Crown in
both singles and doubles.
He first captured the
1968 and 1969 Paddleball National Doubles titles
with partner Dr. Bud Muehleisen, and added the
1969 and 1970 Paddleball National Singles Titles.
He won his first official IRA National Singles
Championship in 1972 and first official IRA
National Doubles Championship in 1973 teamed
with Steve Serot. Brumfield later added four more
National IRA and NRC Singles Championships and
two more National Doubles Championships on the
indoor racquetball courts. To complete his Triple
Crown, The Holder won the singles titles at the 1974
and 1975 Outdoor Racquetball Nationals, and
doubles in 1974 teaming with trusted partner
Muehleisen. Brumfield would never again play the
outdoor events leaving him undefeated under the
sun, and the holder of career Triple Crowns in both
singles and doubles and a second Triple Crown in
singles—an accomplishment unlikely ever to be
matched.
He was the first of two
players in history, along
with Marty Hogan, to
capture the elusive Triple
Crown.
When the racquetball day is done, the question is
who is the All-Time Best Player ever. Charlie is a
consensual finalist among Kane, Hogan, Swain,
Sudsy, and Yellen. Yet, few historians of any sport
endure long enough to actually see in live action the
legendary competitors they write about. The problem
in making this determination is an inconvertible truth
that the fifty-five year old game since the first 1968
Nationals has evolved so much that it'
s next to
impossible to compare one era to the next. The
racquets have grown to double head size, much
lighter and better made. The strings are strung with
400% more tension than when I hit the court. The
doubly faster ball moves like a hummingbird instead
of a sponge, the scoring system today is different
with shorter games, and many rules changes have
obliterated early strategies and given rise to new
ones. The sport was and is called racquetball, but the
greatest players throughout the four eras really
played different games. What I can objectively
deliver is the best of the eras. Each with its own
version of the game, personalities, strategies,
equipment, rules, and one great champion.
The Pioneers competed from the first National event
until the mid-seventies. The players of the Golden
Era vied from the mid-seventies through the
eighties. The Modern Era of the sport consisted of
the nineties to the mid-two thousands. The Current
Era is the last five years through the present 2013
US Open. The Pioneers of championship racquetball
were more often described as Docs than Jocks! We
played sweaty chess, a slow strategic contests won
by the smarter player and not the best athlete. We
played with an extremely slow ball with wood frame
and new-fangled medal racquets strung at less than
fifteen pounds tension in two out of three games to
twenty-one point marathons. The ball only moved 90
mph and typical rallies went six or eight shots before
a point ended. How
The doubly faster ball
accurate was the Doc moves like a hummingbird
moniker? Well, five of instead of a sponge.
the top ten of the era and
numerous contenders just off the list had doctoral
level degrees in medicine, dentistry, law,
psychology, and in my case veterinary medicine.
The Champion of the Pioneer Era was Charlie
Brumfield. It is fairly said that the King rules best
when the subjects are most plentiful and splendid,
and for this Charlie Brumfield is the undisputed
King of Racquetball of all time.
What’s it like to know Charlie Brumfield? From that
first step towards the gym, dragging an overstuffed
bag of racquets, gloves and balls, your drive begins
to build. The echoes of his legend blast down the
hall as you enter the door. The gate of lights, smell
of a new ball, and suddenly the court becomes
smaller as he comes closer. Who has been with your
game since day one, trained harder, practiced more,
and will keep driving as though he’s fresh in the
tiebreaker. Charlie Brumfield, King of Racquetball.
!**
5!
/! &
"$% &
6
!
Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball Dynasty
1968
National Paddleball Doubles Champion w/ Bud Muehleisen
1969
National Paddleball Singles Champion
1969
National Paddleball Doubles Champion w/ Bud Muehleisen
1970
National Paddleball Singles Champion
1971
Winner of IRA National Invitational Singles Championship (First
time in history top sixteen players in one event)
1972
IRA National Singles Champion
1972
IRA National Invitational Doubles Champ w/ Bud Muehleisen
1973
IRA National Singles Champion
1973
IRA National Doubles Champion with Steve Serot
1973
IRA National Invitational Doubles Champion w/ Bud Muehleisen
1974
National Outdoor Racquetball Singles Champion
1974
National Outdoor Racquetball Doubles Champion w/ Bud
Muehleisen
1974
IRA National Invitational Doubles Champion with Steve Serot
1974
Inducted into Racquetball Hall of Fame, youngest inductee ever
1975
NRC Pro National Singles Champion
1975
IRA/IPRO National Singles Champion
1975
IRA National Doubles Champion with Craig McCoy
1975
National Outdoor Racquetball Singles Champion
1976
NRC Pro National Singles Champion
1976
NRC Pro National Doubles Champion with Steve Serot
1977
IRA/IPRO National Doubles Champion with Steve Serot
1978
IRA/IPRO National Doubles Champion with Steve Serot
2004
Awarded Early Riskey Trophy for Lifetime Achievement in
Paddleball
2013
Inducted into World Outdoor Racquetball Hall of Fame
Appendix A: Stats
Even in retirement Brumfield remains the Holder of
All Titles as the only player inducted in both the
USAR indoor and WOR Outdoor racquetball halls of
fame and awarded the NPA Earl Riskey Trophy,
paddleball'
s top honor.
!**
5
"$% &
6 ' !
+"
Nobody remembers second place.
I started playing pink ball in 7th grade while in junior high at
Mar Vista in 1960. I played my first paddles after dislocating
my finger in early ’64. Then, in 1965 in the eleventh grade, I
won the
San Diego City Schools
pink
ball
doubles
championship with DC Charleston.
For the record, I prefer the Sportcraft wooden Clunker, and the
17-year spot Bud gave me at the IRA 1969 Nationals final.
Someone in the 1969 gallery muttered within my earshot, ‘For
your first National Champion would you rather have Dr. Bud or
THAT.’ My feelings were hurt. So please never talk to me
about the meaning of ‘homered’ (home conditions, referee or
crowd favorites).
Stick a fork in him, he’s done! (To Keeley at 1971 paddleball
National final)
I am very proud of having won dual titles in paddleball and
racquetball when the singles and doubles were conducted at
the same time. It was very difficult to do in that time when my
singles opponents are resting while I’m playing a number of
doubles matches. (In 1973 he won the IRA National Singles,
IRA National Doubles Champion with Steve Serot, and the
paddleball Nationals, and IRA National Invitational Doubles
Champion with Bud Muehleisen.)
Respect for Muehleisen runs so deep in the West that when
Dr. Bud shifts sports, many follow, myself included.
The best doubles team in racquetball is Brumfield and
whoever my lefty partner is.
B: Brumfield’s Greatest Quotes
King of Racquetball
The only New Age technique I used was ABC- Always Believe
Carl (Loveday).
You aren’t smart enough to beat me. Remember that. (To
Marty Hogan in 1976)
I have been inconvertibly mistaken about Hogan’s abilities.
In those days, I played very close and when an opponent
jacked me with a pass, I pushed off aggressively with my left
arm to go back and make the opponent pay for the temerity.
Oops … guess I haven’t played in a while.
I fully understand as well a robust reluctance by my
contemporaries to ever consider me as a victim. But to be
sure, the calls and the pranks did not always go in my favor.
My memory says that Jan Pasternak and her father were from
the Houston ‘J’. The dad was rich and got me a car to drive in
a subsequent tourney in Houston. On the eve of the finals, I
partied and was unable to remember how I got ‘home’ or the
whereabouts of the car. I played Steve Serot in the finals the
next morning and my training program again proved
successful. I and a partner beat down Serot and Valier later
that memorable day. Unknown if and when the car was
recovered.
Everything I’ve done in my life since my first shot in 7th grade
has been for racquetball.
I AM the People’s Champion!
Another day, Another win.
I have always believed the best training for racquetball is to
play racquetball.
King of Racquetball
My opponents often played without shirts to try to stay cool. I
was accurate and willing enough to take advantage of that
fault.
He gave me no choice. It was either hit him or hold up.
You never see a BIG SHOT like that in a SMALL TOWN LIKE
THIS!
The three wall god was Barry Wallace. He was kind enough to
schedule the pros when the sun was cresting the cement front
wall. Then came the blizzard of lobs and three-wall up and
outs—Three Blind Mice.
Hear comes the Heavenly Donut Truck. (At 20-0).
Get the fuck out of the way! I’m here because I need the
money, and I’m going to win!’ When that happened Borg
couldn’t compete with Brumfield any more in squash and lost
to him in badminton at the Challenge of the Racquets.
That’s as confusing as Father’s Fay in Harlem. (NYC live
interview)
I’ve dropped down from the clear favorite into an upset
position. That means other racquetball players will be in a
position to upset me.
The most important things: There should be television
coverage, produced by be a slower and more consistent ball,
maintain the head size, and a slower floor surface.
My analytical prowess and the ability to pinpoint my
opponent'
s weaknesses have been neutralized by the raw
power.
King of Racquetball
Why should I practice law, when few attorneys make what I’m
making?
‘Charles Brumfield, USD ... I wasn'
t aware Harvard had a
cooking school.’ (To attorney Frederick Smith the Third,
Hawvard)
Frankly, the pressure to perform in law is far greater than in
racquetball. In racquetball, the odds are always against me.
I'
m not gifted in any way as an athlete. In fact, I'
ve always
been the underdog THAT nobody expected to win. In law,
however, the exact opposite is the case. I feel a great deal of
pressure to perform at the levels others undoubtedly expect of
me, which I expect of myself.
When the lion is young it hunts. When the lion is old it rests in
winter.
Finally, the stigmata! (2003 Legends Tour)
None will be surprised to learn that the Holder has been
inducted by unanimous fiat into the fledgling Outdoor
Racquetball Hall of Fame. The joyous confirmatory ceremony
itself is to be held at the outdoor nationals in Huntington
th
Beach on July 13 at 1:30. Out of respect, all tournament play
stops during the fateful proceeding. The Holder should be
introduced to the throng by a dignitary of equal standing in the
sport. Mega-Shoes to fill. A coherent three-minute speech of
introduction would also be required. That latter requirement
may be too high a hurdle.
I assume you know Charlie is sick and prognosis is not great. I
have decided to dedicate this year’s 2013 US OPEN in his
honor. – (Doug Ganim, US Open Director)
King of Racquetball
I saw you win that last match. Six months after I die have them
dig me up. I'
ll still spot you 15 points.
You probably are thinking after all these years I’m trying to
poison you. – (Steve bo Keeley)
A player never stops learning how to play the game.
!
"
/
!" /
Steve bo Keeley is
the author of the
best-selling
Complete Book of
Racquetball, It’s a
Racquet, The Kill &
Rekill Gang, and
hundreds of articles
from
racquetball’s
inception to the present. He was Charlie Brumfield’s primary
nemesis throughout the Golden Era of the sport in the 70s,
and lived with Brumfield as the game began to grow in
Michigan and California. He has won five National paddleball
singles titles, one US National Racquetball runner-up,
Canadian National Champ, three Pro titles, and was ranked
nd
2
rd
or 3
behind Brumfield throughout the sport heyday. He
was the first equipment-sponsored player, the first apparel
sponsored, the first club pro, ran the first clinic and camps,
and was the sport’s foremost early instructor. Steve bo Keeley
opened up Central and South America to racquetball, and the
remainder of his adventures in life to this point make his
Wikipedia page read like Indiana Jones.
& 7
Find more information by entering the following into your Web
browser.
Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball Facebook
Charlie Brumfield Wikipedia
Steve bo Keeley Wikipedia
Steve bo Keeley Facebook
RacquetballMuseum US Facebook
US Racquetball Museum Website
*/
Cover photo of the 1975 Las Vegas Tropicana Nationals
Charlie Brumfield vs. Craig McCoy by Davey Bledsoe. The
PPA shot is courtesy of Bud Muehleisen. ‘Mighty Brumfield’
cartoon by Jan Campbell Mathews. ‘Brumfield Victory Urge’ by
John Foust. The other photos are courtesy of Art Shay, John
Foust, and the US Racquetball Museum.

Charlie Brumfield: King of Racquetball

Transcription

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