The Surprising Rene Lacoste

I grew up in the 1980s, which is to say, I had my teenage years in the 1980s. I went to high school then. I finished college then. There was a book titled The Preppy Handbook written by one Lisa Birnbach that came out in 1980 and influenced many a high school student (and those just outside that range). Having never read this book, I'm not sure if she wrote it seriously or more tongue in cheek, in some kind of anthropological distanced manner.

At the time I was vaguely aware of the term "preppy", I still had no idea what it meant. With hindsight, I realized that "preppy" referred to someone that went to "prep" school or preparatory school. These schools were mostly popular in the northeast, and was effectively college before college.

If you've ever watched Dead Poet's Society or I suppose School Ties, these are prep schools. You pay tuition. You may live on the campus. Rich kids go there. And because they're rich, they dress rich.

So in those days, this preppy style meant polo shirts, sweaters tied around the neck, boat shoes without socks. It was a look that bespoke casual wealth.

Key in that attire was the Lacoste shirt. These are those shirts with alligators on it.

Except they weren't alligators. They were crocodiles.

And who was this Lacoste guy anyway?

If you had to point to the most influential men and women in tennis, not the best players mind you, but the most influential, who would you pick?

On the women's side, it'd have to be Billie Jean King. Billie Jean King's influence far exceeds her considerable contributions to the sport of tennis. Of the many matches she played, it was a match that was an exhibition that was her most important.

Bobby Riggs, who has been considered a number 1 player during the 1940s (the ranking system that is in place now wasn't around then), was already in his mid 50s in 1973. He challenged the top player of the time, Margaret Court, and despite being 20 years older, he crushed her easily. While Court was a great player, she sometimes lacked the mental toughness we expect from our best athletes.

Once she lost, Billie Jean felt it necessary to play Bobby and win, to legitimize women's tennis. She won in straight sets, and her win was key during the women's lib movement, and title 9, which opened up opportunities for women in college sports.

Her influence was wide and pervasive.

On the men's side, who would you pick? You might pick Arthur Ashe, but his influence as an African American player wasn't nearly so influential. For one, baseball had made the bigger stride, many years earlier with Jackie Robinson. Athletes like Muhammad Ali made bigger noise.

I'd pick Rene Lacoste. No, he wasn't a political person.

Instead, he was a thinker, an inventor.

Remember those Lacoste polo shirts? The shirts that fueled the preppy revolution?

Lacoste was the top French player, back during the 1930s, when France built a stranglehold of success. He was the leader of the four musketeers. Along with Jean Borotra, Jacques "Toto" Brugnon, and Henri Cochet, these four men would represent the height of French tennis.

Even during his playing days, Lacoste was innovative. The leading American tennis player of the day was "Big Bill" Tilden. Though Tilden stood merely 6 feet tall, he was considered dashing, larger than life, even as he hid from public his homosexuality.

Lacoste tried to figure out how to beat Tilden. Lacoste was a steady player. In those days, there were wooden racquets, and heavy balls. Muscle-laden Spaniards hitting heavy topspin were a thing of the future, and so it was possible, with great training, to simply get the ball back, aiming it side to side. Lacoste used this strategy to take advantage of his superior ball positioning, over Tilden's power, but lack of good movement.

But Lacoste innovated elsewhere. In those days, it was common for players to wear long white shirts and long pants to play the sports. It was difficult to play when the weather was humid. Lacoste discovered that the shirts were ill-suited for tennis, and began to design what would now be called a polo shirt. Given how ubiquitous this shirt is, you might be surprised that a tennis player invented it.

Lacoste also invented the predecessor to the modern ball machine. You'd feed tennis balls down a tube, and then crank a wheel, and it would play the ball well enough to practice volleys. Even a person who didn't play could set it up and help players to practice.

Lacoste invented one of the most distinctive racquet ever. In a day when wooden racquets were popular, Lacoste realized wood was heavy, wood would warp. He invented a steel racquet. But it wasn't merely a wood racquet. It was a steel racquet with two wires, one wrapping the other. This was not something you'd think of out of the blue. Jimmy Connors used this racquet throughout the 1970s. Even Billie Jean used it for a while.

Lacoste continued to invent. Guy Forget, a tennis player of the late 80s and early 90s, used one of his last inventions, which was a guitar shaped racquet that was bent on the inside, and lead Forget (pronounced for-zhay) to a top 5 ranking, and one of the most stunning upsets in Davis Cup history, when a ragtag team of Forget and over-the-hill Henri Leconte beat the team of Agassi and Sampras, with top doubles team, Flach and Seguso.

To be fair, both Agassi and Sampras had yet to reach the peak of their careers. Agassi was certainly the more accomplished player, with Sampras only having his surprising 1990 US Open win to his resume. Sampras was not nearly as dominating as he was to become in the mid 1990s.

Even so, the surface was carpet, and France, with Leconte and Forget should have lost. Yet, Sampras lost to both the magician Leconte and to Guy Forget who seemed nervous, but had one of his best years in 1991, won the match. The French duo also paired to beat the Americans. Coached by Yannick Noah, the 1983 French Open winner (still, the last win by a Frenchman in the French Open), this Gallic team produced an amazing upset.

Forget played with Lacoste's unusual racquet, which, alas, never caught on elsewhere.

So, Lacoste, with his influence in modernizing the game through clothing, racquets, and tennis strategy, was a unique oddity in all of sports.

An inventor, who was also an athlete.