By Nancy Gill McShea
(April 27, 2010) If you followed tennis during the golden years of the professional game in New York, chances are you remember the 6-foot-5 image of the fiery Fritz Buehning dashing across the court at the US Open.
Fritz was out of New Jersey and often met his Eastern junior friends and foes across the net on the storied Stadium Court. In 1982 he defeated Vitas Gerulaitis of Howard Beach in an early round match there. At the 1983 Open, Fritz and his partner Van Winitsky were doubles finalists on Stadium, surrendering to John McEnroe of Douglaston, who once beat Fritz in a boys’ 12s match in Bayside, Queens; and Peter Fleming of Chatham, a childhood practice partner at The Racquets Club in Short Hills, N.J.
On Friday night in New York City, Fritz joined his former rivals McEnroe and Fleming as he was inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame.
"Fritz and I go way back, even playing against each other when we were just little kids," McEnroe recalled recently. "Like me, Fritz wore his heart on his sleeve and played the game with a lot of passion. He definitely is one of the most talented players to be inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame."
"The game of tennis was made for me," said Fritz, whose goal was to rank among the world’s top ten. He fought for every point and admits now that his temper outbursts were basically anger directed at himself. "I was second behind McEnroe in fines at Wimbledon, and if I had made it to the second week I might have passed him. It’s ironic because to me Wimbledon is the mecca of tennis."
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The record shows that Fritz played the pro circuit full time for five years, from 1979-85, and achieved career high world rankings of No. 21 in singles and No. 4 in doubles. He was poised to break into the world’s top ten in singles when a foot injury derailed him and ended his career abruptly at age 25.
Like the fictional Roy Hobbs in the movie The Natural, whose goal was to be the best ever before his baseball career was cut short, Fritz suddenly understood all too well the meaning of the movie’s famous line – "We have two lives, the life we learn with and the life we live with after that…"
…The life we learn with….. Athletic ability was in Fritz’s blood. He learned the game at the Racquets Club with his father, Dr. Peter Buehning, West Germany’s best gymnast before he moved to the U.S.; and with his mother, Renate, who played on the 1958 U.S. women’s national handball team. Fritz’s sister Susan was the captain of her high school tennis team and his brothers, Peter Jr. and Jim, both played team handball for the U.S. at the Olympics, but Fritz had the edge in tennis.
He signaled his impending arrival on the world’s pro circuit at age 17 when he won the 1977 New Jersey High School State tennis championships as a Millburn junior. The late Gene Scott took notice and gave Fritz his first wildcard into Scott’s pro event in South Orange. More wild cards followed and between 1977 and 1979 he vaulted into the tennis spotlight.
“During that two year window I went from being a top junior player to being able to win matches on the pro tour,” said Fritz, who told a reporter that he had trained for that opportunity all his life. “I started to play at 7, won my first tournament at 9 and played national tournaments when I was 10.”
He skipped his senior year in high school, headed to UCLA on a tennis scholarship and the following spring helped his team reach the 1978 NCAA finals. In the summer of 1978 he was 18 and still eligible for the juniors. He won the USTA national hard court championships and ranked first in the country. He returned to UCLA the next year, won All-American and Pac-10 Player of the Year honors while playing in the first singles and doubles positions, and led UCLA to the 1979 NCAA team championship.
…The pro career…Fritz was 19 and on summer break when he set out to see the world. He traveled to Paris to compete for the U.S. in the International Lawn Tennis Club event and then qualified and won a round in the men’s main draw at Wimbledon before moving on to the Pan Am Games in Puerto Rico.
Later that summer, he defeated 1975 US Open champ Manuel Orantes on clay in the first round of the US Open warm-up in Washington, D.C., and then bowed in the quarters to Johan Kriek at the final Open tune up in Stowe, Vermont. Buoyed by his results, Fritz turned pro two weeks before the 1979 Open, and by year’s end he ranked among the world’s top 100.
In early 1980 he fell prey to the sophomore slump and admitted that a poor work ethic might be the culprit. Luckily, his former coach Harry Hopman asked him to train on the Peugeot-Rossignol team under coach Bob Brett. The team was designed to give structure to young pros, among them Jose Luis Clerc, Andres Gomez and a few other comers. Fritz caught a second wind, inched up the singles rankings to No. 69 and then broke through.
By December of 1980 he had reached his first singles final at the South African Open in Johannesburg, defeating 1977 US Open champ Guillermo Vilas and doubles specialist Bob Lutz before losing to Kim Warwick in the title match. Three weeks later, he won his first Grand Prix singles title at the New South Wales Open in Sydney, Australia. He beat future French Open champ Yannick Noah in the second round and prevailed in the final, 6-4, 6-7, 7-6, over UCLA graduate Brian Teacher.
“Doing well at Johannesburg and Sydney was the springboard,” said Fritz, whose singles ranking jumped to No. 21 at the end of 1980. Victories over guys in the top ten kept mounting; he was in the running.
In the summer of 1981 Tennis magazine’s editorial group singled him out as a player to watch. Another reporter wrote that his blazing serve, savage volleys and explosive temper made him one of the top competitors and one of the leading personalities on the tour.
In 1982 he lost to Clerc in the finals of Richmond but that same year he beat Gene Mayer in Mexico. By 1983 he had posted significant wins over Grand Slam champ Mats Wilander, future Wimbledon champ Pat Cash and top tenners Kevin Curren and Tim Mayotte.
Fritz says that his favorite victories were in singles against the cream of the crop, yet one of his most memorable victories came in doubles at Wimbledon in 1982. He and his partner Ferdie Taygan defeated Heinz Gunthardt and Balazs Taroczy 8-6 in the fifth set to earn a spot in the quarters where they lost in four sets to eventual champs Peter McNamara and Paul McNamee.
Fritz was a well known doubles specialist; he netted 12 titles and reached the finals 15 times. Some were repeats with partners Taygan, a 1981 victory over the Mayer brothers at Rotterdam and a semifinal showing at the US Open; and with Fleming, especially a 6-3, 6-0 route of Tomas Smid and Gundhardt at the 1984 U.S. Indoors in Memphis, and a three setter in 1981 over the Giammalvas at Atlanta.
…The life we live with after that…In 1984 Fritz was 24 and had bone spurs removed from his foot. He returned to the circuit too quickly, developed pain and was diagnosed with a stress fracture. Over a period of two years — from 1985-87 — he underwent six operations to treat bone spurs in the ankle joint and a stress fracture in the nevicular bone. He walked with a cast and crutches during that time frame.
“If you can’t run you can’t play tennis,” Fritz said, “so that was it!”
He played his last match in March of 1985 and retired officially in 1987.
“I was pretty depressed for a very long time,” he said. “I’m [a member of the Open’s] “Final 8” Club but I didn’t go back to the tournament for 7 years. The guys I came up with were all still out there.”
He immersed himself instead in his family’s manufacturing business in Hillside, N.J. “My grandfather started the business, we sold plastics machinery,” said Fritz, who took on the role of international sales manager. When the business closed, he became involved in selling the company’s assets.
Fritz now teaches tennis at Twin Oaks in Morristown, N.J., and works in industrial sales for a Chicago plastics company. He also enjoys the accomplishments of his three children — Gerhard, a senior at Rutgers and the captain of the lacrosse team; Chelsea, who plays soccer on scholarship at USC; and Saxon, a junior tennis player who trains at Saddlebrook in Florida.
Like Hobbs, Fritz has lived the line from The Natural. He has closed a few doors and discovered a few new beginnings.
“Tennis was my life,” he said, “and it is still my passion. I can play a decent set of singles and a couple of sets of doubles.”
A good omen, that!
Nancy Gill McShea worked as a copy editor at a major New York advertising agency, spent 15 years teaching English and running the library in two Long Island high schools and coached varsity tennis. She has spent the past 27 years reporting in magazines and newspapers about tennis players and the game's leaders in the United States Tennis Association, Eastern Section.