By Nancy Gill McShea
(May 3, 2010) Still ruggedly handsome and agile on the eve of his 85th birthday, Philadelphia native Tony Franco, who once had a blind date with Grace Kelly and looks like he could have auditioned for the Cary Grant role in the 1940 movie "The Philadelphia Story," instead left the city in 1938 for more exotic surroundings and landed a role in tennis.
"I was 13 when my Dad was transferred and moved the family to Puerto Rico," Tony said. "And that was the first time I stepped onto a tennis court."
He picked up an old, loosely strung racket that looked more like a lacrosse stick and learned the game with local kids at the Condado Beach Hotel and the San Juan Country Club.
In the 71 years since he ventured inside the white lines, Tony has put together a fascinating tennis background at the same time he forged a successful business career with IBM.
Tony was recently inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame alongside legendary tennis historian and journalist Steve Flink and former World No. 21 Fritz Buehning.
A self described late bloomer, he was 80 years old when he earned his first USTA No. 1 singles ranking, in 2005, and the world’s No. 1 singles ranking, in 2006. He has won five ITF world championships (1 singles, 4 doubles), 12 USTA national senior titles (4 singles, 8 doubles) and has reached the finals eight times (twice in the 75s and six times in the 80s). In 2009, Captain Franco led the U.S. Gardnar Mulloy Cup (80s) team to the silver medal at the Super-Senior World Championships in Australia.
To get the ball rolling on his long journey, he returned to Philly in 1942 and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He detoured briefly to enlist in the U.S. Navy during World War 11 and served aboard a landing craft tank.
"We landed at Normandy in July of 1944, six weeks after the invasion so there were no fireworks," said Tony, who spent time running supplies back and forth from England and up and down the Seine, once that was secure, and was lucky enough to be in Paris on VE Day for one of the bigger parties of all time. He completed his tour of duty and finished up at Penn.
"My dad is modest and a gentleman who doesn’t like to talk about himself so I’ll share a story," his daughter Lola said. "When my dad arrived at Penn he was 5-foot-4 and weighed 90 pounds. The coach of the crew team tried to recruit him and promised a varsity letter as Penn had a tremendous crew team in the 1940s. But my dad told the coach in his squeaky voice that he was going out for the tennis team because he would rather get a letter for being good, not for being small. He made the varsity tennis team as a freshman."
Tony graduated from Penn in 1949 and has fond memories of playing tennis there. "Fred Kovaleski’s William and Mary squad and Dick Savitt’s Cornell team clobbered us," he said, "but the last weekend of the season we defeated both Harvard and Dartmouth." He went home to Puerto Rico to work as a trainee with IBM and continued to play tennis regularly with Charlie Pasarell’s father — the future pro was 2 at the time — and the pair once split sets in an exhibition at the Caribe Hilton with the famous Fred Perry and Martin Buxby.
In 1951 he was 25, single, and his IBM bosses asked where he’d like to be assigned. "I told them Rio, Havana or Mexico City," said Tony, who understood well that IBM meant ‘I’ll Be Moving!’ IBM passed on exotic locales and sent him to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to set up an office and build the business.
Honduras was home for 12 years and at a party he met Edith, the perfect Grace Kelly to his Cary Grant. They were married in 1956 and will celebrate their 54th anniversary this June.
In 1963 Tony and Edith moved on to Mexico City, IBM’s Caribbean Central American area headquarters.
Tony continued to play tennis at every destination, of course, and represented Puerto Rico at the Central American and Caribbean Olympics; Honduras at the Central American Championships; and Mexico at the Stevens Cup competition.
In late 1969, Tony and his family returned to the U.S. and settled in Briarcliff, N.Y. He now plays tennis regularly at both Club Fit at Briarcliff and the Saw Mill Club. In 1970, he became eligible to compete in USTA men’s 45 senior events. The top four seeds in the first Eastern tournament he played were Bobby Riggs, Ellis Flack, Al Doyle and Tony Vincent, along with national contenders Bill Tully and Alan Fleming. "A pretty tough crowd," he said, yet he managed to rank No. 10 in the East that year. He later ranked first in the East from the men’s 50s on up and chaired Eastern’s senior ranking committee, a volunteer assignment he handled from 1976 through 1989 when he retired from IBM. He was also the captain of Eastern’s Atlantic Coast 45 and 55 Senior Intersectional team matches.
Tony was a national quarterfinalist in the 55s and turned heads in the 60s when, unseeded, he upset Riggs, the top seed and defending champ, 6-3, 6-3, at the 1986 USTA National 60 Clay Courts in Little Rock, Arkansas. Asked if strategy were the key, Tony replied, "I just tried not to miss and I was lucky I was able to move fairly well. It was one of those days when everything seemed to go right, and Riggs was six years older than I was."
Riggs told newspaper reporters that he had run into a buzz saw playing Tony. Curt Beusman, Tony’s longtime doubles partner, ordered a batch of T-shirts for their tennis buddies imprinted with "Buzz Saw Franco!"
The good times rolled and longevity ruled. "We’ve become friends with players and their wives over the years," Tony said. "It’s kind of a tight knit fraternity, an interesting group."
He played Fred Kovaleski in college and 51 years later lost to him in the final of the 2000 USTA National 75 Grass Courts. The runner-up finish earned Tony a spot on the 2001 U.S. Men’s 75 Bitsy Grant Cup team in Australia. Then Tony struck gold in 2004 when he beat his friend Grady Nichols in three sets to win his first national singles title at the USTA Men’s 75 Grass Courts at Orange Lawn in New Jersey.
He is now a seasoned veteran on the world stage, having represented the U.S. on five men’s 80 world cup teams, most of them played in Antalya, Turkey. Tony won his first world singles title there in 2006, the year Nichols talked him into playing both singles and doubles in the same event. Together they have captured three world doubles titles: in Turkey and in Australia; and they have won seven USTA national senior titles.
"Tony is a great partner and friend," Nichols said. "He has a joke for every occasion. They just keep flying out of his mouth and he keeps us all loose."
Kovaleski is also a fan. "Tony is a wonderful competitor and a genuine sportsman who always does the right thing," said Fred, who has never lost to his friend. "In the heat of competition senior players will do almost anything to win, but Tony will never give anyone a bad call. Watch out for his forehand, though; it’s a weapon."
It’s a good thing Tony has a sense of humor because his losses to Kovaleski are a family joke. Lola’s oldest son Patrick used to ask his grandfather, "How did you do?" and Tony would say, "Oh, I lost to Mr. Kovaleski." The last time Patrick asked Tony "How did you do?" Tony answered glumly, "Same result," and Patrick said, "Do you think you can beat Mrs. Kovaleski?"
Lola said Patrick’s dad, Kevin Seaman, wasn’t laughing the first time he played his future father in law when Tony was 60.
"Kevin was 23, in great shape and had played varsity tennis at Hobart," Lola said. "He was certain that he could beat a man 39 years his senior. But dad is a very smart player. He has a horrible backhand and a lame serve so he covers his weak spots and studies his opponent. Just like in chess, he can see what’s going to happen next on the court and it’s fascinating to watch him figure it out. Kevin wasn’t moving well, Dad saw that right away and whooped him, like 0 and 1. He ran Kevin all over the court, hit all the corners, lobbed him and drop shot him. Kevin thought he was going to have a heart attack."
Tony Jr. says his dad is a very good parent but he, too, has been stung by that cagey court strategy. "Dad is highly competitive but doesn’t mind losing,” he said. "He has a heck of a drop shot and he used to take great pleasure in hitting one that I couldn’t get to…The first time I couldn’t get to his drop shot I was in my late thirties and I could see that he was a little bit sad. I think it showed he felt bad for me that I was getting older…it said something about him, that there’s no greater pride than seeing your child do well..."
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.