On Friday, April 29, the Junior Tennis Foundation will host the 24th annual Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame awards dinner at The Water Club in New York City. This year's inductees are Brian Hainline, M.D., chief medical officer of the United States Tennis Association; Robert L. Litwin, a senior national and world champion; Melissa Brown, the 1984 French Open singles quarterfinalist and winner of the Wimbledon Ladies' Plate; and Al Picker, the veteran tennis columnist of The Newark Star Ledger. Nancy Gill McShea has written profiles of each inductee here:

Robert L. Litwin

By Nancy Gill McShea

Sports icons Phil Jackson and Andre Agassi have been defined as evolving Zen Masters. Add to the list the name of Bob Litwin, the world and national senior tennis champion who has been ranked first in the world. Bob confided that he started to evolve personally and win major senior titles after he created “The Focused Game” concept, a series of Zen-like self-affirmation techniques he began teaching in 1978 at mental training seminars.
Today, 35 years after he began writing about his focus philosophy, interviewing coaches, national champs and training others in the discipline, Bob works full time as a mental training performance coach with Wall Street hedge funds, traders and athletes. He uses the athlete as a model for high performance to help people get into the ideal space to bring their best to their jobs.

Brian Cheney, ranked No. 1 last year in USTA men’s 60 singles/doubles and the son of the legendary Dodo Cheney, believes that Bob’s gift is his ability to convey his thinking in his writing. “When I read his writing, I relate to what he’s saying about his own experience and that helps me grow in my own life,” he said. “That’s why he’s a successful life coach.”
To get to this point in his personal history, Bob has experienced and come to terms with a full range of life’s highs and lows. In the process he has learned that “we are not our roles; all roles are transient. We evolve as we get older and what’s left is who we really are. Many know the journey but few actually take it.”

The tennis angle is obviously a huge part of the story. Bob played the game casually when he attended Great Neck South High School but didn’t compete in national tournaments until he was 35. “I was awed by tennis’s elite,“ he admitted some years ago. I kept thinking you can’t start at 35 and be a great national player.”

He changed that story when he won his first national title at the 1990 USTA Men’s 35 Grass Court Championships in Southampton, N.Y. He was 43. Less than a year later, he silenced skeptics when he beat California’s Dave Bohannon 6-2, 6-4 in the final to win the USTA Men’s 40 Grass Court singles title at Santa Barbara, proving to himself that his victory in the 35s had not been a fluke. He capitalized on his strengths – mental toughness, great foot-speed and what many consider his wicked southpaw serve – and committed just two unforced errors. He called on his focus techniques to concentrate on the short term task at hand and keep his attention in the present to banish anxiety.

He forged ahead and claimed victory in 14 USTA national championships, ranked 21 times in the U.S. top ten and played on and/or served as captain of countless USTA-sponsored national and international team events. He’s a legend in the East – undefeated for 11 years while ranking first in his age group 18 times and 29 times among the top three. *(Bob’s national and international tennis achievements in singles, doubles and team play fill 5 pages. E-mail requests will be honored.)

In 2002 he was honored as the USPTA National Senior Player of the Year and on 16 occasions he took home Eastern’s USPTA Player of the Year Award.

In 2005 Bob stood on the mountaintop when he won the ITF (International Tennis Federation) Men’s 55 World Championships in Perth, Australia, and achieved the world’s No. 1 ranking for the year. He has twice been a world finalist (he defaulted once on Yom Kippur) and has notched a trio of top three world rankings.

His peers say he is the classic good guy. Mike Silverman, director of Sports, City Parks Foundation, targeted Bob to receive the 2008 Vitas Gerulaitis community service award for his support of the foundation’s junior programs. “However big a heart Bob has as a tennis champion, he has an even bigger heart as a person. He’s been an inspiration to many, including me,” Mike said.

When Bob hosted “Tennis Talk” -- a live audio stream, call-in talk show – which aired on the USA Network during the 2000 French and US Open Championships, he invited his doubles partner Kirk Moritz to work as co-host. “Bob is like a brother to me. Asking me to join him was a nice gesture and very good for my spirit,” said Kirk, who had endured open heart surgery shortly before the show.

Kirk let it slip that Bob is not completely perfect, however, that he used to engage in a bit of hostility on the court. “He had a feisty basketball attitude like the other left handed Aquarian [John McEnroe], but he’s more relaxed now. His writing helps his play, it helps him to visualize.”

Visualizing not only helps his play, it also refreshes his memory. Bob was a basketball player in high school and said “tennis was a fill sport.” He went to college at Michigan, tried out for the freshman tennis team and, coincidentally, met Dr. Brian Hainline’s brother, John, across the net. John was heavily recruited and trounced him 6-0, 6-0. Bob put his racket back in the closet and didn’t hit another tennis ball for five years.

In the early 1970s he taught history at the Franklin School in Manhattan and the members of the school administration decided to start a tennis team. They checked resumes to find a coach, saw that Bob had played tennis in high school and told him “You’re it!” Kids at liberal private schools in those days were politically sophisticated and more interested in debating the Vietnam War than learning a new sport. Only two students showed up for the team. No problem; Bob had instant practice partners!

He got a summer job stringing rackets at a club in Great Neck. The head pro, Joe Fischbach, was passionate about golf and often AWOL when people showed up for tennis lessons so Bob started teaching.

You know the rest. He left the classroom to teach tennis full time, and during that period he welcomed into his life his two daughters, Jody and Amy. He played a few tournaments and thought his game was looking good as he moved toward his thirties. At 33 he tried out for the Maccabi Games and qualified for the nationals. A young kid from Harvard beat him but a spectator told Bob he was close.

“That triggered a positive reaction,” Bob said. “It was a double elimination. I won the next two matches and lost the fourth but decided I would try again in four years to make the 35s team. I played some before the next tryouts – met all the great Eastern players -- the Steve Siegels, the Doug Barrows – but I got the experience and made the team. I went to Israel, won a bronze in singles and a gold medal in doubles with Steve Gottlieb.”

In 1983 he won all his matches in the East but didn’t meet the top two players and ranked third. His goal was to be ranked at the top of his age group so he kept going.

“I was always evolving as a player,” he said. “Even back then I had a sense that I could be better. I wasn’t stuck on a point in time. Every year was a mountain and I thought that was cool. I once told Brian Cheney I thought it was amazing that I was up there with the best players – with him, the Larry Turvilles, the Armstead Neelys, the Charlie Hoevelers. Brian said, ‘Bob, you’ve beaten the top players; guys are looking up the hill at you.’ Yet after I achieved the No. 1 world ranking in 2005 I still wanted to play a perfect match.”

But in the fall of 2007, Carol, Bob’s devoted wife of 26 years, was diagnosed with cancer while he was playing the grasscourts at the Rockaway Hunt Club. Dealing with Carol’s illness from 2007 to the summer of 2010, when she passed away, was the toughest battle of his life.

To complicate matters, in early 2008 during a national event in St. Petersburg, Bob flipped over a cement wall. “I was lying there for about five minutes waiting to see if I was paralyzed,” he said. “I got up, attempted to finish the match but had to stop.”
He was in pain for a year, thought it was a muscle problem and eventually went to see Dr. Hainline to help eliminate the pain. The X-ray showed that he needed a new hip. Bob was shocked, said he went into instant denial but had surgery in July of 2009 and then a total revision of the surgery in November of 2010.

He is now on the comeback trail, getting ready for a tournament in May and writing a new chapter in his story after two years away.

“If I’m ready to play I’m not going to lose,” Bob said. “The more complete I am as a human being the better tennis player I am. When you gain perspective about what’s really important and then think about the importance of winning a match, the pressure disappears. I feel like the work I’ve done over the last several years – the spirit work of accepting and non judgment and being more forgiving of myself – these are the things that free you up as a player. So I didn’t hit my backhand today. Big deal. All the things I needed to get through the last four years I bring to the court. I’m going to look like I don’t even care.

“That is the new story I‘m writing for myself right now.”