Robert Larimore Riggs February 25, β October 25, [ 4 ] was an American tennis champion who was the world No. As a year-old amateur in , Riggs won the singles title at Wimbledon , [ 5 ] the U. National Championships now U. Open , and was runner-up at the French Championships. He was U. After retirement from his pro career, Riggs became well known as a hustler and gambler. He organized numerous exhibition challenges, inviting active and retired tennis pros to participate.
In , aged 55, he held two such events, first against the No. Depending entirely on speed and ball control, he soon began to win boys through 15 years old and then juniors through 18 years old tournaments. Jones and the Southern California Tennis Association , Riggs writes in his autobiography that for many years Jones considered Riggs to be too small and not powerful enough to be a top-flight player.
Jack Kramer , however, said in his own autobiography that Jones turned against Riggs "for being a kid hustler". After initially helping Riggs, Jones then refused to sponsor him at the important Eastern tournaments.
With the help of Bartosh and others, Riggs played in various National Tournaments and by the time he was 16 was the fifth-ranked junior player in the United States. The next year he won his first National Championship , winning the National Juniors by beating Joe Hunt in the finals. That same year, , he met Hunt in 17 final-round matches and won all 17 of them. He went undefeated for four years of play at Franklin High School in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and was the first person to win California's state high school singles trophy three times.
The final was "a victory of youthful determination over veteran court generalship. At 18 in , Riggs was still a junior but won the Southern California Men's Title, Los Angeles Ambassador hotel event and Los Angeles metropolitan championships and then went East to play on the grass-court circuit in spite of Jones's opposition.
