George Jay Gould II
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George Jay Gould II (September 1, 1888 – January 26, 1935) was an American real tennis player, and son of financier George Jay Gould I. Also called Jay Gould, Jr., he was the world champion (1914–1916) and the olympic gold medalist (1908, under the name jeu de paume). He held the U.S. Amateur Championship title continuously from 1906–1925, winning 18 times (no tournaments were held during the U.S. involvement in World War I).[1] The court built for him by his father at the family's Georgian Court estate was restored in 2005.
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[edit] Birth
He was born on September 1, 1888 to George Jay Gould I.
[edit] Marriage and children
He married Anne Douglass Graham in 1911. George had the following children:
- Anne Douglass Gould who married Frank Spencer J. Meador and lived in Texas
- George Jay Gould III (1918-1987) who was a student in the Arizona Desert School in Tucson, Arizona when his father died, and he later married Eileen O'Malley (1919-1996).
[edit] Death
He died on January 26, 1935, at Margaretville, New York. The cause of death was "hemorrhage of the esophagus brought on by a complexity of ailments."
[edit] Tennis
Richard Travers wrote in October 2005:
At the end of 1898, when guests arrived to stay and to play polo on the oval that George had created for that purpose, the weather was so bad that the matches had to be called off. "Don’t worry" said George, "This won’t happen again. Come back next year." And when the guests did, they found that a new sporting complex – Bachelor’s Court, now called the Casino – had been built. This contained a real tennis court and a racquets court along the long north side, with a swimming pool, flanked by a ballroom and the sporting lounge, on the south side. The shorter east and west sides, with a bowling alley and squash courts respectively, completed the rectangle. In the middle was a tanbark ring, about 200 feet x 100 feet in size. The central covered tanbark ring was used for many purposes, including concerts and plays, but perhaps none more kitsch than the human chess game, where appropriately-dressed people were moved by command to the nominated spot. What happened when a piece was taken? I guess he just shuffled off, reflecting on the fate of being the pawn of the rich. Jay and his elder brother Kingdon were taught to play polo and, under the tutelage of Frank Forester, tennis. They used special lightweight rackets, made in Tuxedo by Robert Moore. Frank Forester (1876-1948), who had been brought to Lakewood by George Gould for this specific purpose, was coach and manager of the Racquet & Tennis Club of New York. He had started his tennis career at Prince’s Club as a lad at the same time as Cecil "Punch" Fairs, and went to the newly-built court at Jesmond Dene before coming to the USA. He stayed at Lakewood until 1914, when he became the coach for Payne Whitney at Greentree. He is described as a strong player, but he never challenged for the Championship and devoted himself to coaching others. Kingdon didn’t prosper at tennis, but Jay certainly did. What astonished the players from Europe was that, having started at 12 years of age, Jay displayed such great ability and maturity of judgment at an age when others were just about to pick up the racket for the first time. As noted in The Pageant of America, "In Gould the followers of court tennis found their ideal champion. Covering the court with almost incredible speed he never erred in his judgment of distance and direction." From about 1904 the court at Lakewood became a magnet for tennis players, who came to play with this intriguing prodigy. They included “Punch” Fairs (who knew Forester from the old days at Prince’s Club), Tom Pettitt, Fred Tompkins, Jack White, and Alfred White. George Gould and J.H. Smith had brought over Ferdinand Garcin, the Champion of France from 1893 till his retirement in 1925, from Paris and he spent half his time at Lakewood teaching Jay Gould. Eustace Miles also coached Jay during his stay in North America in 1900-1901.
Allison Danzig wrote in 1930:
The outstanding features of Gould’s play wherein he excelled all others were, first his service and, secondly, his stroke on the floor. While Richard Sears is credited with being the originator of the overhead railroad service, and many others preceded Gould in the use of it, the master of Lakewood and Philadelphia developed it so much further than did anyone else, and made of it so fearful an attacking weapon, that his name is almost synonymous with it. Such was the accuracy of Gould in giving this service that he seemed to be able to place it within an inch of wherever he desired to, and his variations of length and pace left the receiver hopelessly in the dark. This was true not only of the first set of the match, but of the last as well, for such was endurance of Gould that he could deliver the service practically interminably. Such a service was calculated alone to make Gould a hard man to beat. But when it was combined with as heavy a stroke on both the forehand and backhand as probably has been seen – a stroke that cut the ball down into the corners with demoralizing accuracy and left his opponent the thankless task of beating "better than a yard" – it made an invincible game. No dedans that ever saw Gould in action could contain its delight and amazement in the presence of that right arm of his, with the elbow rising and falling with the inevitability of a guillotine, putting the deadly cut on the ball and laying down one heartbreaking chase after another. "Better than a half," "better than a half." Like the knell of doom, the marker’s cry tolled in the ears of his unhappy opponent as he frantically dug ball after ball out of the corners, and lords and barons and financiers, who had seen the strokes of the great masters parade before them, looked on in awe, unable to believe that it was humanly possible to cast such a spell over a ball as Gould exerted with his racquet. No man ever got a loose ball from Jay Gould, or if he did he never forgot it, and it is probable that no player ever lived who was more accurate at any ball-and-bat game, who made fewer mistakes than did the master of Lakewood.
