Two of the best: Brown, Wong big part of NJ tennis tourney history

LEXINGTON - They will go down as a couple of racket Rembrandts.

In the modern era of the News Journal Tennis Tournament — which for the sake of this piece starts just prior to the sport’s boom period of the 70s and 80s — you could ask for no better bookends than Terry Brown and Nicky Wong.

Brown owns an unparalleled 17 men’s singles championships, achieved during a 19-year span between 1966-1984.

Wong has won the last four and five overall.

You can’t blow out the candles on the tournament’s 90th birthday celebration these next two weeks without considering the inner flame that turned them into such great champions.

“Anybody who has worn the crown and been a mentor to a younger generation, this tournament holds a level of pressure,” said Wong, who won his first men’s title in 2012 as a teenager. “It’s very strange, but it’s true.

“To say you didn’t want to win the News Journal was a lie. Everybody secretly wants to win and the best players really don’t want to lose.”

Wong’s coming-out party was in 2005, at the age of 12. He won the boys’ 15 title and reached the semifinals in the boys’ 18s, beating four members of Lexington’s high school team in the process. He also won the boys’ 12 crown that year.

“I think about being a kid and talking to a reporter. I thought I was (Roger) Federer,” Wong said. “Some of those matches changed my life, were real confidence-builders. My first big, local trophy in front of a crowd was a big confidence builder. I remember going to tournaments all over the state, and nationally, and carrying that swagger with me.

“I would go into Kroger to pick up the newspaper and I wanted to point it out to the lady at the checkout and said, ‘Here I am!’”

Brown won men’s singles titles in his teens, 20s and 30s, a distinction shared only by eight-time champ Hal Schaus and six-time champ Jay Harris, who is coming home from New York to play again after nearly reaching the semifinals last year at 51.

So why did Brown keep playing year after year, title after title?

“I guess you need to do something for aggravation,” he joked. “It was one way of keeping the fat off … and I’ve been told I’m rather competitive by nature.”

He probably got that from his late father, Francis, who played in the first News Journal Tournament in 1934 and was still winning intermediate division matches into his 70s. He lived to be 96.

“He built our house on Oakwood Drive because there was a ball diamond across the street and a tennis court down the road,” Brown, 75, said. “That was before Lakewood Racquet Club (which has hosted the NJ since 1982), when most of the best tennis players came from right around Maple Lake Park.”

A 1965 Mansfield Senior graduate, Brown won his first men’s singles title in 1966 by beating his high school doubles partner Ron Hollinger. (They reached the state semifinals for the Tygers.) He was dethroned the following year by Schaus, but then won 16 titles in 17 years after that, his only loss in that span in the semifinals to his younger brother, Ken, in 1972.

Otherwise, Brown tore through a gauntlet of contenders that included Lakewood teaching pro and NJ tourney director Ron Schaub, Andy Wiles, Fritz Haring, former NJ tourney director and teaching pro Jerry Lorentz, Denny Burns, Bud Vetter and Alan Benson. He looked invincible until Schaub snapped his title streak at 12 with a three-set victory in 1985.

“One of my most vivid memories was playing Andy Wiles in the finals at The Woodland Club,” Brown said. “He was playing for St. Peter’s and St. Peter’s supported their sports and everybody was out cheering for him. It felt like everybody in the stands was cheering for Andy.

“He won the first game and the crowd went wild … and that was the only game he won. I was probably a junior or senior at the University of Toledo and he was a junior or senior in high school. I basically had a three or four year advantage on him. But I’ll always remember the fans cheering for him like he was a basketball player.”

Brown felt like the world was against him and used that to his advantage. That’s what great competitors do.

They also eventually adapt when work and family obligations become top priorities and they no longer have two or three hours a day to devote to tennis like in high school and college

“The biggest challenge was playing and practicing less and still playing good when you weren’t at your sharpest,” said Brown, whose family ran a realty company and now a renovation business. “So it was more about finding a balance of what my body would let me do, leave it at that and do what I can do.”

Like Brown, who never lost a Mid-American Conference match while at Toledo, Wong also played for the Rockets after graduating from Lexington in 2011. Once he was done at UT, he, too, had to adapt his game due to a change in his daily routine.

Wong became part-owner/operations manager for Nickel & Bean, a local coffee shop and gathering place, and he and his wife, Shellie, another former Lex star, had a son, River, now 5.

After a two-year hiatus, Wong lost in the 2017 and 2018 finals to seven-time champ Mason Dragos. When Dragos, who now lives in southern California, didn’t return in 2019 after finishing up at Butler University, Wong reclaimed the title and didn’t let go.

He racked up four in a row, without more than a week or two of preparation for any of them. “One of my strengths has always been my court intellect and ability to construct points and find weaknesses and adapt to each match,” Wong said. “Even as an adult who isn’t playing, I think I have enough weapons left. I still have a loose arm. I’m not half-assing my serves. I’m still cracking serves, I’m still running around decent on the court.

“It’s not like it used to be, but there’s enough for me to push you and enough for me to understand the game. It’s what I’ve done my whole life.”

After taking three years off, Brown returned to play in the News Journal in 1992, at 44, and came within two points of reaching the finals before tearing his left Achilles. At 50, he won men’s doubles with Harris as they knocked off Schaub and Joel Terman, the three-time defending champs, in three sets.

Wong has a hard time seeing himself playing in the tournament at 50. Right now he has a hard time seeing himself playing this summer, especially with his grandfather, Jack Miller, stepping away after likely playing more matches than anyone in tournament history.

Now 87, Miller played six matches (16 sets) and won all six in one marathon day of the 1989 News Journal. He was 53 at the time, sustaining himself on bananas, water and one milkshake.

“In my mind, last year was the last one for me,” Wong said. “River was running around. He wasn’t a toddler anymore. I think I’m going to find my peace and enjoyment in the sport through him and I don’t want to get to the point where I hate the sport because I feel like I have to keep going.

“I’ve supported the sport the best I can. The next chapter is probably going to be with my son.”

Wong didn’t completely close the door on playing this year, not after hearing he could join Brown, Schaus and Harris as the only players in nearly a century to win men’s singles titles in their teens, 20s and 30s. He knows his grandfather would like him to play.

“I said, ‘Pop, I just turned 30, we’ll quit together,’” Wong said. “He said, ‘No, no. One more year.’

“Growing up, he was a father figure because I lost my dad at a young age, so I lived with him a lot. I look at Ron (Schaub), too, as a mentor of mine. I played heavily for these two men, especially Captain (Miller’s nickname), since I was like a son. “That’s where we bonded over the sport. So it’s only fitting for us to be done at the same time.”

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Two of the best: Brown, Wong big part of NJ tennis tourney history