Shlomo Glickstein
(1958 - )
Israeli tennis player. In November 1982, he was ranked twenty-second in the world, his highest ever. He concluded the 1981 pro circuit with a ranking of thirty-third in the world, compared with his standing of 57 at the end of 1980, and 153 at the end of 1979. In 1981, he was thirty-fifth on the list of money-winners among the pros, earning $93,112. Glickstein is the greatest tennis player Israel has ever produced. He has defeated many of the top stars, including Australian Peter McNamara, ranked eighth in the world. Glickstein’s best tournament win to date was the South Orange, New Jersey, $75,000 Grand Prix, held in August 1981. Glickstein’s 1982 world rank was thirty-three.
Shlomo began playing the game when he was 10. He played at a small club near his home in Ashkelon about twice a week until the age of 16. An excellent athlete, Shlomo played basketball and soccer as a child, but at age 16, he gave them up to concentrate on tennis. One major problem he faced was the lack of courts in Israel. “We had to move from one club to another to practice on different days every week”, recalled Glickstein. “It was really tough”. No club would accept the national team (of which Shlomo was a member) and allow them to practice because members wanted to use the courts for themselves.
By age 12, Shlomo had made enough progress to catch the eye of national coach Ron Steele. “Shlomo was undoubtedly the best tennis prospect in Israel”, recalled Steele. “I used to go down to Ashkelon on Saturdays especially to train him". During the 1975 and 1976 seasons, Shlomo competed in a number of international tournaments, doing rather well in general. “By the time he finished the juniors", noted Steele, “Shlomo was one of the top ten juniors in the world”.
But an obstacle awaited him: the Israel Defense Forces. Like all Israeli males, Shlomo Glickstein had to serve three years in the Israeli army, beginning at age 18. Though the army gave him special consideration (he was based close to the Israel Tennis Center in Ramat Hasharon outside Tel Aviv), there is no denying that military service took three years out of his life at the most productive time in a young tennis player’s career. His job in the army was to work with youngsters who, because of their social backgrounds, had little motivation to take the army seriously. Shlomo did manage to play on Israel’s Davis Cup team from 1976 to 1980, despite his army service.
For a time, Glickstein wavered in his committent to tennis. Then in 1978, his father, Moshe, a former chairman of the Israel Tennis Association’s Youth committee, died. Shlomo told Ron Steele at the time, “I’ve made my decision: I’m going to be a tennis player. I want to honor my father’s name in tennis". From then on he dedicated himself completely to the game.
Glickstein joined the professional tour in May 1979, shortly after his release from the army. That year he won his third straight Israeli national championship. Then came a turning point in his career. At the Tel Aviv Grand Prix that October he reached the quarterfinals, but more importantly, coach Ron Steele, arguing that he was still not aggressive enough, advised him to play in Sweden and in Australia. “Shlomo was instructed to attack, attack, attack”, said Steele.
In November 1979, Glickstein managed to stretch John McEnroe to three sets in the first round of the Stockholm Grand Prix after losing the first set 6-0 in five minutes. “Shiomo realized”, noted Steele, that the giants of the game were only human”. Glickstein learned that aggressiveness pays off.
In January 1980, Glickstein won the Australian Hard Courts Championship in Hobart, a victory which brought him $8,750 and enabled him to advance a full 200 places in the ATP rankings within three months. His second major success was also won below the equator as he climbed to the quarterfinals of the Sigma Open in Johannesburg, South Africa. Returning to the American circuit, Glickstein defeated Bill Scanlon to reach the semifinals at the Stowe Grand Prix in Vermont.
But, it was a first-round upset win at Wimbledon in 1980 that won Glickstein instant international recognition. He defeated Raul Ramirez (then ranked 35). Britain’s mass circulation Daily Express carried a banner headline which read:
“Shlo-motion.” The subhead announced: “Ramirez Rocked by Israeli Hero.” Israeli journalists, noting that Glickstein had grown up in Ashkelon, compared him with the Biblical Samson, another native of that sea coast town.
In the second round at Wimbledon, Shlomo faced Bjorn Borg. The Swede triumphed on his way to his fifth Wimbledon championship, but the loss was tempered by Borg’s kind words for Shlomo: “He has been doing very well. After all, he’s been on the circuit only one year”. Glickstein won the Wimbledon Plate, the consolation tournament, that year.
Then Shlomo defeated the world’s No. 11 player, Brian Gottfried, at the Stockholm Open, and made it to the quarterfinals there. He also got into the finals of the British Hardcourt championships in Bournemouth. His biggest financial reward that year came in December when he earned $20,000 in prize money at the World Championship of Tennis Challenge Cup in Montreal, coming in fifth in the eight-participant tournament which included some major figures in international tennis.
In 1981 Glickstein continued to improve, and he won the South Orange, New Jersey, Grand Prix, the first time an Israeli has won a tennis grand prix. He reached the semifinals of the South African and Canadian Opens and the quarters of the Australian Championship. He also reached the quarterfinals in another five Grand Prix meets. During that year Glickstein defeated Harold Solomon and Eliot Teltscher, ranked 9 and 10 on the ATP computer. In doubles, he was runner-up at South Orange, with his Davis Cup teammate Dave Schneider and he reached the semifinals in two other Grand Prix tournaments with different partners. And, in the Grand Prix standings, he was ranked twenty-fourth at the end of 1981: he had been thirty-eighth at the end of 1980.
Ivan Lendl, the Czech tennis star, commented on Shlomo in the summer of 1981: “He has great anticipation. He always waits for the ball where the ball is coming. He looks as if he’s going to move very slow, but he is really very fast. He always does the right thing. He has great shots, especially passing shots on the backhand down the line. He has great touch”.
On his own performance in 1981, Glickstein noted, “My game is now steadier and I am not making so many unforced errors. I believe I am capable of beating any player on the circuit, except perhaps the top six."
He has one gripe: the media. ‘They quote me and that makes me nervous. They write all sorts of things about my personal life outside tennis”.
In May, 1982, Glickstein achieved one of his most impressive wins, taking the eight-man Tennis Classic in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He picked up $25,000 for the triumph, but, unfortunately for him, no ATP points to improve his ranking, since the tournament was outside the Grand Prix circuit. The following August, he reached the semifinals of the South Orange, New Jersey, Grand Prix tournament, the one he had won the previous year.
Shlomo Glickstein was born on January 6, 1958, in Rehovot, Israel.
Courtesy of:
http://jewishsportshalloffame.com/Hebrew/JSHF/ShlomoGlickstein.htm