Andy Murray’s heroic five-set comeback in his first-round match of the 2020 US Open became an instant classic. On the verge of being eliminated from the tournament by Yoshihito Nishioka on Tuesday afternoon, Murray, making his way back from hip replacement surgery, fought from two sets down to earn an unexpected and exhilarating victory.
Marin Cilic, Federico Coria, Cristian Garin, Karen Khachanov, Cameron Norrie and Casper Ruud made similarly arduous and improbable journeys during the tournament’s first week, with each man’s back-from-the-brink triumph thrilling and remarkable in its own way. After all, overcoming a two-set deficit against a world-class player who is on a roll is a tall order, a nearly insurmountable feat.
Just ask Daniil Medvedev. Down two-sets-to-love against Rafael Nadal in last year’s US Open men’s final, Medvedev battled back to force a fifth and decisive set—only to have Nadal find his championship form and hold on for the victory.
It’s quite an extraordinary thing to pull off a major comeback by taking three straight sets in any round, but it’s all the more remarkable to do it against a Grand Slam champion in a championship final, when all the marbles are on the table.
That’s why Richard “Pancho” Gonzales’ Houdini act on this date at the 1949 U.S. National Championships, now the US Open, is arguably the greatest comeback in tournament history. Played in the pre-Tiebreak Era, he lost far more games than any other player in a title match before climbing out of his two-sets-to-zero hole to escape with the title. And he did it against the top player in the world.
Gonzales was just 20 years old in 1948 when he captured the men’s singles crown at the U.S. National Championships, and he reached the title match again in 1949, escaping from near defeat in the semifinals against Frank Parker, the 1944 and 1945 champion, to get there. Awaiting Gonzales in the 1949 final was 28-year-old Ted Schroeder, the reigning Wimbledon champion, who was essentially defending his U.S. title as well. Schroeder won the men’s singles title at Forest Hills seven years earlier, but World War II military commitments, his business career and family life had kept him from entering a Grand Slam singles tournament until the summer of 1949, when he took vacation time to play both Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships.
The title tilt between Gonzales and Schroeder at the U.S. Nationals was played on September 5 in a packed stadium of 13,000 fans at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, N.Y., and was aptly billed as the match of the year.
It took just the opening set for the match to make good on that claim.
The two Californians went head to head in an epic display of serve-and-volley tennis that saw Gonzales serve 17 aces and hold five set points against Schroeder, who did not reach “deuce” on Gonzales’s serve until the set was knotted at 12 games apiece. And yet when the set finally concluded after 73 minutes and a record-breaking 34 games—the most ever played in a U.S. championship final—Gonzales found himself on the short end of the score, 18-16, and ruing his missed opportunities. His game slumped noticeably in the second set and Schroeder won it comfortably, 6-2, to put the still-despondent Gonzales on the brink of elimination.
Then everything changed. Gonzales came out for the third set with his full arsenal blazing.
“If earth was on the line in a tennis match,” the editors of Sports Illustrated wrote in its “20 Favorite Athletes of the 20th Century” issue in 1999, “the man you want serving to save humankind would be Ricardo Alonso Gonzales.”
Rifling a barrage of service aces and passing shots that rendered Schroeder defenseless, Gonzales lost only a handful of points in the first four games of the third set, which he won with ease, 6-1. A 10-minute break between sets failed to slow him down. His furious attack continued in the fourth set, which he took, 6-2, to even the match.
But Schroeder had no intention of rolling over, especially in a Grand Slam final. He had gone five sets to defeat Parker in their 1942 final at Forest Hills to capture his first major title, and just months before the 1949 U.S. Championships he had won four five-setters at Wimbledon, including the title match, to earn his second Grand Slam crown and the nickname of “Lucky Ted.”
With Gonzales ready to dig in as well, the crowd hung on every stroke as the two Americans battled back and forth in the fifth set to keep pace with one another. The score sat deadlocked at 4-all when Gonzales broke Schroeder’s serve and took the lead for the first time since the opening set. Schroeder nearly got the break back, but his backhand drive sailed long, and Gonzales did not give him another chance. He hit a smash to reach match point and then kissed his racquet for good luck before stepping to the service line.
For one last time in the match, Gonzales went on the attack. He followed his serve to the net with a pair of volleys: a forehand half-volley that he pushed into the mid-court, and then a backhand volley that pinned Schroeder deep into the corner. Schroeder was left with only one response: he whipped a forehand down the line, past a lunging Gonzales, who watched the ball fly beyond his reach and land a fraction outside the chalk. Lucky’s Ted good fortune had run out after two hours and 23 minutes of play, and Gonzales’s comeback was complete.
“The place turned into bedlam,” reported the New York Times’ Allison Danzig, the first journalist inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, who wrote that “one can hardly give the champion too much praise for his moral fiber.”
It was only the fifth time since the tournament began in 1881 that a player had come back from an 0-2 deficit to win the title match. It has not happened again.
To see highlights of the 1949 men's final, click here.
