In 57 years of Stanford tennis, Dick Gould delivered aces

When the Stanford men’s tennis team clinched the national title in 1978, its head coach wasn’t in the mood for congratulations. He put a towel over his bowed head and thought to himself, “Thank God we didn’t self-destruct.”

That team, led by John McEnroe, Bill Maze, Perry Wright and Matt Mitchell, was often at war with itself, according to coach Dick Gould.

“I loved them, and they were good friends,” he said. “But they were so competitive that on any one day, a guy would blow up at another guy, just in a rally. They always wanted to beat each other, to the extreme.