A Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from soccer’s World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, some NBA and a little NHL, plus aquatics and the Olympic Games, this sparkling little city that sits somewhere between Los Angeles and Palm Springs along Interstate 10, has its share of sports connections. Redlands has quite a remarkable sports connection. Among the city’s top tennis connections, this might be one of its best ever. – Obrey Brown
I WISHED THERE WERE more guys like Darrell Hudlow.
Redlands, the city where football turned out highly successful, soccer and softball became high-level sports, throw in some impressive swimming, above-average baseball, plus amazing track & field and golf connection off the charts, there was an original Mr. Tennis in this city.
It might’ve been Hudlow.
In a city that’s produced multitudes of high school and collegiate tennis champions, including some Wimbledon and U.S. Open connections, Hudlow comes quickly to mind.
I wasn’t even aware he played tennis. The place to go dancing, said once-young lovers, was Hudlow had a drive-in, located on “the highway to Redlands.”
Hudlow was proprietor of a big place near downtown. Upon moving to Redlands in 1979, I couldn’t miss the greenish sign out there on a Redlands Blvd. building — where the Bank of America now sits, I think.
Hudlow was a University of Redlands Hall of Famer. It was stressed to me likely by my City Editor, Dick West, of the Redlands Daily Facts – that Hudlow had been a tennis player. A damned good one at that.
Immense Bulldog tennis coach Jim Verdieck may well be the name associated with championship brilliance around Redlands. Hudlow showed up on the scene long before Verdieck built his dynasty.
Verdieck’s teams won an unheard-of 921 tennis duals over a 38-year span. In 35 of those years, Redlands copped the conference championship. There were plenty of top players, namely Verdieck’s sons, Doug and Randy, among other brilliant players wearing those maroon and grey uniforms.
Long before the Borhnstedt and Verdieck brothers started playing — they played at both Wimbledon and U.S. Opens — Hudlow set an early tone for high level tennis in Redlands.
Hudlow’s, incidentally, is a now-disappeared liquor store over on that Redlands Blvd. site. The old-timer just laughed. “I went into the liquor business,” he cracked. “I quit tennis because I didn’t have time any more.”
The liquor business, at least in Redlands, was taboo amidst his college campus in those days of the 1940s and 1950s. “The university fought me,” said Hudlow, who carried a grudge against his alma mater for years. “It was a staid old school. You couldn’t even dance up there.
“Anyway, they took this liquor thing to the city council.”
Hudlow won when that university turned over a new leaf, he told me. When the school inducted him into its relatively new Hall of Fame in 1984, they extended a familiar hand. “The university,” he said, sarcastically a few days before the event, “is having a cocktail hour before the (Hall of Fame) dinner.”
Maybe, I told him, he ought to provide the liquor. “If I did that back when I was going to the university,” he said, chuckling, “I’d have gotten kicked out of school.”
The UofR had long been a dominant tennis program. Hudlow was conference singles champion from 1937-39.
It was curious timing. Verdieck, who hailed from nearby Colton, was playing football for a dynamic group called the Vow Boys up in Palo Alto. Stanford University had vowed that it would never lose to USC. Following a football loss to USC in 1932, Stanford players vowed they would never again lost to the Trojans.
Hudlow, for his part, was playing championship-level tennis while Verdieck was making football his college-playing mission. Hudlow won amateur singles titles in Arizona, Michigan and Arkansas. Verdieck was Rose Bowl dominant.
Some of Hudlow’s opponents were Frank Kovacs, a Wimbledon champion who later lost to legendary Bobby Riggs in the 1941 U.S. Tennis Championship finals.
Hudlow also played Gardner Mulloy, the four-time U.S. Tennis Champion, paired with William Talbert in doubles. Then there was Welby Van Horn, who lost to Riggs in the 1939 U.S. Tennis Championship finals. Hudlow beat Van Horn at a tournament in Ojai, Calif.
Another big name Hudlow opponent was Frankie Parker, a onetime U.S. Tennis champ.
Said Hudlow: “I played Jack Kramer in an exhibition in the (Redlands) university gym,” he said, “to raise money so I could go back east. I think we played to a tie that night.”
Kramer, who would become a huge tennis executive in years ahead, was a U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion.
“I can’t remember if I ever played Bobby Riggs,” said Hudlow. “I knew him. You know, on rainy days at country clubs, all people do is sit in the clubhouse playing poker. I held Bobby’s one-dollar bills for him.”
Hudlow was in the second class of UofR Hall of Famer selections. The Hall headliners had to be Verdieck himself, along with football coach Frank Serrao. Lee Fulmer (baseball, basketball), John Fawcett (cross country, football and track), Charles Gillett (football), Lee Johnson (track), faculty member S. Guy Jones, track’s Samuel Kirk, Donald Kitch (football, basketball), Sanford McGilbra (football, basketball, baseball), Robert Pazder (football, basketball, baseball), football and tennis star Randy Verdieck were right there.
While Hudlow was inducted, so, too, was his coach, Lynn Jones (1928-44).
There was a lengthy list of names, likely trying to catch up with a near century’s worth of athletes and other sports-related contributors that needed to be enshrined.
Hudlow, who died on June 19, 1998, said he didn’t play tennis for nearly 40 years before he sold his liquor store. When he decided to return, he played recreationally.
“I could tell you lots of stories,” he said, chuckling. “I think I’ll hold off for awhile.”
