Maurice Evans McLoughlin “Red, California Comet”
Born: January 07, 1890
Died: December 10, 1957
Hometown: Carson City, Nevada, United States
Citizenship: United States
Handed: Right
Inducted: 1957
Grand Slam Record
U.S. Singles 1912-13
Singles finalist 1911, 14-15
Doubles 1912-14
Doubles finalist 1909, 15, 16
Wimbledon Singles finalist 1913
Tournament Record
Davis Cup Team Member 1909, 1911, 1913-14
He came out of out the West with a cannonball service, spectacular volleys and overhead smashes. He created great excitement in the East and abroad at Wimbledon with the violence of his attack. And more than anything else, Maurice Evans “Red” McLoughlin, known as the California Comet, opened the eyes of the public to tennis as a demanding game of speed, endurance and skill.
Tennis at the turn of the century was a moderately paced game contested from the back of the court. But McLoughlin, a right-hander, carried this attack forward, projecting the cannonball serve and rushing in behind it to meet the return near the net with a cataclysmic overhead or a masterful volley. The volley was not new to the game (it had been used in the first Championship in 1881), but it had not nearly been the finishing stroke that Red Mac made it.
Born January 7, 1890, in Carson City, NV, McLoughlin polished his game on the public parks courts of Northern California, and this in itself was a departure in the direction of democratizing the game. Most of the top-ranking players had developed their games on the turf of exclusive clubs in the East or their own private family courts.
At 19 he had developed sufficiently to be named to the Davis Cup team to play alongside another San Francisco teenager, Melville Long, 18, against Australasia in the 1909 Challenge Round. They were whitewashed but Red absorbed valuable international seasoning. He enlivened five straight U.S. finals, starting in 1911, winning 1912 and 1913 battles over Wallace Johnson and Dick Williams, losing his title to Williams in the Championships’ farewell to Newport. At the Forest Hills inaugural, an all-San Francisco clash, he was beaten by the rising Bill Johnston, 1-6, 6-0, 7-5, 10-8.
His one venture to England, 1913, was an artistic success as the U.S. regained the Davis Cup, and he helped draw unprecedentedly large crowds to Wimbledon, where he won the all-comers over Aussie Stanley Doust, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5. In the Challenge Round he fought defending champ Tony Wilding all the way, but missed a set point at 5-4, 40-30, and was beaten, 8-6, 6-3, 10-8. Then came the Cup tests, shutouts of Germany and Canada, and a 1-1 first day split against Cup-holding Britain. That evolved to a 3-2 U.S. victory as McLoughlin partnered Harold Hackett to a five-set win over Roper Barrett and Charles Dixon. It set up Red for the finisher over Dixon, 8-6, 6-3, 6-2.
McLoughlin reached his peak the next year in the Davis Cup final, even though the Cup was lost. The matching of McLoughlin and Norman Brookes of Australasia brought forth tennis that was a revelation to the thousands who attended. The match was characterized as “never been equaled.” McLoughlin won, 17-15, 6-3, 6-3. The matches attracted 14,000 people daily, and McLoughlin was given much of the credit for the large crowds.
After the Davis Cup success, the 1915 “Tennis Guide” said, “In McLoughlin America undoubtedly has the greatest tennis player of all time.” Yet he never again attained that form. Absent from the East for several years, he returned after Army duty in World War I and was hardly recognizable. He had lost his cannonball and his punch. Gone was his whirlwind speed. After he was defeated by Dick Williams decisively in the 1919 quarters, he left the tennis scene for golf, where he soon was shooting in the low 70s. His tennis career had come to a premature end. Some said he was burned out from his violent exertions on the court.
On December 10, 1957–the year of his entry into the Hall of Fame–the Comet died. But in the short time that he had lighted the tennis firmament, as no one before him, he had started the sport on its way to becoming a popular game for Americans. He ranked No. 1 in 1914 and was in the U.S. Top Ten seven straight years from 1909, No. 1 in 1912, 1913 and 1914.
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