So nearly every day, she would take the older two to the local club and brought along, Dick, who was 6. Her husband, a traveling salesman, liked to play tennis to stay in shape, and he suggested she take the boys to lessons while he was out of town. It is the next incarnation of a passion that began as sibling rivalry.ĭorothy Stockton was just trying to keep her three boys busy. They live in a different world than we do,” he said. “The rest of us civilians, we have no idea. Stockton is now planning charity events through a newly formed foundation to take tennis to veterans on military bases, one he’s dubbed T3: Thanking our Troops through Tennis. “That was the only time in my life I’d ever been on a military base,” he said. In that original photo, Newsday had sent a writer and photographer to write about the Long Island boy who’d beaten players nearly twice his age at a major tournament and practiced regularly at the nearby Mitchell Field, the former Air Force base. “I just stayed in my tennis clothes,” he said.Īnd tennis always seems to guide his path. He keeps it in a place of honor, next to pictures of his own sons playing baseball.Įven at 62, after a long playing career that included a collegiate national championship, trips to Wimbledon and French Open semifinals and a top-10 ranking, Stockton still makes a career out of the sport that took him all over the world. The earliest newspaper photo of Stockton after winning a tennis tournament is a talisman. He’s 7, standing next to his father with a racket almost as big as he is, wearing a white polo, white shorts, white canvas sneakers, and even his white-blond hair seems a gesture of respect for the sport that would always be a part of his life. More than 50 years later, it sits prominently on a side table just inside the door to his Wellington home. Dick Stockton’s mother knew that photo would be meaningful one day.

Stockton tennis live scores