Bob Ryland, First Black Pro Tennis Player In U.S., Dies At 100

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Bob Ryland, the first Black professional tennis player in the United States, passed away Sunday night a few weeks after his 100th birthday, according to the Riverside Clay Tennis Association (RCTA).

"We are very sad to announce the passing of Bob Ryland last night, a few short weeks after his 100th Birthday," the association wrote on its Facebook page. "Bob was a long-time RCTA member, who never missed our annual picnic."

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Ryland was born in Chicago in 1920 before moving to live with his grandmother in Mobile, Alabama.

He said in an interview in 2019 with The Wall Street Journal that he remembered at the age of seven watching the Ku Klux Klan murder one of his cousins in the street near the park in Mobile where he would play tennis.

Ryland would go on to become one of the best players in the American Tennis Association, an African-American tennis league.

However, Ryland was barred from playing in whites-only professional leagues until he was 40, when he became the first Black man to do so in 1959.

"My only dream in tennis was to become good enough to beat Bob Ryland," legendary tennis player Arthur Ashe, the only Black man to win the U.S. Open, Wimbledon and Australian Open, once said in an interview.

Ryland was also the first Black tennis player to compete in the NCAA National Championships.

Ryland would go on to coach many of the world's top professionals, including Harold Solomon, Leslie Allen, Ashe, Bruce Foxworth, Venus Williams and Serena Williams.

"The news of this year just gets harder and harder and harder to bear," Mark McIntyre, the Executive Director of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association, wrote in a Facebook post about the passing of Ryland. "This is a tough one. A very tough one. What a lovely man he was. A class act, a huge heart, a great soul. Good night, Bob."

In 2019, at the age of 99, Ryland was the oldest of New York City's 13,775 tennis permit holders, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Ryland lived on the Upper West Side at the time of his death, where he had been a resident for many years.

He was still coaching tennis to kids in Riverside Park, Central Park, Harlem's Frederick Johnson Playground, and other courts throughout the city.