ATHENS — It is late on a weekday morning and the Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame on Georgia’s campus is closed. That is to say, the door is locked. But those in the know realize this building is rarely unoccupied this time of day and certainly not during this week with the NCAA tennis championships in town.
So Baylor women’s tennis coach Joey Scrivano, his entire squad in tow, taps gently on the glass doors. Inside, Georgia tennis coaching legend Dan Magill springs up from his desk as if there were an air raid. He grabs his knob-handle cane and quickly shuffles to the door to let in his unexpected guests.
The group pours in the unlocked door like the warm May breeze and Magill directs them into the adjacent gallery to show them his jumbled display of photos and tennis rackets, including the one with which John Isner won the longest Wimbledon match in history. Magill leaves them be and returns to his office across the hall. But after only a cursory glance at the relics in the Hall of Fame, the half-dozen or so Bears have returned and surrounded Magill at his desk.
He is the artifact they have come to see.
“The thing that makes him so impressive and sets him apart is he hasn’t coached for a quarter century, but players who never played for him have such a connection with him, and he with them, I don’t know that it could be possible with anybody else,” said Manuel Diaz, who succeeded Magill as Georgia’s tennis coach after playing and working for him. “Players from all over the world hold him in such high esteem. He cultivates those relationships not only with his former players from 25 years ago but my players from five and 10 years ago and everybody. He just forms all these bonds and that’s very special.”
Surrounded by attractive female tennis players, Magill is in his element. He asks every one where they’re from and has a story or comment about each answer, the ones from Bosnia and the Czech Republic as well as the ones from Dallas and Council Bluffs, Iowa. He points out his poster of Anna Kournikova and tells them she is his favorite tennis player. But he’s only kidding, and they know it.
Everybody knows Diaz is Magill’s all-time favorite, in tennis or otherwise.
“He’s almost Mr. Perfect,” Magill said of “Manuelito,” as he likes to call him. “He’s a very handsome boy. Everybody he meets likes him. If he were in politics he could be governor or president. But he loves what he’s doing and wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
When it comes to bonds, there could not one greater than the one between Magill and Diaz. Their relationship spans four decades and remains as intimate today as when it was forged.
Diaz first laid his eyes on Magill in the spring of 1971 when he and his father traveled from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to visit prospective colleges. Aware of Georgia because of fellow Puerto Rican Tony Ortiz, who had played for Magill in the 1960s, Magill and his father, Manuel Sr., planned to visit Athens first then continue on to North Carolina, Wake Forest and Mississippi State.
They showed up unannounced and walked into the tennis complex through the clubhouse between two sets of bleachers. A match was underway when the elder Diaz asked a young man where was Mr. Magill?
“He was sitting in the corner top row of the bleachers by Court 1,” said Diaz, his 59-year-old face breaking into a deep-creased smile. “Somebody went and got him and he came down and he was chewing ice like he always does. I didn’t know what to make of him. Here’s a guy with madras pants and a polka-dot shirt and a houndstooth hat. It was a double-take.”
There was another problem. Diaz spoke English in high school and studied from textbooks written in English, but he “had never heard English the way it was spoken here.”
“But as soon as he starting engaging with me,” Diaz recalled, “he was so charming and so disarming and welcoming. You knew right away if you came to Georgia, you were one of his and it didn’t matter where you were from.”
Diaz never made the other visits. He stayed in Athens for three days and signed a scholarship to attend the next fall. He almost left the following Christmas, overwhelmed at first by the changes in culture and climate, not to mention the strange food. But his father urged him to stay on through the spring and, by the end of it, Diaz was a star. He earned All-America and All-SEC honors helped Georgia earn four consecutive SEC titles, leaving as captain.
Diaz’s next step was always going to be playing pro tennis. But a shoulder injury his senior season derailed that plan. After a brief stint as a successful club pro, Magill lured back Diaz as an assistant with the intention of handing him the keys to the program when he retired.
“I knew the players would have respect for him,” Magill said of that decision. “There was nothing fake about him. Anybody who knows Manuelito likes him. Even the opposition respects him. And he knows tennis.”
Clearly the transition has been a smooth one, something that can’t always be said of one coach following a legend. Diaz, who succeeded Magill in 1989, has won four of Georgia’s six national titles in the 23 years since and enters this week’s tournament as the nation’s No. 2 seed. And great players from all over the world continue to flock to Athens to play for the Bulldogs, as much for what Magill did as for what Diaz is doing.
“This program is what it is because of Dan Magill,” said Wil Spencer, Georgia’s No. 1 singles player. “You look at everything around here, you look at the trash cans, what does it say? It says Dan Magill. Even a guy as young as me knows his legacy and respects it. He’s made this program. Manny, too, obviously.
“To see him up there still, 91 years old, to be up there and to be so faithful, to always come to our matches and support us, it means a lot.”
On April 22, Georgia clinched the SEC tournament championship with a 4-1 win over Kentucky. It was the 34th SEC title of any kind for the Bulldogs, so that in itself was hardly a surprise. What was unexpected was Diaz’s reaction afterward.
“I actually sat in the bus and cried,” Diaz said. “I just sobbed. I started thinking about Coach, and it was tough. It just brought everything home.”
It’s not that Diaz is worried that this will be Magill’s last NCAA tournament in Athens. Magill still plays doubles with his friend Merritt Pound and some other friends twice a week. But Diaz also knows that “God only gives you so many” and the thought of Georgia tennis carrying on without Magill involved is almost too much for him to bear.
Magill scoffs at such contemplation. He jokes about growing old and having trouble getting around but still spins tales of Ty Cobb and Spurgeon Chandler like they’d just walked out of the room. And he firmly believes he has left the legacy he has built in good hands.
“I just thank the Lord for me still knowing what I’m doing,” Magill said, laughing. “Manuelito will be fine, and he’ll have a good successor in [assistant coach] Will Glenn, another good boy. And somebody will come in here and run the Hall of Fame just like I have.”
Maybe, but that entrance is going to be tough to follow.
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