If you want to get Manny Diaz to laugh – or cry – just mention the name Dan Magill. Both of their names have been mentioned a lot the last few days, which has meant Diaz, Georgia’s men’s tennis coach of the last 32 years, has done a lot of laughing and crying.
Diaz just surpassed Magill as the winningest men’s tennis coach in SEC history. The penultimate victory – number 707 – surely would have made Magill proud. It came Sunday in a resounding upset of No. 3 Ohio State on UGA’s Henry Feild Stadium courts, a 4-0 shutout, no less.
Seconds after the clinching point by Phillip Henning at No. 2 singles, Diaz found himself drenched from a unexpected water cooler dunking. That his son, Alex Diaz, and fellow senior Robert Lowe were the culprits made the shocking chill more tolerable.
Monday morning, Diaz slept in just a tad and made his way to the Dan Magill Tennis Complex a little later than usual. Otherwise, this monumental milestone came and went almost like an overnight dream.
Make no mistake, though, overtaking Magill was big deal as an athletic achievement.
“I don’t look at it as beating Dan; certainly that wasn’t at all our focus or goal,” said Diaz, who has been at Georgia 42 years, including six as Magill’s assistant and four as a Georgia player. “One hundred percent of our focus leading up to these last couple of matches was to get these guys in as good a place as we could to believe the could win both of them. A lot of it was getting the guys mentally prepared.”
They certainly seemed to be. The No. 35-ranked Bulldogs defeated No. 10 Tennessee 4-2 on Friday, then followed it with a 4-0 shutout of Ohio State on Sunday. The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 earlier this year.
It was more difficult than the final score would indicate. After Georgia won the doubles point, Henning found himself trailing 5-1 in the first set and the Bulldogs were similarly behind in several other singles matches. But Henning rallied for a 7-6 (6) win in the first set and sophomores Blake Coyder and James Trotter got three-set wins to set up the clinching opportunity for Henning, who got it 6-4.
Further enhancing the accomplishment was it came before a crowd of more than 2,000 on the first weekend inside the team’s new stadium. The Henry Field Stadium grandstand, previously a tall stack of wooden bleachers, was completely rebuilt from the ground up at a cost of $8 million.
"I think what's inspiring is you've had two tennis coaches at Georgia since the 1950s," Georgia Athletic Director Greg McGarity. "And knowing how hard it is to succeed a legend and be successful, that just doesn't happen very often. But in this case, it did happen. More than 1,400 victories by two men is just unheard in the sports world these days, especially in a competitive environment like the SEC. It just shows that those two men were joined at the hip."
Diaz saw none of this coming. In fact, he verbalized as much years ago. Not long after being appointed successor by Magill himself, Diaz said he’d “never be around long enough” to run down any of Magill’s considerable records.
“At the beginning of my career, that seemed so unattainable,” Diaz said Monday. “There’s no way I thought I’d even be remotely close, given all his success and everything. But looking back on it and it’s hard to believe that all these years have elapsed. It just flew by.”
The reality is that Magill saw something in Diaz that he didn’t see in himself. When an injury sidetracked Diaz’s promising pro career not long after college, Magill convinced him to come back to Georgia to be his assistant.
It has been 38 years since Diaz accepted that “temporary assignment.”
“I don’t know what it was,” Diaz said of Magill, who recruited Diaz out of his native Puerto Rico. “He made a comment one time that he thought I had a knack for dealing with people, that I related with each and every player differently. That, and he said of all his players I was the only one who hated losing as much has he did.”
Diaz hasn’t lost much. He has led the Bulldogs to six national championships (which includes four outdoor and two indoor titles) and 28 SEC championships.
Diaz celebrated Sunday’s win the way a 66-year old might be expected to. He and his wife Suzanne went to dinner at The Last Resort with friends Jack and Paul Lavin, Trent Allen and Jeff and Sabina Wallace. Jeff Wallace, of course, has 744 wins as the Bulldogs’ women’s tennis coach. Afterward, they went to the Hilltop Grille for drinks and “closed it down,” which happened to be 8 p.m.
Expect Diaz’s record to grow because he doesn’t plan to walk away soon.
“I don’t really have an exit strategy,” Diaz said with a laugh. “As long as I have the energy and passion to do this, I have no plans to stop. I’d like to think I’ve got five or eight or 10 years left in me.”
That’s just fine with McGarity.
“Manny has a lot of gas in the tank,” he said. “He’s as excited as I’ve seen him around this young team. They’ve energized him.”
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