Pancho Segura, Tennis Great of the ’40s and ’50s, Dies at 96
In his 2009 memoir, "As It Was," Mulloy wrote, "In my humble opinion, Segura is the most astute authority on tennis other than myself!" In addition to his son, from his marriage to his first wife, the former Virginia Smith, which ended in divorce, Segura is survived by his second wife, the former Beverley Moylan; his daughter, Maria Segura, from
that marriage; his sisters Catalina, Olivera and Eleanor Segura; a brother, Andres, and four grandchildren.
Writing in Tennis magazine in 1973, Kramer called Segura’s forehand
and Don Budge’s backhand "the two strokes I regard as the greatest in the history of tennis." "I played with the speed of a bullet," Segura told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1987.
Errol Flynn used to send a car to pick me up." After leaving the pro tour in 1962, Segura became a teaching pro at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club
and what is now the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, in Carlsbad, near San Diego.
In addition to his strong showings at Forest Hills in the forerunner of the United States Open, Segura won the United States clay-court championship
and the national indoor championship in the mid-1940s.
Arriving in the United States in 1940 with little knowledge of English — his legs bowed by a childhood case of rickets
— Segura was recruited by the University of Miami’s tennis coach, the prominent amateur player Gardnar Mulloy.
In the late 1960s, Segura honed Connors’s game at the request of his mother, Gloria, who had played in the United States Nationals in the mid-1940s and was coaching her son,
but took him to the Los Angeles area so he could work with Segura.
"I played on islands that were specks in the Indian Ocean," he told The Los Angeles Times in 1991.
