Jon Alexander "Jack" Douglas (September 10, 1936 – July 27, 2010) was an amateur American

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

player and

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

quarterback.

Early life

Douglas was born in

Hot Springs, Arkansas Hot Springs is a resort city in the state of Arkansas and the county seat of Garland County. The city is located in the Ouachita Mountains among the U.S. Interior Highlands, and is set among several natural hot springs for which the city is n ...

, the only child of Dortha and Gordon Douglas. In 1944 he and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. He graduated from

Santa Monica High School Santa Monica High School, officially abbreviated to SaMoHi, is located in Santa Monica, California. Founded in 1891, it changed location several times in its early years before settling into its present campus at 601 Pico Boulevard. It is a part o ...

, where he played football, tennis, and

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

College sports

He attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where he was Stanford's first All-American in tennis in 1957, and earned the honor again in 1958, when he was runner-up in both singles and doubles competition at the

NCAA Men's Tennis Championship The NCAA Men's Tennis Championships are annual tournaments held in the spring to crown team, singles, and doubles champions in American college tennis. The first intercollegiate championship was held in 1883, 23 years before the founding of the NCA ...

. Douglas was also a

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

on Stanford's football team. He played backup to

John Brodie John Riley Brodie (born August 14, 1935) is a former American football player, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) for 17 seasons. He had a second career as a Senior PGA Tour professional golfer, and ...

for two years, and when Brodie graduated, became the starter for the 1957 season, leading the team to a 6–4 record. In 1996, he was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in Athens, Georgia.

Tennis career

After graduating from Stanford, Douglas entered top-level competitive amateur tennis. From 1960 to 1962, he was in the top ten of U.S. players. He won the

Pacific Southwest Championships The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

in 1961, defeating

Roy Emerson Roy Stanley Emerson (born 3 November 1936) is an Australian former tennis player who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, for a total of 28 Grand Slam titles. He is the only male player to have completed a caree ...

in three sets, and reached the quarterfinals in the 1961 U.S. National Championships, losing to

Mike Sangster Mike Sangster (11 September 1940 – 30 April 1985) was a British No. 1 tennis player of the 1960s.

. He won the singles title at the inaugural Philadelphia Invitational Indoor Tennis Championship in 1962, defeating Ronald Holmberg in the final in five sets. Following his service in the U.S. Marine Corps Douglas played on the U.S.

Davis Cup The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format. It is described by the organis ...

team in 1961 and 1962. He scored the only point for the U.S. by defeating

Fausto Gardini Fausto Gardini (8 March 1930 – 17 September 2008) was an Italian tennis player. He was an Italian Davis Cup player and later captain. Gardini had long arms and legs, was renowned for keeping the ball in play and was very determined. "I could n ...

in five sets, as they lost the 1961 Davis Cup finals to host country Italy.

After tennis

Following his tennis career, Douglas founded the Jon Douglas Real Estate Company in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

. He was inducted into the

Intercollegiate Tennis Association The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) is the governing body and coaches association of college tennis, both an advocate and authority, overseeing men’s and women’s varsity tennis at all levels – NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NC ...

Hall of Fame in 1996, and became a member of the Stanford Athletic Hall of Fame in 1958. In 1995, the Jon Douglas Company merged with Prudential to form the Prudential Jon Douglas Company and that company was acquired by

Coldwell Banker Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC is an American real estate franchise owned by Anywhere Real Estate, with headquarters in Madison, New Jersey. It was founded in 1906 in San Francisco, and has approximately 3000 offices in 49 countries and territor ...

in September 1997.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Douglas, Jon 1936 births 2010 deaths American male tennis players Businesspeople from California Sportspeople from Hot Springs, Arkansas Stanford Cardinal football players Stanford Cardinal men's tennis players Tennis players from Santa Monica, California Pan American Games medalists in tennis Pan American Games bronze medalists for the United States Tennis players at the 1959 Pan American Games 20th-century American businesspeople Players of American football from Santa Monica, California