Sport: Pancho at 41

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"My back gets very stiff and I put heat balm on it," he says. "The balls of my feet hurt too, so now I put the footpads on before the pain starts. The tension sometimes gives me a pain in the stomach, a nerve ache. So I take pills for that, and then I take another tablet that's full of minerals. It seems to help my vision."

The poor fellow sounds like a candidate for the geriatric ward, but it's only Pancho Gonzalez describing how it feels to be 41 and starting his 22nd year of professional tennis. It hurts, obviously. Yet there are compensations. Big compensations. In the opening match of the 1970 season at Madison Square Garden, Gonzalez took on Australia's Rod Laver, 31, the top-ranked pro on the tour for the past four years. The old outpatient not only survived; he outlasted Laver through five grueling sets and walked off with the $10,000 winner-take-all prize money. A week later in Detroit, Gonzalez picked up $10,000 more by running another Aussie, 25-year-old John Newcombe, off the court in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.

Jungle Cat. The matches were the first in a ten-city tour offering $147,000 in prize money, and Gonzalez is determined to get the lion's share. Not that Pancho is exactly strapped for cash. He has been topping $100,000 annually from tennis and other interests for the past several years. What keeps him going is the same fierce pride that has marked the moody, 6-ft. 3-in. Mexican-American ever since he arrived on the scene in 1949, firmly convinced that "I'm the best tennis player in the world." There have been disbelievers from time to time: in 1955 the promoters of one tour guaranteed Tony Trabert $75,000 and Gonzalez only $15,000. An enraged Pancho told his opponent: "You'd better get used to losing." Trabert did. So did Frank Sedgman, Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, as Gonzalez won the world professional championship every year from 1953 through 1959 and again in 1961. Some of the match-ups were so lopsided that promoters asked Gonzalez to "ease up a little." That was like asking an angry jungle cat to claw gently. Jack Kramer once said: "Pancho gets 50 points on his serve and 50 points on terror."

Like the big, blistering serve, the terror came naturally. A high school dropout who taught himself tennis on the public courts of Los Angeles, Gonzalez trained little, feasted on tacos and beer, and whiled the nights away playing poker and snooker. On the court Gonzalez displayed the temperament of a tiger. He snarled at opponents, drilled balls at judges' heads, once even rushed into the seats to strong-arm a heckler.

Tennis fans have loved every mean minute of it. They forgive his outbursts as part of his almost fanatical passion for winning, a feat that now takes as much heart as art. He has made concessions. He uses a lighter aluminum racket. He cuts the pockets out of his tennis shorts lest they get soggy with sweat and weigh him down. And he has taken to rigorous training, practicing three hours daily and jogging around his eight-acre Pancho Gonzalez Tennis Ranch in Malibu, Calif. As for court tactics, he likens himself to an aging boxer who can no longer rely on a quick knockout but must pick out a weak spot and "keep punching until the muscles give." His victory over Laver was a case in point.