Tennis - 2024

New York native Larry Nagler was the 1960 NCAA tennis singles champion and doubles champion (with fellow SCJS HOFer Allen Fox). He also played basketball at UCLA for Coach John Wooden for a year and a half in 1958 and 1959 after starting on the freshman team. Not eligible as a freshman due to collegiate rules at that time, he was a three-time Tennis ITA All-American during his Bruin tennis career at UCLA and helped lead UCLA to NCAA team championships in tennis in both 1960 and 1961.

In 1960, he posted an undefeated record in singles tournaments. He won three Pac-8 conference singles titles (1960-62). Named team captain in 1962, Nagler played doubles with Arthur Ashe on the pro circuit for two years and was Ashe’s attorney at the beginning of his professional tennis career.

After graduating from UCLA, Nagler played a limited amount of professional tennis. The ATP computer was not adopted until the very end of Nagler’s career, but he was ranked #272 in the world on the computer at age 37 at a time when he was essentially retired from the tennis tour and was practicing law full time. He played in both the singles and doubles at Wimbledon in 1964. At the 1977 Maccabiah Games in Israel he won a tennis bronze medal in the doubles, and the silver medal in the open men’s singles, for the United States.

He graduated from UCLA Law School and has practiced law in Los Angeles for over 50 years. In 2004, he became the 16th UCLA player or coach to be inducted into the intercollegiate Tennis Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011.