Oct. 19, 2010
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Former longtime University of Notre Dame men’s tennis coach Tom Fallon, the winningest head coach in Irish athletics history at the time he retired, died today of natural causes at his South Bend, Ind., home. He was 93.
Coach of Notre Dame’s 1959 NCAA co-champion squad and elected to the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame a year after his retirement, Fallon spent 31 seasons – from 1957 through 1987 — as Irish men’s tennis coach. He also served as the Notre Dame wrestling coach during the first 15 years that program existed on campus. Fallon finished with a 514-194 mark (.726) as Irish tennis coach, to go with a 65-74-4 record as Notre Dame wrestling coach after he founded that program in 1952. Those combined 579 victories marked the most in Notre Dame history when he stepped down in ’87.
Two seasons after he became Notre Dame’s tennis coach, he led the Irish to a 14-0 regular season and a share of the 1959 NCAA title with Tulane. That ’59 Notre Dame team proved to be one of the strongest teams in Irish history, as it won all 14 of its dual matches. Ten of the Irish victories were by 9-0 scores, three others were 8-1, and the only close match was a 5-4 win over Michigan, the Big Ten champion. The unbeaten season was the first of two perfect seasons under Fallon (he also coached an undefeated 1966 team).
Notre Dame’s Maxwell Brown and Bill Heinbecker had a chance to clinch the outright NCAA title when they faced the Green Wave’s Crawford Henry and Ronald Holmberg in the ’59 NCAA doubles final, but the Tulane pair prevailed to give its team a share of the championship.
In his career, Fallon coached a number of players who went on to great success after leaving Notre Dame, from Jasjit Singh, who excelled in the professional grand slams, to 1966 graduate Pedro Rosselló, who went on to become the governor of Puerto Rico. Rosselló was named one of two winners of the 1999 Rolex Achievement Awards, which pay tribute to past participants in the world of collegiate tennis who have achieved excellence in their chosen careers and are honored for their professional successes and their contributions to society.
Following another undefeated campaign in 1966 (15-0, with Rossello serving as captain of that squad), Fallon brought the 1971 NCAA Championships to the Notre Dame campus, as UCLA won the team title. The NCAA singles final featured two soon-to-be legends: Jimmy Connors of UCLA and Roscoe Tanner of Stanford, with Connors – just a freshman at the time – prevailing.
Fallon became a college tennis legend, with his teams winning the Eastern Intercollegiate Championships 11 times before his retirement. He had only two losing seasons in the 31 years in which he headed up the Irish tennis program. Fallon’s Irish teams won 20 or more matches in six straight seasons from 1979-84. He was named the Midwestern Collegiate Conference coach of the year in 1986.
Since current Irish men’s coach Bobby Bayliss began in 1987-88, the Notre Dame squad generally has opened its fall season with the Tom Fallon Invitational on the Notre Dame campus.
Thomas William Fallon was born April 19, 1917, in Long Island, N.Y. He enrolled as a freshman at Notre Dame in 1938 and after graduation spent four years as a Navy officer during World War II. After earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in physical education at Columbia, he returned to his alma mater. He was named chairman of the physical education department in 1969 and also became director of activities at the Rockne Memorial Fieldhouse.
Fallon and his wife, the former Eleanor Williams, were parents to three children – Jessica, a 1975 Notre Dame graduate; Terence, a 1977 Notre Dame graduate, and Christopher, who played tennis for the Irish in 1977.
Visitation will be from 3:00-8:00 p.m. Sunday (a rosary will be said at 5:00 p.m.) at Kaniewski Funeral Home, 3545 N. Bendix Drive in South Bend. The funeral Mass will be at 9:30 a.m. Monday at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the University of Notre Dame campus.
— ND —