Champ’s Tribute- Grace, Optimism and Devotion

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”-Rumi

Have you ever won a perfect set? Well Pauline Betz Addie, aka Champ, gave me the confidence to make this once happen. We shared a perfect love set or 24 straight points. Also we shared a the other type of love off the court. Pauline’s game in life was all about excellence. Through focus, practice and preparation she freely excelled herself. Graceful, Optimistic and Devoted were the divine or GOD virtues she bestowed.


Pauline had boundless physical and mental grace. Her ensuing kindness, gentleness and humility complimented her physical poise. Whenever I wish to visualize championship form I would just emulate Pauline’s grace. When things get bad I recall how Pauline would transmute the situation into looking how I can benefit from such difficulty. Finally her devotion to excellence inspired me greater to purposefulness to find explore my divine potential.


Pauline was my beloved friend, teacher, employer, and partner. She gave me the courage to be the beauty I loved by her very presence. We shared a devoted friendship for forty years. She demonstrated to me not for the importance of outcome but the value of a developing the grace of process- cultivating keen concentration.

My greatest fear always has been not using my full potential. Pauline was my Zen Master teaching me the art of living. She showed little distinction between her work and play. Her labor was her leisure. Uniting her mind with her body, her education was her recreation. Pauline’s love and her spirit you could hardly tell which from which. She tapped into excellence in whatever she pursued. All her life you could never tell whether she was working or playing

Pauline was the ultimate optimistic. She always said to me “you never know what bad is” and always made the best out what was given to her. Maybe that is why she so enjoyed playing duplicated bridge transforming bad cards into winning hands. Always she would see good or the silver lining. Her gift was she would transform sow’s ear into a silk purse with whatever presented her. We would go on many a Florida golf trip and laugh and after I would make some horrendous shot and she would always share some positive comment.

Pauline was devoted to so many things. She cared deeply about others and her world. She was always helping those less fortunate either giving them work or loaning them money. When she was given a hotel room she would share it with many other players and even give up the bed and sleep on the floor. She would worked with me at soap kitchens or help me in so many ways. Pauline would recall how she waited tables two days after and worked spooning corn on customer’s plates after winning her first U.S. Forest Hills Title. She was a wholehearted tennis instructor. She loved teaching so much when she came on vacation to visit me in Florida she ended up help teaching my lessons for me.

Her life was filled with both prosperity and setbacks. Pauline enjoyed some of tennis greatest feats while in the last years of her life some of the greatest perils. She exemplified boundless possibility and astounding freedom.Through practice and preparation to what has heart and meaning death comes not as defeat but a triumph to a glorious life. Yes she embodied the If quote as you walk through the doors on Center Court of Wimbledon, “If I can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” Her entire life was based on this theme of taking whatever adversity or honors came her way with evenness and balance. I once joke with her in her 70’s when she was dating Washington most prominent businessman does this mean she was going to stop mopping the courts up with towels when it rained. Of course she did not.

She only cared about being free to excel in new experiences whether it was a late night balancing of the tennis facility books or when she could change the spark plugs on her VW bug. Whether it was, bridge, ping pong, golf, piano, flute, tax preparation, accounting or whatever she endeavored here was a chance for her to compete with herself. She learned it was not so much about overcoming her opponent yet how she could reach her fullest potential.

When I was developing her timeline for the Pauline Betz Addie Center I asked her what was your best match. With her usual grace she responded her 1945 Forest Hills Final loss to Sarah Palfrey Cook. “ I played my best match ever. Sarah was such a terrific and so under rated player who never fully recognized for her incredible talent”. How many champions would give a lost as their best match ever?

Years ago Pauline shared with me that when she was at her highest point of tennis achievement it was a dark and lonely time.

Pauline lead a life just like Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Her speed made her a champion and she was outcast by the flock. She loved to teach beginners and blaze a different trail.

“And the more Jonathan practiced his kindness lessons, and the more he worked the nature of love, the more he wanted to go back the Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born as an instructor and he his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself” .

…”If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then we have finally overcome space and time, we have destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don’t you think we might see each other once or twice?”

Pauline exemplified grace, optimism and devotion. Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull her friends and students CAN FLY! Once in 1943 Tri-State Championship finals Pauline won a perfect love match, no point lost. Yes a perfect love match is freedom. Now whatever stands between our very liberation may be overcome. I believe what Pauline sought both in life and death is what frees us.

Pauline’s death serves to liberate me to what life is all about . What brings you grace, optimism and devotion? Do these virtues free you with a greater sense of possibility? With grace, optimism and devotion I am awakened by Pauline’s death and will always cherish how she exemplified the same liberation during her tribulations and triumphs.