OLLIE W. GRESHAM

CLASS OF 1999

Ollie Gresham learned to play tennis at the age of 14 and played on the Tulsa Will Rogers High School team.  He played # 1 doubles in 1951 and # 2 singles in 1952.  He went to Tulsa University and played four years for the Golden Hurricane.  In 1954, the team was the first and only T.U. tennis team to do undefeated for the entire season with wins over the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma A & M, and Arkansas University.  He played # 2 doubles on that team with now Judge Mickey Wilson.  During Ollie's senior year in 1955, he played # 1 singles and doubles.  He returned to coach the T.U. tennis team for two years in the 1960s.

After college, Ollie played and won many city and regional tournaments with Buddy McCune.  After Buddy's untimely death in 1968, Ollie teamed with S. L. Shofner and for the next 12 years won nearly every tournament the entered in the Missouri Valley, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisana.  In 1969, they won the prestigious Southern Sectional in Jackson, Mississippi, and the National 35 Indoor Tournament in Salt Lake City, Utah.  They finished the year as the # 2 team in the nation in Men's 35s.  He has also teamed with Arnold Short and C. J. Hixon winning several local, State, and Missouri Valley tournaments.

Ollie has won Missouri Valley Sectional Championships in four different events (singles, doubles, mixed doubles, and father-son doubles).  In 1983, he and son David were ranked # 4 nationally in father-son doubles.

He has served as an officer of the Tulsa Area Tennis Association and is a Past President of the Oklahoma District Tennis Association.

Like that battery commercial, Ollie just keeps going and going.  Over the past eight years, he has won the National Public Parks Tournament in singles and twice in doubles with John Been; has won three National Senior Olympic Championships in doubles (twice with Dave Riley and once with Joe Harris); and won the National Intersectional 60 Doubles with Don Dippold.  He is one of the five original members of the Oklahoma Tennis Hall of Fame.