University of Georgia Athletics
Diaz Brings His Bulldogs Home
September 08, 2016 | Men's Tennis
The above video features an interview with Manny Diaz talking about how he ended up at Georgia and what it means to bring his team to his home.
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Long before Manuel Diaz ever met Dan Magill, he'd corresponded with the legendary Georgia men's tennis coach for more than a year.
Nobody could have imagined when Diaz and Magill were exchanging letters in the early 1970s, from Athens to San Juan and back, that such success would follow. They're the only two coaches Georgia has had since becoming a varsity program in 1955. Magill is in the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame, as are several of the players they coached, and Diaz will no-doubt join them after he retires.
As a player, Diaz was a two-time All-American at Georgia, in 1974-75. He later served as Magill's assistant coach, and together they led the Bulldogs to the program's first NCAA championship in 1985 -- and won it again two year's later.
After Magill retired in 1988, Diaz took over as head coach and has led the program to four more NCAA titles and 26 SEC titles (17 regular-season and nine tournament). And all that success began with some letters.
Diaz was in high school in his hometown of San Juan, P.R., and was told stories about Magill and the Georgia program from the assistant pro at the Caribe Hilton Swim and Tennis Club, Tony Ortiz, who had spent a year with the Bulldogs.
"(Ortiz) spoke so highly of Coach Magill, wrote Coach Magill a letter and Coach Magill started corresponding with me, as they did back then," Diaz said. "Coach Magill was a prolific letter writer; I must have gotten at least 100 letters in that year and a half."
When he was a junior in high school, Diaz and his father, Manuel Diaz Sr., decided to visit some schools in the United States. An accomplished junior player that had traveled to the U.S. in the summers to play tournaments, Diaz had been to the state of Georgia previously, having played an event at the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center in Atlanta.
The first stop on the Diaz's college tour was Athens, which Diaz had heard about but hadn't yet seen. Nor had he yet met Magill in person. It turned out to be the only stop on the tour, Diaz said.
Diaz and his father arrived in Athens unannounced, while the Bulldogs were playing a dual match.
"(Magill) came down and it was such a great first impression, you know, because Coach Magill was such a colorful dresser," Diaz said. "He had on probably polka-dot pants and a madras shirt and a houndstooth hat. He was such a character and you immediately were drawn to him, my father especially."
Diaz was not only struck by Magill, but also the Georgia program, the atmosphere at the matches -- and by Athens itself.
"We just fell in love with Athens. It was that one week where everything is in bloom, the azaleas to the dogwoods, Milledge Avenue was full up people walking up and down -- it was a tremendous visit, and by the end of the visit Coach Magill offered me a full scholarship and we decided to go back home," Diaz said. "We didn't visit anybody else. It was a terrific visit and a first impression."
Things not only worked out for Diaz, but a few years later his younger brother, Ricky, joined him in Athens and was All-SEC in 1977.
Now, decades later, Diaz is back in San Juan with the Bulldogs, who open their fall season this weekend at the Palmas Tournament. It's a four-team scramble event, featuring singles and doubles. Twice before Diaz has taken a few players down to Puerto Rico for events, but he said this is the first time he's taken the whole team to the island to play a tournament.
"It's a great opportunity and it's something that I've been trying to do for several years, and all of a sudden we got an opportunity this year to do it," Diaz said. "I'm looking forward to letting them walk though Old San Juan, the second oldest city in the Western Hemisphere. It's just got some terrific history; I can show them where I had my first communion, show them where I went to elementary school. It's going to be a beautiful trip for all of us."
Diaz recalled taking some Bulldogs to a fall tournament in the late 1990s, when his youngest son, Alex, was still in diapers. Alex is now a freshman on the Georgia team, following in older brother Eric's footsteps of playing for their dad.
Before playing for his dad at Georgia, Alex played for his dad's homeland, along with Eric. They represented Puerto Rico together in the Davis Cup in 2015 and Alex played again earlier this year.
"It has been a really good experience," Alex said, "which I'm sure will help me going forward playing for Georgia."
Diaz didn't get the chance to play Davis Cup for Puerto Rico, which is part of the Unites States Tennis Association. Puerto Rico didn't begin competing individually as a nation until 1992, and Diaz was its first captain. In the past few years, however, he's mostly just been a proud dad.
"Now with my sons having an opportunity to play there I've started just supporting them," he said. "I've been offered that position again and I'm not sure that I want to torture my sons any more. I just wanted to give them a little bit of space, at least the first years that they played Davis Cup."
Tennis has long been a popular sport in Puerto Rico, though not quite at the level of baseball and basketball. Under the coaching of Welby Van Horn, Diaz's coach, numerous top-level players came from Puerto Rico, including UCLA's 1966 NCAA singles and doubles champion Charlie Pasarell.
Puerto Rican tennis also made big news last month during the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, when Mónica Puig won the women's singles gold medal -- the first Olympic gold of any kind for the country. It was a special thing to see, Diaz said.
"I think Mónica Puig has re-energized tennis for many people all over the world, especially in Puerto Rico," he said. "The reception she got (recently) when for the first time she returned to Puerto Rico was sensational. ... I actually followed her matches throughout the Olympics and just found myself just really getting involved in it. Everybody was sending me videos and the island sort of stopped. ... This is special and I believe it will invigorate and re-energize tennis in the island."
As a young player in Puerto Rico in the 1960s, Diaz knew he needed to come to the United States to find "the best place that could help me develop academically, socially and athletically." He didn't know, he couldn't know, that the place he found would be a central part of the rest of his life.
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.