There will be a Celebration of Life gathering on June 26. Please click here to read the full obituary.
Born 13 February 1937, died 28 April 2024
by James Zug
James F.C. Bostwick, the former world champion, died last weekend at the age of eighty-seven.
Jimmy Bostwick was one of the greatest amateur athletes of the twentieth century. He first played court tennis in Aiken, where he grew up. He took lessons from Pierre Etchebaster when Pierre was down for his annual spring sojourn. In his early twenties, Bostwick started playing tennis regularly at the Racquet & Tennis Club after he joined in 1958.
Less than a year later he won the 1959 Gold Racquets and went five sets against the current world champion Jack Johnson in the U.S. Open. In the spring he knocked off Norty Knox in the finals of the 1959 U.S. Amateur, just weeks after Knox had beaten Johnson in the world championship. He became the youngest amateur champion since Jay Gould a half century earlier. Proving it was no fluke, Bostwick again beat Knox in the 1960 Gold Racquets, 6-4 in the fifth set.
Known as someone who combined the classic floor game of subtlety and finesse with a deep determination, Bostwick was one of the greatest tennis players in U.S. history. He won the U.S. Open singles seven times: in 1960, 1961, 1962, 1967, 1969, 1970 and 1972; he won the U.S. Open doubles in 1968, 1969 and 1970 (with brother Pete Bostwick). He won the U.S. Amateur singles in 1959, 1964, 1970 and 1972; he won the U.S. Amateur doubles in 1969 and 1973 (again with Pete) and then in 1980 with Norty Knox. At Tuxedo Bostwick accumulated seven Gold Racquets titles in all and was the first person to win the Gold Racquets in both racquets and tennis on the same weekend.
Bostwick was world champion from 1972 to 1975, winning the title twice. After losing 7-1 to his brother Pete in the 1970 Challenge, he turned the tables in 1972, beating Pete 7-2. In 1974 he played in one of the most controversial Challenges of all-time, beating Howard Angus 7-5. A year later he retired as world champion. In 1994 Bostwick was inducted in the inaugural class into the International Court Tennis Hall of Fame.
Bostwick excelled in a half dozen other sports. He was an outstanding golfer. In 1964 he captured the French Amateur, winning 8 and 7 in the thirty-six-hole finals. In the same summer he made it to the fifth round of the British Amateur. He won the club championship at Piping Rock in six different decades. In 1968 he qualified for the 1968 U.S. Open at Oak Hill but missed the cut after two rounds. He also loved ice hockey. He was a stalwart on the St. Nicholas club team for a quarter century and scored the winning goal in 1962 when the St. Nicks beat Harvard. He later coached hockey at Green Vale School on Long Island.
Jimmy Bostwick, Pete Bostwick & Pierre Etchebaster
Pete Bostwick (left) and Jimmy Bostwick receive their trophies from Bob Hope after the Bostwick brothers won the “Ike,” a combined-score amateur golf tournament sponsored by the New York Daily News that was named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower and held at the Wheatley Hills Club in Long Island circa 1970
Four World Champions – Wayne Davies, James F.C. Bostwick, George H. Bostwick, Jr. & Northrup R. Knox
