Son of the German Otto Maier, founder of FC Barcelona, ??Enrique Gerardo ‘Bubi’ Maier Müller was the undisputed leader of Spanish tennis before the Civil War. Since the appearance of Manuel Alonso in the 1920s, Spain had not had another figure of his international stature. Maier, a player from RCT Barcelona, ??was the first Spaniard to win a Grand Slam title, and he did so twice: in 1932 he won the mixed tournament at Wimbledon with the American Elizabeth Ryan, and in 1935 he won the US Open with the also American Sarah Palfrey.
In 1935, Enrique Maier was the first Spaniard to participate in the Australian International Championships, and the only one until the appearance of Andrés Gimeno in 1959. He did so through an invitation from the Australian federation, but, in reality, his decision to Undertaking the trip was because, that year, he set the goal of playing in the four Grand Slams.
Enrique Maier was born on December 31, 1910 in Barcelona. It was very easy for him to contact tennis. His parents, Otto and Isabel, were members of the RCT del Turó, the RCT Barcelona and the Societat Sportiva Pompeya, something common then among families rooted in sports practice, since the three entities were a few meters from each other. Otto Maier arrived in Barcelona as a corporate representative of the Hartmann company with the mission of launching an innovative sanitary dressing factory.
The great fan of the racket was her mother, Isabel, a woman of strong convictions, who was one of those who led the fight for FC Barcelona to accept the entry of women into its membership list.
Enrique and his sisters, María ‘Beli’ Isabel and Rosario, began to play their first rackets on the courts of the RCT del Turó. In 1924, the RCT Barcelona and the RCT del Turó pooled their finances to hire Romeo Acquarone, a Monegasque of Italian descent, who was one of the most sought-after tennis teachers in Europe. Acquarone quickly noticed Bubi.
Tall, strong and very coordinated, Enrique learned very quickly and had no rival in the youth championships. At the age of 16 he was already a junior champion of Catalonia, and he trained with Eduardo Flaquer, Francisco Sindreu and Raimundo Morales, members of the Davis Cup team. He also played in Germany and Switzerland, taking advantage of his father’s travels, both for his health business and to visit his relatives.
In 1927, the Catalan Team Championship became the great objective of the clubs of Barcelona. Maier had to decide on a club, and he did so with RCT Barcelona. A year later, he competed in the Bavarian Championships, and, for the first time, the Spanish Championship. He lost in his debut in four sets to Francisco Sindreu,
first favorite, but won the doubles event with Ricardo Morales. Maier would no longer lose a single individual match in the Championship. He won seven consecutive titles between 1929 and 1935. The one in 1931 was special, because of its sentimentality and because of how the events developed.
Based in the United States as an engineer, Manuel Alonso took advantage of a stay in Spain to sign up for the tournament. Alonso and Maier had two Spanish Champions trophies in their display cases. The original trophy, a cup donated by Alfonso XIII, stipulated in its regulations that it would become the property of whoever won the competition for three consecutive years or five alternate years. On the center court of the RCT Barcelona, ??absolutely packed, on April 19, 1931, Maier defeated Alonso 6-4, 5-7, 7-9, 6-2 and 6-1. He received the Cup from King Alfonso XIII five days after the Second Republic was proclaimed.
In 1929, Maier began his international involvement. He played in the French tournaments on the Côte d’Azur, made his debut in the Davis Cup against Germany, signed up for Wimbledon, although in the end he did not travel, and interacted in Deauville and Biarritz with those who would become his great friends: the French musketeers Brugnon, Cochet, Borotra and Lacoste, as with the German champion, Baron Gottfried von Cramm.
Wimbledon was his favorite tournament. He rented an apartment in London with the French, and trained in Roehampton. “We played exhibition doubles matches, some with sensational music bands,” Maier said in an interview in which he analyzed his great performance in 1932. “In the mixed match he was signed up with Lilí Álvarez, but she ultimately did not travel. And Elizabeth Ryan, who was 40 years old, told me to sign up. In her youth, Ryan had won tournaments in Barcelona, ??and she served and volleyed better than many men. “We won against all odds.”
Two days earlier, Maier had achieved his best performance at Wimbledon, losing in the quarterfinals to future champion Ellsworth Vines. “The best match of my life was when I defeated Jean Borotra in four sets in the round of 16. For me, it was impossible to play better,” he added. At that Wimbledon, Enrique Maier was already listed as a member of the International Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain, and he found a new and good friend: Fred Perry.
In 1933 and 1934, Maier restricted his international activity, although he did not forget about Wimbledon. There he learned, through Fred Perry, that the Australian federation wanted to invite good European tennis players to participate in its International Championships in January 1935. In reality, the Australian federation had received that order from the city of Melbourne and the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club. Melbourne was celebrating the centenary of its founding, and Kooyong LTC was seeking its leadership as an Australian club ahead of Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide.
Fred Perry, current champion of the Australian Open, had a lot of prominence in the search for his five companions. These were Christian Boussus, Giorgio de Stefani, Jacques Brugnon, Roderich Menzel and Enrique Maier. Bubi accepted after learning that his friends agreed to travel to Australia. “It will be a great opportunity to try to play the four major world tournaments in the same season,” he told Brugnon and Boussus.
In November 1934, carrying his rackets and some golf clubs that he had bought in London in 1932, when he was given a £20 voucher for sports equipment for his victory in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon, Maier headed for Australia. He was accompanied by Giorgio de Stefani, son of the Italian Minister of the Interior, the only ambidextrous tennis player of the time, and who ended up being a member of the International Olympic Committee and president of the Italian tennis federation.
De Stefani was one of Maier’s betes noires on the track. He was a tough guy in action, and he greatly surprised his rivals by being able to play with both hands although he served with his right. “That long trip brought us together a lot. Australia was quite an experience, with tracks in every corner, with thousands of fans even watching the training sessions,” he explained. Before the International Championships, Maier competed in the New South Wales Championships in Sydney, and, already in Melbourne, the Victorian Championships.
The great Australian tournament opened its doors days later, but the Kooyong LTC did not look exceptional because, weeks before, major floods had left the slopes impassable. Exempted in the first round, Maier debuted against Abel Kay, Australian amateur boxing champion in the welterweight category, who was also an excellent water polo and Australian football player. Bubi won 6-1, 6-4 and 6-3. In the third round, Maier was defeated by Vivian Erzerum Bede ‘Viv’ McGrath, a member of the Aussie Davis Cup team, and one of the first high-level tennis players to play the two-handed backhand. In doubles, partnering with Stefani, he reached the semifinals.
The farewell to the Australian adventure was in Perth, on the courts of Kings Park, in an Australia-Europe match that the Aussies won by a clear 6-1. Maier lost his singles match against John Brownwich, and in doubles, along with Stefani, they lost to Bromwich and McGrath. “Between one competition and another, what I improved the most was in golf. Many of the Australian tennis players were excellent on the links,” explained Maier in 1946, when he retired from tennis and became a Spanish golf coach.
De Stefani proposed a different return to Australia than planned. The Italian had received a message from his father explaining that the Maharaja of Kuch wanted to take tennis lessons. Maier accepted, but negotiations broke down and plans changed. The Italian ambassador in Batavia, now Jakarta, informed De Stefani that the Government of the Dutch East Indies invited them to play some matches. They paid for their travel, subsistence allowance and a tourist stay in Java. What was initially a four-day visit turned into a stay of almost two weeks from which they left exhausted between tennis and sightseeing.
The other three Grand Slam stages of that 1935 closed with defeats in the third round at Roland Garros (Perry), round of 16 at Wimbledon (Menzel) and quarterfinals at the US Open (Wilmer Allison). In 1936, Maier was already thinking about international retirement, and if he did not do so before it was because the Davis Cup draw dictated that Spain had to host Germany.
Enrique Maier contacted Manuel Alonso, who told him that he would be in Barcelona to play on the RCT del Turó courts. And he convinced him because Baron von Cramm, already facing Hitler, had announced that he would be part of the German group. “It was my last Davis Cup match, and it was an honor to play it with someone so great and such a friend of Von Cramm,” Maier explained.
The Spanish Civil War ended Maier’s retirement. After the war he focused on golf, and as he explained, “I cried one day when, by chance, I passed by Ganduxer Street and saw how they were destroying the RCT Barcelona chalet, which had already moved to Pedralbes.” All of his trophies disappeared during the Civil War.
