Remembering Nancy Gill McShea

USTA Eastern mourns the loss of journalist and longtime staff member Nancy Gill McShea, whose massive body of work over decades shined a bright light on the sport—and its many stars—in the Eastern section.

"Anybody who earns a tennis ranking of any kind or volunteers time to promote tennis as the sport for a lifetime is a star in my mind," she once said.

Nancy covered Eastern news for the famed Tennis World magazine in the 1980s and also supported former Eastern junior Nick Greenfield as he endeavored to produce Eastern Roundup, a publication that printed draw sheets and documented all the big happenings on the Eastern junior circuit in the early 1990s. As an Eastern staff member, she edited the section's annual yearbook and profiled every Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame inductee for the ceremony's program booklet for over 20 years. Indeed, when we announce the passing of a USTA Eastern legend on this website—David Dinkins, Doris Herrick, Bob Ryland, Dick Savitt—we will often reprint her stories. (You can read many of her pieces at the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame Digital Archive.)

In 2011, with former USTA Eastern President Dale Caldwell, Nancy coauthored Tennis in New York: The History of the Most Influential Sport in the Most Influential City in the World. The book details the legacy and evolution of the game in the Eastern section over more than a century, highlighting the achievements and impact of the many VIPs who got their start in this corner of the world—including Althea Gibson, Savitt, Vitas Gerulaitis and John McEnroe, among many others. Nancy continued to champion Eastern tennis well into the 2020s, publishing archival newspaper articles and photos that she had collected over the years to the Tennis in New York Facebook page.

For all her efforts, Nancy herself was inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012, and she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the section in 2017. (She is pictured at that ceremony, above, center, with current Eastern Executive Director Jenny Schnitzer and former Eastern Executive Director David Goodman.)

Our thoughts are with Nancy’s friends and family.

Below, we have re-published the feature written in honor of Nancy’s 2012 induction into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame. It is one of the very few features that was not written by Nancy herself.

Nancy Gill McShea (2012)

Nancy Gill McShea, an award winning tennis writer and the co-author of the book, Tennis in New York, calls herself a 99 percenter, one of those people who earns less than a million. She has worked at many jobs since she delivered newspapers as a pre-teen in her native Long Beach, including two stints as a secondary English teacher, Librarian and tennis coach - at the Long Beach Junior High School and St. Mary's High School in Manhasset.

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She competed in Long Island baseball leagues and on high school and college varsity basketball teams before she jumped on the tennis bandwagon in the early 1970s at the beginning of the Open era. She tried to imitate Billie Jean King while learning to play tennis in the parks and coaching Junior Team Tennis.

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The timing was perfect. Tennis coincided with her commitment to the young feminist movement and her volunteer work in local politics as a Democratic committeeman. She worked for both of the Kennedys, in Allard Lowenstein's congressional campaigns and lobbied in Washington against the Vietnam War. When Senator McGovern lost every state except Massachusetts in the 1972 presidential election, she decided it was time to have fun.

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Tennis and modeling doubled as her gateway back into the mainstream while she raised her three children. She traveled around the Tri-State area as a junior tennis parent and high school coach and hustled in and out of New York auditioning for print and television commercial roles. She landed jobs advertising an arthritic tennis player, a young woman trapped in suburbia in a Ms. Magazine ad and a Mom playing basketball in a national Cheerios commercial with her husband and two kids. She was having fun, but the director on the Cheerios" set disagreed and shouted through his bullhorn, "You just knocked your husband out of the frame fighting for that rebound. This is not a game, it's a commercial. And you're not Walt Frazier!" When her daughter Colette got a college tennis scholarship, Nancy wrote a satirical piece about the perils of the junior game for World Tennis magazine. Next up was a live guest appearance discussing pressures in junior tennis with Nick Bollettieri on Ted Koppel's Nightline show during the 1984 US Open. Soon after, she started what evolved into a 30-year career as a tennis reporter.

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World champ Bob Litwin graciously called Nancy the voice of Eastern tennis who made ordinary people feel like stars in their tennis world. That was her goal, to try and give readers a look into people's lives - in their own voices - beyond the tennis stats. "Anybody who earns a tennis ranking of any kind or volunteers time to promote tennis as the sport for a lifetime is a star in my mind," she has said. "It has been my privilege. I love hearing people's stories and do my best to give readers an insight into who they are outside the white lines." Nancy has written over 2,000 tennis articles and 87 of the Junior Tennis Foundation's hall of fame profiles to showcase those stars. She has connected with the sport's legends throughout the country and received five press service awards for her work - - as the Public Relations Director/ Writer/Editor for the USTA Eastern Section; the Managing Editor/Writer for Eastern Roundup and Passing Shot magazines; a Copy Editor/Columnist for Tennis Week magazine; a Sectional Reporter for Tennis USA and USTA; a Columnist for Newsday; and a Staff Writer for College and Junior Tennis magazine. Last year, she co-authored Tennis in New York with Dale Caldwell.