By John Frierson
Staff Writer

As an 18-year-old from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Manuel Diaz took a big leap when he decided to come to Georgia to play tennis for the Bulldogs and Dan Magill. A little more than a decade later, Diaz was Magill’s assistant coach when Jeff Wallace transferred to Georgia from Utah.

Both men were good players for the Bulldogs before becoming Georgia and college tennis legends as coaches. On Friday night, Wallace and Diaz, along with one of the greatest running backs ever, Herschel Walker, will be inducted into the Circle of Honor, the highest honor the UGA Athletic Association can bestow upon a player, coach or administrator.

“I’m just feeling grateful,” said Wallace, who built Georgia’s women’s tennis program into a national powerhouse over his 38 seasons as head coach, before retiring at the end of the 2023 season. “I’m grateful to have been a student-athlete at the University of Georgia, grateful to get a degree from the University of Georgia, and grateful to have been able to coach at one place — a place I love the most. I’m also incredibly grateful for this honor.”

Wallace’s teams won six national championships (four National Indoors and two NCAA), and Diaz’s men did the same (four NCAA titles and two National Indoors championships). Wallace won 818 matches in his extraordinary career (one of two women’s coaches to ever top 800), 18 SEC titles, and was the ITA National Coach of the Year four times. Diaz, who retired in 2024, won 781 matches, 29 SEC championships, and was the ITA National Coach of the Year three times. 

“It’s pretty neat that we had the careers that we did at the same place at the same time — and at our alma mater, to boot,” Wallace said. 

Both men spent more than 40 years either playing or coaching at Georgia. Diaz will be inducted into the ITA Men’s Collegiate Hall of Fame next May, with Wallace sure to follow soon into the Women’s Hall of Fame. Both men are already in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

“These two great honors coming this year, I’m incredibly honored and grateful for both of them, and for the opportunity to coach so many great players over the years,” Diaz said. “We’ve had a lot of great young men come through our program, and just to play a part in their lives, both when they played here and to this day, it’s really special.

“Now that I’m retired, I’ve had an opportunity to sit back and reflect and appreciate all of these wonderful things that I’ve been able to be a part of over the years. You can’t do that when you’re coaching because there’s always a sense of urgency about everything.”

Diaz, an All-American player in 1974 and ’75, had a career singles record of 85-7. He was coaching at a club in Puerto Rico when Magill brought him back to Athens in 1982 as the assistant coach. 

“I came back to the University of Georgia because it was a place I loved, and I thought it would be a great place to settle down and eventually, at some point, raise a family. … I could appreciate the difference that Coach Magill made in my life, and that inspired me to want to be that person for other people,” Diaz said.

Diaz helped the Bulldogs climb to the top of men’s college tennis in the mid-1980s, with Georgia winning its first NCAA team title in 1985 and its second in 1987. Diaz took over as head coach after the 1988 season and led the Bulldogs to the NCAA finals in his first year. A lot more great seasons followed.

While Diaz helped Magill build Georgia into a powerhouse, and then kept the Bulldogs there for decades, Wallace took over a women’s program that hadn’t yet done much nationally outside of Lisa Spain Short winning the NCAA singles title in 1984. In Wallace’s first season, in 1986, Georgia went 20-9. The Bulldogs reached the finals of the NCAA tournament the following year. 

Diaz and Wallace are connected in one other very significant way. It was Wallace’s wife, Sabina, a former runner on the Georgia track team, who introduced Diaz to his wife of 40 years, Suzanne, who is Sabina’s cousin. Manuel and Suzanne Diaz have three children, including two, Eric and Alex, who played for their dad at Georgia.

“It was awkward in some ways, and a little bit weird,” Diaz said of coaching his sons, “but after the first or second year for each of them, it was great to see them grow as people and become independent young men.”

While Diaz is now mostly living in Florida, where he splits time between playing pickleball and enjoying life with Suzanne, their grown children and grandkids, Wallace has spent much of the past couple of years on the golf course. When asked what retirement was like, Wallace said, “It’s about a seven handicap.” He and Sabina have two children, Jarryd and Brittany, and will soon be up to six grandchildren.

Walker led the Georgia football team to the 1980 national championship and won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, rushing for 5,259 yards in just three seasons before going pro. By the time he was done at Georgia, Walker had 41 school records, 16 SEC records, and 11 NCAA records.

So why did it take so long for one of the greatest college football players ever to get into the Circle of Honor? For a Georgia student-athlete to make the Circle, they have to graduate from UGA, and on Dec. 12, 2024, long after his final carry between the hedges, Walker did just that, with a degree in Housing Management and Policy.

Walker wasn’t a college tennis player, but he did pick up a racket from time to time. There is a famous story, perhaps apocryphal, of the time Magill arrived at Henry Feild Stadium and saw black markings on one of the courts — a clear sign that someone had been playing tennis in running shoes. When informed by James Payne, who took care of the tennis facilities for years, that it was Walker, an irate Magill calmed down and said that they needed to get the football star some tennis shoes.

A few years after Walker left Georgia, he came back to Georgia’s courts to play in the 1986 celebrity doubles event connected with that year’s ITA Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Now, he’s entering the Circle of Honor with two of the greatest coaches in college tennis history.

“To go in with Manuel and Herschel is super special,” Wallace said, “and I know this is an honor I’ll never forget. I couldn’t be happier about it.”

 

Assistant Sports Communications Director 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.