Vince Van Patten

Updated 2008/2009
Vince Van happens to be a multi dimensional personality. Apart from being a Hollywood actor he has also been a winner of some of the biggest poker games and tournaments. He has also been nicknamed as “King of the Hollywood Home Games”. He is a working commentator for a national television serial well known as World Poker Tour. Being a multi dimensional personality is only one side of a great career as an actor, director, producer and a tennis champion in world tournaments.

Vince Van Patten is the youngest son of actor Dick Van Patten who also had roots in the entertainment industry. With the help of his father’s agent Vince could gain an entry in to the industry at the age of 9 years. A commercial for Colgate toothpaste was just the beginning and 30 more commercials followed. Soon his father got casted in the TV series, Arnie, and the family moved from Long Island to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is the place where Vince’s career as a child actor bloomed. During the 1970s he guest starred in more than three dozen classic TV serials like Bonanza, High Chaparral, Medical Centre, Adam 12, The courtship of Eddie’s father and many more. He got a regular job in the Apple’s way at the age of 16. Apple’s way was a CBS series in which he played the role of an Architect’s son, who leaves the big city in order to raise the family in the small town of Appleton in Iowa. Three years down the line Vince worked as a co-star in the Bionic Boy, a two-hour ABC spin-off of the hugely popular Lee Majors vehicle, the six million dollar man. What he got next were entirely different roles: as a surfer bully in Gidget’s summer reunion and then as a jailed hillbilly brother in Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission which was shot in Yugoslavia with great artists like Telly Savalas and Ernest Borgnine. His brother also acted in this project.

Due to Vince’s popularity and success in the small screen, he started getting big screen roles as well. He co-starred with Kurt Russel, Cloris Leachman and Fred MacMurray in the Disney comedy: Charlie and the Angel. He was only 14 that time. He also had a chance to play a cow boy opposite actor Charles Bronson in Chino; a hockey player who falls in love with a French-Canadian girl in The Time Forever and a football jock in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School

But Vince’s real passion remained tennis. He had an ability to invent new ways of playing the game and progressed quickly through the junior tournament ranks in Los Angeles. Owing to his popularity in the game, he was offered a starring role in the Paramount Films movie called Players. Unfortunately that role was given to someone else. That was the reason how he got motivated and wanted to participate in Wimbledon. . “I spent three months practicing on grass and never won a match!” recalls Van Patten. “On the last day of failing to qualify, Players came to the venue and started filming.”

He did not get discouraged due to the event. Vincent was determined and practiced really hard after reaching home and he was ranked among the top 30 professional tennis players within an year’s time. He was also awarded the Association of Tennis Professionals’ Rookie of the Year award in 1979 beating Ivan Lendl. He was at the summit of his career in 1981, when he beat the first-, fourth- and fifth-seeded players in the world – Vitas Gerulaitis, Jose Louis Clerk and John McEnroe, respectively and won the $300,000 Seiko World Super Tennis tournament in Tokyo.

In his 8 years of professional career in Tennis, Vince beat almost every major player of tennis, including Ilie Nastase, Roscoe Tanner, Stan Smith, Bob Lutz, Tom Okkor and John McEnroe. He retired from the game in 1986. At the peak of his career he was ranked 25th amongst all the players in the world. He could have easily made it to the first 10 tennis players on the earth if he had not suffered from sporadic back trouble. After retiring from tennis, he took his poker hobby seriously and started entering tournaments. He started up his own