Charles Edgar Brumfield (born June 9, 1948) is an American attorney and former professional racquetball player as well as a noted paddleball player. For much of his professional racquetball career, Brumfield was the marquis player for Leach Industries, the leading manufacturer of racquetball rackets at the time. Leach produced several Brumfield signature rackets including the "Graphite Brumfield". For a brief time, Brumfield had his own sports brand label, which marketed rackets and sports apparel.
Brumfield was the #1 player on the men's professional racquetball tour for most of the 1970s, winning 4 championships and dominating most of the tournaments he participated in. This was a golden age for racquetball, when the sport was one of the fastest growing leisure activities in North America. The names of the top players were well known outside the sport, and the best players could earn large sums of money in endorsements. Steve Keeley ranks Brumfield as the 4th greatest racquetball player of all time, after Cliff Swain, Marty Hogan, and Sudsy Monchik. Brumfield retired from professional racquetball in the early 1980s, settling into a successful career as an attorney in San Diego. He has a son, Conor, who also resides in San Diego. Both are avid golfers.
Professional sports career
Brumfield began as a handball player until a dislocated finger prompted him to take up paddleball in 1964. His play came to the attention of Bud Muehleisen, who was the dominant player in the sport at the time, and the two became lifelong friends. Brumfield won his first National Paddleball Association (NPA) paddleball singles championships in 1969, ending Muehleisen's streak.
This led naturally to a career in racquetball—or 'paddle rackets' as the sport was known at the time—a sport that Muehleisen was promoting on the West Coast. Muehleisen edged Brumfield out in a close tie breaker during the finals of the first national racquetball championship in 1969, a time when racquetball was still strictly an amateur sport. The rivalry between Brumfield and Muehleisen helped to bring the sport of racquetball of age in the early 1970s, and Brumfield won the first professional racquetball championship in 1972, a victory Brumfield ranks amongst his most important.
Brumfield won back-to-back national racquetball singles championships in 1972 and 1973 (winning 20 consecutive tournaments), then again in 1975 and 1976. He continued playing world class racquetball for the next 10 years. However, the official ball became much faster in the latter part of Brumfield's career, and this did not suit his game style. In 2003, Brumfield's contemporary, Jerry Hilecher, said: "With a slower ball, I don't think anyone would have been able to compete at his level. With a fast ball, he would be one of many close to the top."
During the late 1970s, Brumfield's major rival was Marty Hogan. This rivalry fueled the great popularity of the sport at that time, and was even the subject of a 1978 LeRoy Neiman painting which was widely published in poster form. Brumfield and Hogan were the first players to have earned fame and large incomes from the sport, and their stature as professional athletes capable of earning endorsements outside the sport has not been equaled by anyone who has followed them in the sport.
Brumfield has also won numerous national racquetball open doubles titles—first with Muehleisen in 1969, then in 1973 with Steve Serot, and finally in 1975 with Craig McCoy—as well as outdoor national racquetball doubles championships with Muehlheisen and Serot in 1974 and 1975. According to Muelheisen, the team of Brumfield and Muelheisen never lost a game—let alone a match—in national level competition play; a feat not since equaled by any regular racquetball partnership. In an interview with Apex magazine (a Handball/Racquetball/Squash publication, Summer 2008), Muehleisen said that no team ever scored more than 13 against Muehleisen and Brumfield in tournament play. Games were played to 21 in those days, making this achievement all the more impressive. Brumfield denies that he and Muehleisen were undefeated, and attributes Muehleisen's failure to remember the occasional loss to a particular fondness for those days. But Brumfield has never cited a specific defeat that he and Muehleisen suffered, and there are no official records to verify such a loss.