[1] He attended Ventura High School with longtime tennis friend, Tom Chivington.
In the summer of 1958, he contacted the Southern California Tennis Association to provide two players to run a kid's clinic in Ventura and was sent Mike Franks and Noel Brown.
[2] From 1963 to 1966, he was the Tennis Coach at Foothill Junior College in Los Altos, California, where his first champion player was Horst Ritter, who won the State Junior College Singles Championship, as well as the doubles with Rodney Kopp in 1963.
[4] He is the winningest coach in Stanford men's tennis history with an overall record of 776–148 and a .840 winning percentage.
Nine of his Stanford players, including John McEnroe, Gene Mayer, Alex "Sandy" Mayer, Roscoe Tanner and Tim Mayotte, have gone on to be ranked among the top 15 in ATP World Singles Rankings.
[3][5] He has also coached 14 players who have reached top 10 in ATP World Doubles Rankings, including No.
1 Ranked Doubles Players, McEnroe, Jim Grabb, Jonathan Stark, Alex O'Brien, Jared Palmer, and Bob and Mike Bryan.
[3][5] The Stanford men's tennis program began its rise to national prominence when Gould successfully recruited Roscoe Tanner in 1969 and Alex "Sandy" Mayer in 1970.
In June, 1977, a few months before John McEnroe entered Stanford, he reached the Wimbledon semifinals, and there were rumors that he would turn pro immediately.
However, Gould continued to have success in the 1990s even as the game evolved with powerful, oversized, composite rackets and blasting topspin ground strokes.
[1] Gould is also credited with developing the first personal seat license plan while coaching at Stanford.
[3][7] Seeking financing for a new tennis stadium, Gould in 1986 came up with the idea of selling the rights to seats, a licensing plan under which purchaser's name is engraved in the seat, and the purchaser owns the right to have first choice for tickets for any event held in the stadium.