His father was a caretaker at a tennis club in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and 7-year-old Francisco began learning the game while working as a ballboy.
He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1984.
A case of rickets in childhood left him bowlegged for the rest of his life.
During a three-year stretch that began in 1950, when he was ranked the No. 1 player in the world, he won three straight U.S. Pro singles titles on three different surfaces.