Frederick Towersey Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) was a British tennis and table tennis player and former world No. 1. He won 10 Majors, including eight Grand Slam tournaments and two Pro Slams single titles, as well as six Major doubles titles. Perry was the first player to win a "Career Grand Slam", lifting all four singles titles, which he completed at the age of 26 at the 1935 French Championships. He remains the only British player to achieve this feat.[4]
He won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships from 1934 to 1936 and was world amateur No. 1 player during those three years. Prior to Andy Murray in 2013, Perry was the last British player to win the men's Wimbledon championship[5] and the last British player to win a men's singles Grand Slam title until Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open.
Perry's first love was table tennis and he was World Champion in 1929. He began playing tennis aged 14 and his tennis career at 21, when in 1930 an LTA committee chose him to join a four-man team to tour the United States.[4] In 1933, Perry helped lead the Great Britain team to victory over France in the Davis Cup; the team's first success since 1912, followed by wins over the United States in 1934, 1935, and a fourth consecutive title with victory over Australia in 1936.[4] However, due to his disillusionment with the class-conscious nature of the Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain, the working-class Perry turned professional at the end of the 1936 season and moved to the United States where he became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 1939. In 1942, he was drafted into the US Army Air Force during the Second World War.[6] After retirement, he founded the clothing label Fred Perry in London in 1952. He also had a career in broadcasting, working as a tennis summariser and reporter for BBC Radio from 1959 to 1994.
Despite his unprecedented contribution to British tennis, Perry was not accorded full recognition by tennis authorities until later in life, because between 1927 and 1967 the International Lawn Tennis Federation ignored amateur champions who later turned professional.[5] In 1984, a statue of Perry was unveiled at Wimbledon, and in the same year he became the only tennis player listed in a survey of 2,000 Britons to find the "Best of the Best" British sportsmen of the 20th century.[7]
Early life
Perry was born in 1909 in Stockport, where his father, Samuel Perry (1877–1954), was a cotton spinner.[8] For the first decade of his life, he also lived in Bolton, Lancashire, and Wallasey, Cheshire, because his father was involved in local politics. When living in Wallasey he attended Liscard Primary School and, briefly, Wallasey Grammar School. Perry moved to Brentham Garden Suburb in Ealing, west London aged eleven years when his father became the national secretary of the Co-operative Party after World War I.[8] His father became the Labour and Co-operative Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Kettering in 1929.
Perry first began to play tennis on the public courts near his family's housing estate.[8] He was educated at Ealing Grammar School for Boys.
Table tennis career
"Perry took advantage of his athletic build and extraordinary physical capacity: he was highly mobile and fast, had a sound defence and placed his balls very well. Thanks to his very strong wrist he could hit a very hard forehand drive".[9] Perry reached the quarter-finals of the men's singles in the 1928 Stockholm World championships, where he lost to Laszlo Bellak.[9] He was runner-up in the men's doubles with Charlie Bull. In 1929 Perry lost to Bull in the Czechoslovak Open and lost to Anton Malacek in the English Open.[9] At the Budapest World championships men's singles event, Perry beat Miklós Szabados 3 games to 1 to win the title.[10] He beat Szabados again in an exhibition in Paris. His final table tennis appearance was in 1932, in a team match in London against Hungary.[9]
Amateur tennis career
During his amateur playing career Perry trained with Arsenal football club to focus on his fitness.[1]
1927–30
Perry was an eighteen year old table tennis prodigy when he began his tennis career. He reached several quarter finals of tennis events in the London area at Herga club in Harrow, Blackheath, Fulham and Ealing. He also reached the semi-finals at New Malden.[11] Perry reached the semi-finals at the Herga club tournament in Harrow in July.[12] He also reached the semi-finals of the Sidmouth tournament in September.[13]
In 1929, a year when Perry won the World Table tennis championships, he continued his tennis career.
Professional tennis career
1937
After three years as the world No. 1 tennis amateur player, Perry turned professional in late 1936. This led to his being virtually ostracised by the British tennis establishment.[8] He made his professional debut on 6 January 1937 at the Madison Square Garden against the best professional player, Ellsworth Vines, winning in four sets.[81][82] For the next two years he played lengthy tours against Vines. In 1937, they played 61 matches in the United States on their big tour, with Vines winning 32 and Perry 29.[83] They then sailed to Britain, where they played a brief tour in UK and Ireland. Perry won the King George VI Coronation Cup over Vines.[84]
Post playing career
Broadcasting career
After retiring as a player, Fred Perry had a long career as a tennis broadcaster. He worked as a summariser and reporter for BBC Radio from 1959[111] to 1994[112] and for many years was a familiar voice during BBC radio's coverage of Wimbledon. He also commentated on TV on the BBC from 1951 to 1952 and ITV's coverage of Wimbledon from 1956 to 1968, after which ITV stopped broadcasting the championships. ITV "employed me as a would-be counter-attraction to my old friend Dan Maskell on BBC Television. We were simply not able to compete and I wasn't unhappy when ITV gave it up as a bad job. The BBC had two channels to ITV's one, and were not inhibited by commercial breaks every fifteen minutes and the imposition of a strict time limit on the coverage, as ITV was", explained Perry in his autobiography.[113] In later years, Perry was sometimes interviewed by BBC Television during their Wimbledon coverage. In 1979 Perry spoke to Des Lynam at Wimbledon about his life in an episode of the TV series "Maestro". The programme was shown again as a tribute after his death.
Death
Personal life
Perry was one of the leading bachelors of the 1930s and his off-court romances were reported in the world press. Perry had a romantic relationship with actress Marlene Dietrich and in 1934 he announced his engagement to British actress Mary Lawson, but the relationship fell apart after Perry moved to the US. In 1935 he married American film star Helen Vinson, but their marriage ended in divorce in 1940. In 1941 he was briefly married to model Sandra Breaux. Then, in 1945, he married Lorraine Walsh, but that marriage also ended quickly. Perry's final marriage to Barbara Riese (the sister of actress Patricia Roc) in 1952 lasted over forty years, until his death. They had two children, Penny and David. David led his father's clothing line prior to a buyout.
In July 1937, an England vs America pro-celebrity tennis doubles match was organized, featuring Perry and Charlie Chaplin playing against Groucho Marx and Ellsworth Vines, to open the new clubhouse at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club.[116]
Perry had an older sister, Edith; they were both born in Stockport, Cheshire. Edith greatly supported her younger brother throughout his sporting achievements. Perry had a half sister, Sylvia.[117]
Clothing label
In the late 1940s, Perry was approached by Tibby Wegner, an Austrian footballer who had invented an anti-perspirant device worn around the wrist. Perry made a few changes to Wegner's design to create the first sweatband. Wegner's next idea was to produce a sports shirt, which was to be made from white knitted cotton pique with short sleeves and a buttoned placket like René Lacoste's shirts. Launched at Wimbledon in 1952, the Fred Perry tennis shirt was an immediate success.[8]
The Fred Perry logo is a laurel wreath, based on the original symbol for Wimbledon.[8] The logo, which appears on the left breast of Fred Perry garments, is stitched into the fabric of the shirt.[119] The brand was initially run by the Perry family, namely his son David, until it was bought by Japanese company Hit Union in 1995. However, the Perry family continued to work closely with the brand.[120]
Sporting legacy
Perry is considered by some to have been one of the greatest players ever to have played the game. In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, called Perry one of the six greatest players of all time.[123] In 1975, Don Budge ranked his top five players of all time and rated Perry number three behind Vines and Kramer.[124]
Kings of the Court, a video-tape documentary made in 1997 in conjunction with the International Tennis Hall of Fame, named Perry one of the ten greatest players of all time. But this documentary only considered those players who played before the Open era of tennis that began in 1968, with the exception of Rod Laver, who spanned both eras, so that all of the more recent great players are missing.
In 100 Greatest of All Time, a 2012 television series broadcast by the Tennis Channel, Perry was ranked the 15th-greatest male player, just behind Boris Becker at 14th, and just ahead of Stefan Edberg at 16th. Perry's great rivals Vines (37th) and Crawford (32nd) were ranked well below him.[125]
Kramer, however, had several caveats about Perry.
Honours and memorials
United Kingdom
A bronze statue of Fred Perry was erected at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London, in 1984 to mark the 50th anniversary of his first singles championship. It is located at the Church Road gate. After Perry's accidental death in 1995, he was cremated and his ashes buried in an urn near the statue.
Perry's home town of Stockport has numerous memorials to the former tennis champion. For instance there is a blue plaque commemorating the house where he was born. In September 2002, a designated walking route called the Fred Perry Way was opened through the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport. The 14 mi route from Woodford in the south to Reddish in the north, combines rural footpaths, quiet lanes and river valleys with urban landscapes and parklands. Features along the route include Houldsworth Mill and Square, the start of the River Mersey at the confluence of the River Tame and River Goyt, Stockport Town Centre, Vernon and Woodbank Parks and the Happy Valley. The route also passes through Woodbank Park, where Perry played some exhibition tennis matches.
In 2009, Perry was selected by the Royal Mail for their "Eminent Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.[127]
World Table Tennis Championships
- Gold 1; Silver 1; Bronze 4
- 1928 Stockholm: Silver Doubles; Bronze Mixed Doubles; Bronze Team
- 1929 Budapest: Gold Singles; Bronze Doubles; Bronze Team
Major finals
Major tournaments
Singles: 10 (8 titles, 2 runner-ups)
Doubles: 4 (2 titles, 2 runner-ups)
Mixed doubles: 5 (4 titles, 1 runner-up)
Singles: 10 (8 titles, 2 runner-ups)
Doubles: 4 (2 titles, 2 runner-ups)
Mixed doubles: 5 (4 titles, 1 runner-up)
Pro Slam tournaments
4 finals (2 titles, 2 runner-ups)
Performance timeline
Fred Perry joined professional tennis in 1937 and was unable to compete in the Grand Slams tournaments.
See also
- Lists of tennis players
- World Table Tennis Championships
- List of England players at the World Team Table Tennis Championships
- All-time tennis records – Men's singles
- Open Era tennis records – Men's singles
- Sergio Tacchini
- Lacoste
Bibliography
- McCauley, Joe (2003). The History of Professional Tennis.
External links
References
- Peter Jackson. Who was Fred Perry? 3 July 2009, retrieved 24 March 2019^
- Fred Perry: Career match record thetennisbase.com, Tennis Base, retrieved 22 September 2021^
- "Myers Seeds Fred Perry No. One; But Three Yanks Place"