Sven Davidson

Tennis Player

• Born: July 13, 1928
• Birthplace: Borås, Sweden
• Died: May 28, 2008
• Place of death: Arcadia, California

Sport: Tennis

Early Life

Sven Davidson was born in Bor†s, Sweden, on July 13, 1928. He was an avid tennis player as a youth. By the time he was in his late teens, he was one of the top tennis players in Sweden. In 1947, he was Sweden’s junior champion. Because a professional tennis circuit did not exist in Sven’s playing days in the same manner that it did later, he played out his career as an amateur. Events at that time did not provide monetary compensation to the victors; they were merely played for the love of the game and competition.

The Road to Excellence

Sven’s tennis career lasted from 1948 until 1961, the most successful portion of which was between 1953 and 1958. During this time span, Sven was consistently ranked in the world’s top ten. In 1957, he reached as high as number three. This same year, he won the French Open. He advanced to three consecutive French Open finals in his career. He was the first Swede to win the French Open, but he was not the last. Several decades later, Bjorn Borg won an unprecedented six French Open titles. However, Sven opened the door for Swedish players in major tennis tournaments.

Along with his prowess as a singles player, Sven was a prodigious doubles player. In 1958, he won the Wimbledon doubles championship with his partner Ulf Schmidt. Sven was also Sweden’s greatest Davis Cup player. From 1950 to 1961, Sven had a combined record of 62-23 for Sweden’s Davis Cup team; he was 39-14 in singles and 23-9 in doubles. He won a total of twenty-six Swedish Tennis Championships. He became Sweden’s all-time Davis Cup doubles winner. His playing career essentially ended in 1961. Though he won just one major singles tournament and one major doubles tournament, in Sweden, Sven was the greatest player of his generation and became a revered citizen.

The Emerging Champion

While Sven had an extremely successful tennis career, his greatest accomplishments came after he stopped competing. Between 1960 and 1964, Sven covered tennis on Swedish television. However, what Sven was doing behind the scenes forever and monumentally changed the game of tennis. He, and numerous others, had been pushing for tennis to change from a strictly amateur sport to a professional one. There was professional tennis before and during Sven’s days, but it was vastly different from what followed. Once players turned professional, they could no longer play in the major championship tournaments, which were reserved strictly for amateurs. Professional players toured in groups and were completely controlled by their managers. Sven felt that the major tennis events should feature all of the world’s great tennis players and not just the amateurs. He also believed that such tournaments could generate enough income to provide ample prize money to free players from the control of managers. As history shows, Sven was correct. In effect, his goal was to turn the professional players into independent entities, open to play in any tournament in which they wished to play. Thus, the phrase “open era” of tennis came about.

Continuing the Story

Sven also played a critical role in the creation of the Stockholm Open tennis tournament. In 1969, the Stockholm Open became the first northern European tennis tournament with official prize money. Also around this time, Sven initiated the first general meeting of the International Tennis Federation (ITF). Along the line of Sven’s ideas, the goal of the federation was to create a cohesive set of rules and regulations to govern professional tennis around the globe. Those first general meetings of the ITF resulted in the modern form of tennis organization. In a sense, Sven, and the others in those first meetings, invented modern tennis. From the late 1960’s to the early 1970’s, tennis players went from either unpaid amateurs or tightly controlled professionals to free agents who could play where and when they desired. During the 1970’s, the popularity of professional tennis exploded. All of the great players in the world were permitted to play in all of the major tournaments. The purses for the athletes increased dramatically. Tennis became a sport in which the athletes could make millions of dollars and become household names throughout the world. Modern players owed a great debt to the work of Sven and his efforts to implement an open form of competition.

Sven was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2007. He remained involved in international and Swedish tennis until his death in May of 2008. He died of pneumonia after he was diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in 2007. He was married to his wife Mary for fifty-one years and left behind two daughters, one son, and two grandchildren.

Summary

Sven Davidson’s significance was immense and of historical importance. Without his work and the work of others involved during the early days of the International Tennis Federation, open era tennis might never have happened. Though Sven won only two major tournaments as a player, his greatest impact was his willingness to initiate change in the structure of professional tennis.

Bibliography

Collins, Bud, and Zander Hollander. Bud Collins’ Modern Encyclopedia of Tennis. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.

Goldstein, Richard. “Sven Davidson, Seventy-nine, Hall of Famer in Tennis, Dies.” The New York Times, June 7, 2008.