Fred Perry

British tennis player

• Born: May 18, 1909
• Birthplace: Stockport, Cheshire, England
• Died: February 2, 1995
• Place of death: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Between 1933 and 1936, Perry won all the world’s major tennis championships and led the British team to victory in the Davis Cup, thereby restoring British tennis prestige.

Early Life

Frederick John Perry (PEH-ree), born to Hannah Perry and Sam Perry, spent most of the first decade of his life in Stockport, Bolton, and Wallasey, towns in Cheshire and Lancashire, where his father, a cotton spinner, was involved with the Cooperative Party and the Labour Party. When World War I ended, his father was transferred to Ealing in west London, though as a Labour candidate he was later elected member of Parliament for Stockport.

Perry showed ability at the leading sports in Ealing County School, as a forward on the soccer team and wicket keeper on the cricket team. Disenchanted with getting knocked around at soccer and hit by the hard cricket ball, he turned to concentrating on what he really preferred: individual, as opposed to team, sports.

Hating homework, in the evenings Perry would push the kitchen table up against the wall, put up a table-tennis net, and hit a ball over it and back off the wall. The repetitious noise was nerve-racking for his family, but through this drill he acquired the knowledge of spins, quick reflexes, and sense of rhythm that were to enable him ultimately to win world championships at both table tennis and tennis. He adopted a comparable kind of tennis drill against the outside wall of his home after he had discovered tennis during a summer holiday at Eastbourne while he was fourteen. Perry’s interest was sparked when he learned that the expensive cars at Devonshire Park were owned by the elegantly dressed players on the tennis courts.

Owning only one tennis racket, which his father bought him for five shillings, he began playing in junior tournaments and reached the singles final and won the doubles at the Middlesex Championships. Concurrently, he developed his table-tennis skills, was selected at age nineteen to play for England, and the following year he won the men’s singles at the 1929 World Championships in Budapest.

Life’s Work

Having become world champion at table tennis at age twenty, Perry decided to retire while at the top and to switch all of his attention to tennis. The same year, he qualified for Wimbledon and won two rounds before being beaten. His father offered to support him financially for a year while he sought success at tennis. Perry spent the winter of 1929-1930 working at taking the ball as early as possible after the bounce, a technique adapted from table tennis. In 1930, he reached the final of the British Hard Court Championships and the fourth round at Wimbledon, beating the world’s fourth-ranked player and gaining the praise of Bill Tilden, who won the title again that year. These achievements earned for him a place on the English team touring the Americas, during which he won the championship of Argentina without losing a set.

In 1931, Perry reached the semifinals at Wimbledon, where he lost to the American Sidney Wood (who then won the title by the default of the injured Frank Shields). Perry beat Wood but lost to Shields in the semifinals of the Davis Cup team competition, as the British eliminated the Americans. In the Challenge Round, Perry beat Jean Borotra but lost to Henri Cochet, the French thus retaining the Cup. On a tour of the United States, Perry reached the semifinals of the United States National Championships, where he lost to Ellsworth Vines, who went on to win the final.

In 1932, Perry lost the deciding singles in a Davis Cup match against Germany and was beaten by Sidney Wood in the United States National Championships, each time in the fifth set. Always furious at losing, Perry resolved to increase his already notable fitness. He did not drink alcohol, and although he toyed with a pipe, it was usually unlit. Before a match, he avoided shaking hands so that he would not lose feeling in his hand. Partly for psychological and theatrical effect, he would come onto the court immaculate in white blazer and long white flannel trousers. (He never wore shorts on court until one night late in his career as a professional, when a rip at the knee obliged him to cut off the torn trouser leg and then the other to match.) At the end of a long match, he would leap over the net to impress the image of his fitness on his opponent’s memory.

After a disappointingly short run at Wimbledon, Perry made 1933 a banner year. In the Davis Cup Interzone Finals against the United States, he defeated Wilmer Allison and Ellsworth Vines and then in the Challenge Round against France, he beat Henri Cochet and André Merlin, thereby bringing the Davis Cup back to Great Britain after twenty-one years. In the next three years, he also won all of his matches, thereby helping to keep the cup in Great Britain. His record in Davis Cup singles was thirty-four wins in thirty-eight matches.

In September, 1933, Perry acquired the first of his eight Grand Slam singles titles (the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and United States Championships). In the final of the United States Championship, Jack Crawford of Australia seemed to be on the verge of becoming the first person ever to win all four Grand Slam titles in the same year, as he led Perry by two sets to one, but the supremely fit Perry swept the last two sets, 6-0, 6-1.

Perry opened 1934 by defeating Crawford in three straight sets to win the Australian Championship and repeated the feat in the Wimbledon finals. He retained his United States title by defeating Allison in five sets in the final. In 1935, he lost his Australian title to Crawford in four sets in the final. He then beat Crawford in straight sets in the semifinals of the French Championships and won the title by defeating the elegant German Gottfried von Cramm in four sets. At Wimbledon, Perry retained his title by beating von Cramm in straight sets. In the United States Championship, he lost his title when, during the first set of his semifinal against Allison, he fell and his racket handle drove into his chest. Despite the pain of what turned out to be a broken rib, he played to the finish. In 1936, he lost his French title to von Cramm in a five-set final, then beat him in the Wimbledon final with the loss of only two games, von Cramm struggling with a pulled leg muscle. Perry regained the United States Championship by defeating Don Budge 10-8 in the fifth set.

Although he often did not participate in doubles matches, Perry did win each of the Grand Slam doubles championships at least once. With Sarah Palfrey, he won the United States mixed doubles title in 1932 and with Dorothy Round the Wimbledon mixed doubles in 1935 and 1936. With G. P. Hughes he won the French men’s doubles in 1933, the Australian in 1934, and eleven out of fourteen Davis Cup doubles matches.

This extraordinary sequence of triumphs meant that Perry was constantly being offered lucrative contracts to turn professional. He declared that he believed that he owed British tennis, in particular the Davis Cup team, his continued participation. By remaining in amateur competition after reaching the top, he risked losing his championships and with them his value on the professional market, as had happened to Vines. Eventually, citing his obligations as a recently married man, Perry turned professional in late 1936.

His professional debut was against the hard-hitting Vines at Madison Square Garden on January 6, 1937. Some eighteen thousand spectators were present, an indoor match record that lasted thirty-six years, and they paid $58,120 for their seats. Perry won in four sets. This match inaugurated their North American tour, in which Vines won thirty-two matches and Perry twenty-nine. The tour grossed more than $412,000; under his guarantee, Perry received $91,335 of this and Vines got $34,195. They toured again in 1938, Vines winning, 48-35. The tour grossed $175,000, and the two split the purse, $34,000. Then Don Budge turned professional after becoming the first person to win all four Grand Slam titles in the same year, and in 1939 he defeated Vines, 21-18, and Perry, 18-11. The tour grossed more than $204,000, of which Budge was guaranteed $75,000. Perry won the United States Professional Championships in 1938 and 1941. His competitive career came to an abrupt end on December 26, 1941, in Madison Square Garden, when, playing the new professional Bobby Riggs, Perry’s foot got caught in a hole in the canvas surface and he fell and smashed his right elbow. His playing arm remained partially disabled. Yet in 1948, he won a professional tournament in Scarborough, England, beating Yvon Petra, who had won Wimbledon in 1946.

During the war, Perry, who had become a United States citizen in November, 1938, served in the U.S. Air Force, chiefly in public relations and rehabilitation work. His business ventures included tennis resorts and a very successful line of tennis clothing and footwear. He and Vines used their tour earnings to buy into the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, where they played exhibitions with Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Errol Flynn, and other Hollywood celebrities. By invitation, Perry partnered King Gustav of Sweden and helped develop tennis programs in Egypt and the Soviet Union. He married four times, the first three ending in divorce: first to the Hollywood actress Helen Vinson, a few hours after breaking his rib in the United States Championship semifinals of 1935; then to an American model, Sandra Breaux, in 1941 and, after the war, to Lorraine Walsh. In 1952, he married Barbara Riese.

Significance

Tall, dashing, fit, and confident, Perry won the world table-tennis championship and went on to dominate lawn tennis in the mid-1930’s. He had a feared forehand and no weaknesses.

Perry is the only player from England to have won all four of the world’s major tournaments. He remains the only Englishman since 1909 to have won Wimbledon, and he won it for three straight years, a record in modern tennis until Björn Borg’s five wins after Open tennis began in 1968. He is the only Englishman to have won the French Championship, on the clay courts of Roland Garros Stadium. He is one of two Englishmen to have won the U.S. Championship, and he did so three times a number equaled by few players. He led the British team to victory in the Davis Cup for four years, the only British victories since 1912.

Even after he won Wimbledon, some of the British tennis authorities still took snobbish exception to his social background and disliked what they considered to be his brashness. Fifty years later, His Royal Highness the duke of Kent presided at the unveiling of a statue of Perry in the Wimbledon grounds and the designating of the Somerset Road entrance as the Fred Perry Gates. No British athlete better deserves such commemoration.

Bibliography

Clerici, Gianni. “Fred Perry, the Son of a Labour M.P.” In The Ultimate Tennis Book. Translated by Richard J. Wiezell. Chicago: Follett, 1975. A lively chapter, emphasizing Perry’s personality and well illustrated with photographs.

Grimsley, Will. Tennis: Its History, People, and Events. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971. One chapter, “Fred Perry The British Master,” summarizes Perry’s amateur career. Another, “Fred Perry,” in the section entitled “Styles of the Great” by Julius D. Heldman, gives a detailed account of Perry’s strokes and playing style.

Hart, Stan. Once a Champion: Legendary Tennis Stars Revisited. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985. The chapter “Fred Perry: ’Showing the Flag’” recounts the author’s 1984 visit to and spirited discussion with Perry at his Florida home and includes three jaunty photographs.

Perry, Fred. Fred Perry: An Autobiography. London: Hutchinson, 1984. A candid discussion of his tennis career, business ventures, and personal and marital relationships, and a shrewd analysis of the state of the game and its exponents, such as Borg, John McEnroe, and Ivan Lendl.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. My Story. London: Hutchinson, 1934. Written in the year of Perry’s first Wimbledon victory.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Perry on Tennis: Expert Advice for All on Lawn Tennis. London: Hutchinson, 1936. An instructional guide to playing the game.

Phillips, Caryl, ed. The Right Set: A Tennis Anthology. New York: Vintage Books, 1999. A collection of essays by tennis players, sportswriters, and others that chronicle the transformation of tennis, including two of Perry’s essays about the sport. There also is an essay about Perry, “The Finest Athlete I Ever Saw,” written by George Lott.