British Tennis: From the Renshaws to the Murrays

By Kevin Stirling Jefferys

In this first comprehensive account of Britain's place in world tennis from the 1880s to the present day, historian Kevin Jefferys shows that - contrary to popular perception - Britain has a surprisingly strong record. He examines the nation's fluctuating tennis fortunes and presents his personal selection of the best British players of all time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785315596

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Reaching the pinnacle of world tennis, as in any sport, is immensely difficult. Anyone who has experience of playing competitively even in the lower foothills of the game – at, say, junior or club level – will know that it’s not long before you come across opponents who can wipe you off the court. In his acclaimed book The Meaning of Sport, award-winning Times journalist Simon Barnes gives a nice illustration of the vast chasm between the professional elite and ordinary mortals. Reflecting on the stunning victory by 17-year-old Maria Sharapova over defending champion Serena Williams in the 2004 Wimbledon final, Barnes told of how a fellow writer friend of his – a confident and reasonable adult player in his own right – once went on court to have a set against the young Maria. The result, Barnes notes (p. 27), was that his friend ‘got walloped. Hammered. Trashed. Sharapova was ten’.

Lots of hugely committed, skilful and talented British players, it should be said, do not feature in this book, which focuses on those leading lights who have triumphed on the global stage from the 1870s to the present day. But the efforts of the many young men and women who (like Pitch author Gregory Howe) pull out all the stops in looking to progress from local to national and international standard should not go unrecognised. That’s why the book is dedicated to those aspirants who seek to scale the heights, spending years of their lives and often much of their income chasing the dream, attempting to be the very best they can. To adapt the slogan of a well-known nationwide motoring organisation (one which, like lawn tennis, was a product of the Victorian era), ‘British tennis hopefuls, we salute you’.

* * *

As with my earlier biography of Fred Perry, I’m grateful to Pitch Publishing for their support and expert guidance throughout all stages of this project. I’d particularly like to thank Jane and Paul Camillin, Duncan Olner, Graham Hales, Derek Hammond, Dean Rockett and Cath Harris. In preparing my text, I’m greatly appreciative of friends and tennis enthusiasts for their assistance and input, most recently at Wimbledon’s first tennis history conference, held at the All England Club in the autumn of 2018. My large debt to the insights of tennis reporters/writers and the memoirs of former players and officials is duly acknowledged in the references and the bibliography at the end of the book. While thankful to all those concerned, responsibility for any errors or oversights remains with me alone.

The front cover images show (from left to right): Andy Murray, holding the Davis Cup trophy after Britain defeated Belgium in the 2015 final; Virginia Wade, triumphant at Wimbledon in 1977; Fred Perry after his victory in the 1936 US Championships; and Ann Jones, winner of the French Championships in 1966. The back cover photographs showcase (clockwise): the Victorian pioneers of lawn tennis William and Ernest Renshaw; the talented all-rounder Lottie Dod; and 1961 Wimbledon champion Angela Mortimer. I’m grateful to Getty for permission to use the cover images. All the photographs inside the book are reproduced courtesy of the Press Association, with the exception of the following: Charlotte Cooper Sterry, Peggy Scriven, and the British Davis Cup teams of 1936 and 1978 (Getty); and Max Woosnam, Phoebe Watson, and the 1932 Wightman Cup teams (Alamy).

Kevin Jefferys,

February 2019

Introduction

When I told a friend I was writing a study about how Britain has fared in the history of world tennis, the reaction was a cross between a snort and a laugh. ‘That’ll be a short book,’ he said. My friend’s response was understandable and not untypical. Britain might make a good fist of hosting Wimbledon, the leading event in the annual tennis calendar watched by hundreds of millions of television viewers worldwide, but home victories in SW19 have generally been as rare as hens’ teeth. Most British adults today, even those with only a passing interest in tennis, will be familiar growing up with the ritual of British players falling like ninepins in the early rounds at Wimbledon. The agonising wait for a British man to win the men’s singles title, last claimed by Fred Perry in 1936, became a media obsession and stretched on interminably until Andy Murray claimed the crown in 2013. The Scot’s victory, 77 years on, finally extinguished one of Britain’s most embarrassing sporting records. It was small wonder that Murray, after laying to rest the spectre of national failure at other tournaments as well as Wimbledon, was dubbed by one journalist as the ‘ghostbuster of British tennis’.¹

This book sets out to ask: are such dim views of British tennis, which persist despite Murray’s exploits, really justified? Has Britain’s performance on the international stage been as poor as it is often made out to be? The answer that emerges in the following account may come as a surprise. What will become apparent is that, looking at the history of lawn tennis in its entirety as a competitive sport, from the 1870s through to the present day, Britain has a more than decent record. It has produced some of the game’s finest exponents, from the days of brothers William and Ernest Renshaw in the late-Victorian period through to Andy and his sibling Jamie Murray in the early 21st century. The story that unfolds here is one of striking triumphs as well as depressing failures, of fluctuating fortunes over time, of barren spells counterbalanced by periods when British players, women as much as men, swept all before them. If champagne were to be poured into the famous Wimbledon trophy lifted by Andy Murray in 2013 (and again in 2016) to symbolically represent Britain’s place in the history of world tennis, then the trophy would be half full, not half empty.

* * *

We can start to gauge British standing in the sport’s history by looking at three sets of raw statistics, each highlighting national performance in different arenas of international competition. The first yardstick for measurement is, by common consent, the most important, namely examining the winners of the four ‘grand slam’ tournaments that stand at the pinnacle of world tennis.² The following table is based on the nationality of singles winners, from inception through to the end of 2018, of what became established – at different points in time – as the major events in the global tennis circuit: Wimbledon/The Championships (dating back to 1877), the United States National Championships/Open (beginning in 1881), the Australasian/Australian National Championships/Open (which first took place in 1905) and the French National Championships/Open (in which overseas players became eligible to compete from 1925; the data for winners of that event derive from that time onwards). The findings of the table are clear cut. When looking at the whole of lawn tennis history through the lens of grand slam results, the USA is well out in front, followed by Australia, with Britain in a respectable third place.

The second measurement of prowess on the international stage concerns the Davis Cup, the premier team competition in the sport. Britain has taken part in the event (undergoing a revamp in 2019) regularly since its foundation at the start of the 20th century. Some nations without long track records have come to the fore in recent times, notably Spain, which, in the era of Rafa Nadal, has claimed five victories since the year 2000. Looking at the full century-plus history of the event, however, the pattern evident in grand slam singles is replicated in Davis Cup outcomes. As the table below illustrates, America and Australia have been the most consistent performers, but Britain has a strong record, vying with France for third spot on the basis of having won the Cup ten times and been runner-up on eight occasions.

The final statistical yardstick of Britain’s place in global tennis history centres on the Olympic Games, which, since the modern form of the event started in 1896, have brought together athletes from all parts of the world to compete in a range of disciplines. Lawn tennis featured at the Games from 1896 to 1924. This was followed by a prolonged gap – caused by a dispute between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) – until 1988, since when the sport has been included at every summer Olympics. In terms of medals awarded for tennis, Britain stands a creditable second in the rankings.

In the early years, through to 1924, when most British medals were acquired, the standard of play at Olympic tennis events was variable. In the period when the modern Games were still establishing their place in world sport, many nations were unable or unwilling to finance the expensive travel and subsistence costs often required to participate. As a result top players who dominated at mainstream tournaments were frequently not in attendance. This advantaged British players in terms of winning medals, particularly when the Games took place in London in 1908. But others benefited too in terms of building a medal tally. No overseas competitors travelled to the USA for the St Louis Games of 1904, ensuring a clean sweep of tennis medals for the home nation that year. At first glance Britain’s performance since tennis resumed at the Olympics in 1988 – a period in which the level of competition has risen sharply, such that observers often now consider an Olympic gold medal as being on a par with a grand slam victory – looks considerably weaker than during the pre-1924 era. Yet a ranking exercise along the lines of the table on page 13, divided into two parts, would show Britain as first for the 1896–1924 period and fifth for 1988–2016. In other words, Britain’s overall record in tennis at the Olympics is impressive, more so than the likes of long-term rivals Australia and France, the latter of whom last secured a tennis gold in 1920.

What does the historical data tell us when looked at in the round? Britain’s record in the 140-year-or-so history of lawn tennis deserves to be judged not through the narrow prism of one event alone. The men’s singles title at Wimbledon has long been, and remains, a hugely coveted prize, the pinnacle of the sport, its importance magnified for home fans and media alike by such a protracted period without a domestic champion, but it should not be the sole criteria for assessing national performance. As shown in the tables on the previous pages, British players have enjoyed considerable success when due credit is given – as in this study – to accomplishments beyond the men’s title in SW19: to the three other grand slam tournaments in their changing guises; to women stars of the game as much as men; to the Davis Cup; to Olympic tennis; to doubles play as well as singles; and to the recent innovation of wheelchair tennis on the global stage. The data when put together confirms that the USA is, incontrovertibly, the outstanding nation in lawn tennis history. But Britain is far from an also-ran. The achievements of players from the Renshaws to the Murrays certainly stand scrutiny when contrasted with the nation’s record in other sporting arenas. Ten victories in the Davis Cup, for example, the most recent in 2015, compare with England’s one and only triumph in football’s World Cup, on home soil in 1966.

* * *

The chapters that follow build upon the bare statistics by providing a chronological overview of Britain’s involvement in world tennis from its foundation as a garden party pursuit in the late-Victorian period to the ultra-professionalism of modern-day tennis. One focus of the book is to outline when British fortunes fluctuated. Ebbs and flows have characterised all tennis nations, even the strongest. In his memoirs Teddy Tinling, a close follower of the game for several decades, reflected: ‘National ascendancy always seems to come in waves.’ Tinling pointed out how the Americans dominated in the years immediately after the First World War, followed by a period of French ascendancy before ‘England’ (as he called it) came to the fore in the 1930s courtesy of the efforts of Fred Perry and Dorothy Round.⁴ Other cycles followed in later times. Britain endured a particularly bleak period in the decades after Virginia Wade’s victory at Wimbledon in 1977 (when many of today’s negative impressions about British tennis were formulated), but this is counterbalanced by the compelling achievements of the Murray brothers in the last decade. After excluding ten years or so taken up with world war (1914–18 and 1939–45), when most elite tournaments were postponed, the overall picture looking back is that the high points in Britain’s tennis history add up to about half a century in total, roughly matching the number of years that can be described as troughs; a further three decades, as we shall see, were characterised by mixed fortunes.

In tracing the ups and downs of British tennis, some attention is given to the question of why national fortunes changed over time. In the first two chapters, for instance, the importance of Britain’s role in inventing, codifying and exporting lawn tennis around the world is highlighted, whereas the third chapter shows that the First World War severely undermined British tennis; it was at this point that the USA inherited the mantle of the world’s strongest tennis nation. The main focus in the text, however, is with who has delivered most for Britain from the 1880s to the present day. Which players, men and women, stepped up to distinguish themselves on the international stage? What motivated and drove these special individuals, and how was their success achieved? In addressing these issues, a central feature of the book is my choice, revealed through individual biographical profiles – the best 20 men and the best 20 women. Although based primarily on results and trophy counts, any such selection of leading players remains subjective – readers will have their own views – and many other strong performers who do not make the top 40 receive honourable mentions in the text. My choices of the leading men and women are identifiable by appearing in bold, upper case typeface (and a summary of their main feats is provided at the back).

No attempt has been made to suggest a comprehensive ranking order of the top 20 men or women. Making comparisons between the respective merits of players who competed in different eras is notoriously difficult. Dan Maskell, British Davis Cup coach of the 1930s and much later the BBC’s ‘Voice of Wimbledon’, wrote in his 1989 autobiography of the challenges faced in trying to judge how a champion of one period would fare in the conditions of another. Balls and rackets, Maskell noted, altered enormously in his lifetime, with modern fibreglass and graphite rackets generating far more power than the wooden frames of earlier years. In addition the intensity of competition increased considerably in each successive generation. Players became progressively fitter and stronger, the product of dietary, training and support regimes that were unknown in former times. When asked, as he frequently was, for his views on how the great players of his youth compared with those of the post-1968 professional age, Maskell nevertheless firmly believed that, under the same playing conditions and using the same equipment, they would fare ‘every bit as well against today’s players as they did against their contemporaries’. The reason for his confidence in reaching this conclusion was that he believed champions stood out and prevailed by ‘the force of their personalities as well as by the technical and physical attributes they possess’.⁵

Acknowledging the problems inherent in comparing players from different epochs is, in the words of Guardian tennis journalist Kevin Mitchell, ‘no impediment to our doing it all the time’.⁶ With this in mind, I do provide in the text – not a full 1 to 20 ranking order of players – but my assessment of Britain’s two or three all-time supreme men and women. Based on their victories in grand slam and other arenas, it will come as little surprise to know that this super-elite includes Fred Perry and Andy Murray among the men, and Virginia Wade and Ann Jones on the women’s side. Many of my choices below that elevated level, however, are designed to showcase the variety of ways in which British players have distinguished themselves in world tennis over the years. Hence there is a place for Victorian pioneers such as the Renshaw brothers, who hugely influenced tactics and shotmaking when lawn tennis was in its infancy; for remarkable all-rounders like Lottie Dod and Max Woosnam, who carried off top honours in other sports as well as tennis; for fine women champions in SW19, Kitty Godfree and Angela Mortimer among them, who kept the British flag flying at times when their male counterparts were struggling; for doubles specialists such as Pat Hughes and Phoebe Watson, as well as Jamie Murray; for players who secured landmark victories, including Mark Cox, the first amateur to beat a professional when tennis went ‘open’; and for underrated players who excelled in challenging environments overseas, for example Colin Gregory, the first British winner of the Australian Championships after the event was elevated to grand slam status, and Betty Nuthall, the first British woman to capture the American national singles title. It is these men and women who lie at the heart of the narrative that follows. It is their prowess which explains why what follows is not, one hopes, an excessively long book, although it’s not a short one either.

1

Victorian trailblazers

Britain and the early development of lawn tennis

Britannia ruled the tennis waves at the turn of the 20th century. British claims to have played the predominant role in the origins and growth of lawn tennis rested on four main pillars. This quartet of general factors has been widely discussed in accounts of the early history of the game, but each is sufficiently important to merit brief attention before turning the spotlight on the individual trailblazers, the men and women who became the sport’s first star performers. In the first place, while there are differing views as to who should be credited with ‘inventing’ lawn tennis, there is common agreement that it emerged among the affluent sections of British society in the mid- to late- Victorian period. A game known as pelota emerged in the Midlands at the behest of Major Harry Gem and his Spanish-born friend Augurio Pereira, both keen players of the ancient sport of rackets, though even after they formed a lawn rackets club at Royal Leamington Spa the game appeared to spread little beyond its immediate environs. The chief pioneer of the modern variant of lawn tennis, meanwhile, is widely considered to be Walter Clopton Wingfield, a retired army officer who served in India and China. In 1874 he patented a portable set of equipment which included four rackets, balls, a net and net posts. Wingfield named his new game sphairistikè (from the Greek for ‘ball-play’) or lawn tennis, and it was given a boost when a supportive letter appeared in The Field, the self-proclaimed ‘Country Gentleman’s Newspaper’. A meticulously researched study published in 2018, The Birth of Lawn Tennis, confirms that this marked the key foundational moment for what became – within a generation or two – a global sport.¹

Major Wingfield was well connected socially, and he noticed on visits to wealthy friends that croquet, hitherto a popular garden party pursuit, was losing some of its appeal. As a result he set about devising a game that would be more energetic than croquet but less complicated than another longer-established pastime of the rich, real tennis, as well as one that might be enjoyed by ladies as well as gentlemen. From the outset, lawn tennis – or ‘sticky’ as some initally nicknamed it – mirrored aspects of the older game, such as a scoring system involving 15, 30, 40 and advantage points and the requirement to win six games for a set. It discarded, however, many other features and regulations of real tennis. In relation to court layout for example, Wingfield favoured an hourglass shape, though a rectangle (smaller in size than in real tennis) was soon to become the norm. In addition, whereas real tennis required elaborate and expensive indoor roofed facilities, the new game was facilitated by the invention of the lawn mower, which allowed courts to be laid out in the open-air grounds of country houses and manors. The process of vulcanisation also allowed the production of rubber balls that bounced sufficiently high on grass to make the game appealing. After filing his patent at a cost of £25, Wingfield was soon making a return on his investment. Within a year or so, over 1,000 boxes had been sold, priced at £10 or five guineas for large and small sets respectively; clients were known to include members of the royal family and the upper echelons of the aristocracy. Lawn tennis, a fashionable and genteel summer activity for the English leisured classes, was born.²

As an element of competition began to emerge alongside social play, a second feature of Britain’s leadership of lawn tennis was its hosting of what became the world’s most prestigious annual tournament. Although other British venues became prominent in due course, for example the Queen’s Club in London, home of the national indoor championships from 1899 onwards, the one location that rapidly achieved international fame was found at the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in south-west London.

In 1869 a group of gentlemen in the suburb of Wimbledon rented four acres of land between Worple Road and the railway line, initially to play croquet. As membership grew in the years that followed, interest shifted to the more novel experience of tennis. In 1877 the club committee, acting under the guidance of one of the founder members, Henry Jones, a doctor, proposed as a means of covering rental and running costs the holding of the first ‘Lawn Tennis Championship’, held in July of that year. ‘The Championships’, as Wimbledon still refers to itself today, quickly became part of the sporting landscape, first as the nation’s premier domestic competition and in due course the tournament that players from far and wide wanted to win. A trickle of overseas entrants before 1900 (a dozen or so, all men, from the USA) turned into a steady stream during the Edwardian period and eventually into a flood after the First World War. Over the course of a quarter of a century or so, the hallowed grass courts in London SW19 played a vital part in transforming lawn tennis – in the words of Wimbledon’s official historian John Barrett – from ‘a social pastime of the leisured classes into a fully-fledged international sport’.³

In addition to inventing the game and showcasing it at Wimbledon, a third element of Britain’s pre-eminence was its key role in exporting tennis to other nations. This contribution to ensuring lawn tennis became a global phenomenon was apparent both close to home, in western Europe, and further afield, across the Atlantic Ocean and in distant parts of the British Empire. To varying degrees, British enthusiasts influenced the spread of the sport in the three nations – France, Australia and the USA – which, alongside Britain, formed the ‘big four’ in world tennis during the first half of the 20th century. Across the Channel, the English upper classes, unable to indulge their love of tennis in cold, wet winters at home, initiated from the 1880s onwards the laying out of the first courts in the south of France. The lead was taken at Villa Victoria in Cannes, home of an English land developer, where a court was in regular use after 1874. Set among palms, eucalyptus trees and beautiful gardens, courts laid out by hotels along the coast of the Riviera, in the likes of Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo, soon began attracting an annual migration of players from Britain and elsewhere in Europe. In Paris, many locals were initially disdainful of lawn tennis, regarding it as an unwelcome English import. But small numbers of grass courts and clubs began springing up in the capital by the late 1880s, a precursor to the holding of a first national championships in 1891. In the meantime, wealthy British players, not always able to travel as far as the French Mediterranean, were instrumental in introducing tennis to fashionable northern summer resorts such as Le Havre (a favoured spot for Oxbridge graduates), Dinard, Deauville and Le Touquet. At the end of the 19th century most participants in north-coast tournaments, sometimes up to 90 per cent, were English.⁴

Within the British Empire, at its geographical peak