Bill Tilden

William Tatem Tilden II (February 10, 1893 – June 5, 1953), often called "Big Bill", was an American tennis player who was the World No. 1 player for 7 years, the last time when he was 38 years old. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a wealthy family, he was a "Junior" at birth but changed his name to "II" when he was in his mid-20s.

Early life

Tilden was born into a wealthy family that was overshadowed by the death of three older siblings to diptheria in 1884, in the span of three weeks. He lived a sheltered life, and was tutored at home until junior high school. His mother died of a stroke when he was 15, and, even though his father was still alive and maintained a large house staffed with servants, was sent a few houses away to live with a maiden aunt. He would call this place his home for 33 years. He found success in tennis at a young age, though he did not make the tennis team at the University of Pennsylvania in his first try.

Tennis career

As an amateur

Unique among tennis players, Tilden became a great player only at the relatively advanced age of 27, only finding recognition as a losing finalist at the U.S. Nationals the previous two years, in 1917 and 1918. He made considerable strides after the winter of 1919-20, when he moved to Rhode Island, and where, on an indoor court, he devoted himself to retooling his relatively ineffective backhand. He emerged with a new grip and a powerful new backhand in the summer of 1920 and for the rest of the decade dominated world tennis.

In spite of his powerful serve, Tilden preferred to play mostly from the backcourt, where he dazzled opponents with his ever-changing tactics: a mixture of guile, of chopped and sliced shots, of dropshots and lobs, and of sudden powerful ground strokes deep to the corners. He hit superbly angled shots on nearly impossible returns and liked nothing better than to face an opponent who threw powerful serves and ground strokes at him and who rushed the net — one way or another Tilden would find a way to hit the ball past him.

In addition to his seven U.S. National singles titles, he captured three Wimbledon titles. He also brought the U.S. Davis Cup team to seven consecutive wins from 1920-1926.

In the mid-1920s, the tip of Tilden's middle finger on his playing hand became infected and had to be amputated. He also had a chronic knee problem that hindered him seriously from time to time. These injuries were not widely reported, and after some adjustments to his technique, they did little to affect his supreme dominance of the sport.

In the late 1920s the great French players known as the "Four Musketeers" finally wrested the Davis Cup away from Tilden and the United States, as well as his domination of the singles titles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills. Tilden had long been at odds with the rigid amateur directors of the United States Lawn Tennis Association about his income derived from newspaper articles about tennis. His last grand slam victory was in 1930, when at age 37, he was Wimbledon's oldest gentlemen's singles champion.

Over the course of his amateur career, from 1912-1930, Tilden boasted a tremendous 93.6 percent winning average.

On the professional tour

In 1931, in need of money, he turned professional and joined the fledgling pro tour, which had begun only in 1927, alongside Vincent Richards, Hans Nusslein and Roman Najuch of Germany and Karel Kozeluh of Czechoslovakia. As the marquee name of the young tour, Tilden set the path for other similarly popular players to turn professional. Still, even with greats such as Ellsworth Vines, Fred Perry, and Don Budge as his opponents—all of them current or recent World No. 1 players—it was often Tilden who ensured the box-office receipts. In 1934, he won 9 out of his first 20 matches against Vines. And in 1941, at 48 years old, he toured the United States playing head-to-head matches with Don Budge, who at that time was incontestably the greatest player in the world. Even at his advanced age, Tilden was able to play competitively against these younger players, for at least the first set, if not the whole match. In 1945, at age 52, Tilden and his long-time doubles partner Vinnie Richards won the professional doubles championship; they had won the United States amateur title 27 years earlier in 1918.

Controversy

Although Tilden almost never drank, he smoked heavily and disdained what today would be considered a healthy life style for an athlete; for most of his life his diet consisted of 3 enormous meals a day of steak and potatoes, with, perhaps, the occasional lamb chop.

Tilden was first arrested on Nov. 23, 1946 on Sunset Boulevard when he was caught placing his hand in a teenage boy's pants (the boy was a prostitute whose services Tilden had solicited). He could have been charged with a felony ("lewd and lascivious behavior with a minor"), but was charged only with a misdemeanor ("contributing to the delinquency of a minor"). He was sentenced to a year in prison and served 7 1/2 months.

He was arrested again on Jan. 28, 1949, after picking up a 16-year-old hitchhiker and making advances. The new charge could have been prosecuted as a felony, but the judge merely sentenced Tilden to a year on his probation violation and let the punishment for the new molesting charge run concurrently. He served 10 months.

In both cases, apparently, Tilden sincerely believed that his celebrity and his longtime friendship with Hollywood names such as Charlie Chaplin were enough to keep him from paying the consequences of his acts. He therefore defended himself in court in both cases in a far less than vigorous fashion.

After his second incarceration Tilden was increasingly shunned by the tennis world. He was unable to give lessons at most clubs and even on public courts he had fewer clients. At one point he was invited to play at a prestigious professional tournament being held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel; at the last moment he was told that he could not participate.

Legacy

Tilden was a champion player of the 1920s and 1930s who was the single most influential person in the history of tennis. He was also perhaps the most paradoxical figure in the history of any sport: a gay man who almost single-handedly changed the image of tennis from that of a "sissy" country-club sport played only by rich white people in long white pants or ankle-length skirts to that of a major sport played by robust, world-class athletes.

Tall, lean, and gangly, with long arms, enormous hands, and exceptionally broad shoulders, Tilden possessed what was called at the time a "cannonball" service. Although he could serve aces almost at will, he had little interest in advancing to the net behind his serve. He primarily used spin and slice serves, reserving his famous cannonball for crucial moments in the match. Allison Danzig, the main tennis writer for The New York Times from 1923 through 1968 and the editor of "The Fireside Book of Tennis," called Tilden the greatest tennis player he had ever seen. "He could run like a deer," Danzig told CBS Sports.

In the United States' sports-mad decade of the Roaring Twenties Tilden was one of the five dominant figures of the "Golden Era of Sport," along with Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, and Jack Dempsey. His subsequent arrests and convictions on charges of soliciting underage males cast a shadow over his illustrious career.

Tilden may have spent more time analyzing the game of tennis than anyone before or since. He wrote two books about the game, The Art of Lawn Tennis (online text) and Match Play and the Spin of the Ball, the latter of which is still in print and is the definitive work on the subject. Besides his great physical abilities, he was an extremely cerebral player, a master of both strategy and tactics, adept at adapting himself to his opponent's style and turning his strengths against him. He was also known for his showmanship, which occasionally veered into what his opponents might have called gamesmanship. He always tried to give his paying audience its money's worth and it was frequently written, though never confirmed by Tilden himself, that he would deliberately lose the opening sets of a match in order to prolong the battle and to make it more interesting for both himself and the spectators. (This ploy was confirmed in 1963 by William Lufler, who played on Tilden's pro tour for several years. Lufler, who had become a highly regarded teaching pro — he was instrumental in forming the USPTA, and served as its president 1963-1966 — claimed that Tilden threw the early sets in most matches.) In spite of his occasional overly colorful behavior he was a devout believer in sportsmanship at all costs and above all other aspects of the game, including the final score; he would readily (and dramatically) cede points to his opponent if he thought the umpire had miscalled a shot in Tilden's favor.

Another of his party pieces, when serving for the match against lesser opposition, was to pick up four balls in his massive hand and proceed to serve four aces, one with each ball. To show his disdain for the women's game, he played an exhibition against the foremost female player of the day, Suzanne Lenglen, giving her three points in each game, and won 6-0 6-0 (I hasten to add that he started each game from minus 40 to love, not love-40, so Lenglen had to win four points before Tilden won seven).

Tilden the consummate showman on the court was also a ham and showman in the larger world. He wrote many unsuccessful short stories and novels about misunderstood but sportsman-like tennis players, and dreamed of being a star on Broadway and in Hollywood. Much of his off-the-court time — as well as his money — was devoted to these pursuits, with failure the inevitable result.

Although Tilden had been born to wealth, and earned large sums of money during his long career, particularly in his early years on the pro tour, he spent it lavishly, keeping a suite at the Algonquin Hotel. Much of his income went towards financing Broadway shows that he wrote, produced, and starred in [1] . The last part of his life was spent quietly and away from his family, occasionally participating in celebrity tennis matches. He died penniless in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 60. He was preparing to leave for the United States Professional Championship tournament in Cleveland, Ohio, when he fell dead of a stroke.

Tilden was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1959.

Grand Slam record

• French Championships
  • Singles finalist: 1927, 1930
  • Mixed champion: 1930

• Wimbledon Championships
  • Singles champion: 1920, 1921, 1930
  • Doubles champion: 1927

• U.S. Championships
  • Singles champion: 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929
  • Singles finalist: 1918, 1919, 1927
  • Doubles champion: 1918, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1927
  • Doubles finalist: 1919, 1926
  • Mixed champion: 1913, 1914, 1922, 1923
  • Mixed finalist: 1916, 1917, 1919, 1921, 1924

Professional Tennis Championships highlights

• Wembley, England
  • Finalist, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938

• United States Professional Championship
  • Singles, 1931, 1935

• French Professional Championship
  • Singles, 1934

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• DeFord, Frank. Big Bill Tilden, The Triumphs and the Tragedy. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1976. ISBN 0-671-22254-6
• Tilden, William Tatem. My Story: A Champion's Memoirs. Classic Textbooks, 1948. ISBN 140478652X.
• Tilden, William Tatem. Match Play and Spin of the Ball. Kennikat Press, 1969. ISBN 0804617716.

External links

• "William Tatem Tilden", International Tennis Hall of Fame, Retrieved July 16, 2007.
• Schwartz, Larry, ESPN.com, 2007; "Tilden Won With Style", ESPN.com, Retrieved July 16, 2007.

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