Fred Perry
Frederick John Perry (May 18, 1909 – February 2, 1995) born in Stockport, Cheshire. was an English tennis player and three-time Wimbledon champion. He was the World No. 1 player for 5 years, four of them consecutive, 1934 through 1938, the first three years as an amateur. He was the last Englishman to win Wimbledon.
Early life
Fred Perry was born in Stockport, Cheshire, England, to Sam and Hannah Perry. Perry's father was a cotton spinner, but went on to develop a career in politics within Co-operative movement, and was elected to the British House of Commons as a Labour Party member twice, in 1923 and 1929. As a child and teenager, Perry attended Ealing County School, where he developed an affection for table tennis. His budding talent and strong dedication to the sport eventually led to a world championship in 1928. It was after this victory, at age 18, that he stopped playing and devoted all his focus to lawn tennis.
Perry developed his game with Pop Summers, who forced him to master the ability to hit the ball early after the bounce—a difficult task. Though this required months of practice, his proven speed and coordination as a table tennis player surely helped.
Tennis career
By 1933, Perry had won his first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Championships, defeating Australian Jack Crawford in five sets. He won eight Slam titles in total. By age 26, he was the first player to achieve the Career Grand Slam, having won all four Grand Slam singles titles, though not all in the same calendar year. He is famously remembered as the last British player to win the Wimbledon men's singles title, winning it three times in a row, from 1934-1936. His 1935 victory is significant, because it was the first successful Wimbledon title defense since the abolition of the Challenge Round in 1922. Previously, the defending champion did not play until the final round.
In 1933, Perry also helped lead his team to victory over France in the Davis Cup, which earned Great Britain the Davis Cup for the first time in 21 years. With Perry, the country won the Cup for the next three consecutive years.
After three years as the World No. 1 player while still an amateur, Perry turned professional in 1937. For the next two years he played lengthy tours against the powerful American player Ellsworth Vines, including 61 matches in the United States, with Vines winning 32 and Perry 29, and nine matches in England, with Perry winning six. They finished the year tied at 35 victories each. Most observers at the time considered Perry to be the World No. 1 for the fourth year in a row, sharing the title, however, with both Vines and the amateur Don Budge. The following year, 1938, the tour was even longer, and this time Vines beat Perry 49 matches to 35. Budge, winner of the amateur Grand Slam, was clearly the World No. 1 player. In 1939 Budge turned professional and played a series of matches against both Vines and Perry, beating Vines 21 times to 18 and dominating Perry by 18 victories to 11.
Fred Perry clothing brand
In the late 1940s Perry was approached by Tibby Wegner, an Austrian footballer who thought a sweatband bearing Perry's name could be a marketing gem. Together, they redesigned the product with lighter and softer material than Perry was using previously. The Fred Perry brand became publicized after Perry convinced fellow players to wear the sweatbands on court. Wegner's next idea was to produce a sports shirt which was to be made from white knitted cotton pique with short sleeves and buttons down the front. Launched at Wimbledon in 1952, the Fred Perry polo shirt was an immediate success. The brand is best known for its laurel logo, which appears on the left breast of the tennis shirts. The laurel logo (based on the old Wimbledon symbol) was stitched into the fabric of the shirt instead of merely ironed on (as was the case with the crocodile logo of the competing Lacoste brand).
The polo shirt was only available in white until the late 50s when the mods picked up on it and demanded a more varied color palette. It was the shirt of choice for diverse groups of teenagers throughout the 1960s and 1970s, ranging from the skinheads to the Northern Soul scene and Manchester's very own "Perry Boys." Since its transcendence from mere sportswear to streetwear, the Fred Perry brand has hadan enduring influence on British and international fashion.
Legacy
After his playing career ended, Perry was a tennis announcer for both television and radio, and wrote for London newspapers. By 1938, he had become a U.S. citizen, and he served as a training officer with the United States Air Force during the Second World War.
Perry was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 1975. He is considered one of the greatest male players to have ever played the game. 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. The 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.
In his 1979 autobiography, fellow tennis great Jack Kramer named Perry one of the six best players of all time. [1] Kramer recounted, "Whenever an opponent would make an especially good shot, Perry would cry out 'Very clevah.' I never played Fred competitively, but I heard enough from other guys that that 'Very clevah' drove a lot of opponents crazy." He described Perry's reputation for being "an opportunist, a selfish and egotistical person," who "never gave a damn about professional tennis". This sentiment echoed the views of the tennis hierarchy during Perry's time, unable to accept the success of an ordinary man from the working class. Perry defended his commitment to the game: "I must have played [Ellsworth] Vines in something like 350 matches, yet there was never any fixing as most people thought. There were always people willing to believe that our pro matches weren't strictly on the level, that they were just exhibitions. But as far as we were concerned, we always gave everything we had."[2]
Despite his early unpopularity, Perry's enduring legend, as the last male British player to win Wimbledon, has made him Britain's most celebrated tennis player. In 1984, a statue of Fred Perry was erected inside the Church Road gate at the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his first singles championship. In his birthplace, a special 14 mile (23 km) walking route, Fred Perry Way, was built by the borough of Stockport and officially opened in September 2002.
In Fred Perry, An Autobiography, published in 1984, Perry wrote of his memorials: "There will be a few former members of the All England Club and the LTA revolving in their graves at the thought of such a tribute paid to the man they regarded as a rebel from the wrong side of the tennis tramlines." Never embraced by the highbrow tennis establishment during his own time, Perry relied on his own self-confidence and showmanlike spirit to find remarkable success and support from fans.
During his life, he was married four times: in 1935, to American actress Helen Vinson; in 1941, to Sandra Breaux; in 1945, Lorraine Walsh; and in 1952, to Barbara Reis, with whom he had one daughter and whose son he adopted.
Perry died in Melbourne, Australia on February 2, 1995, while attending the Australian Open Championships.
Grand Slam singles finals
Wins (8)
| Year | Championship | Opponent in Final | Score in Final |
| 1933 | U.S. Championships |  Jack Crawford |
6-3, 11-13, 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 |
| 1934 | Australian Championships | Jack Crawford |
6-3, 7-5, 6-1 |
| 1934 | Wimbledon | Jack Crawford |
6-3, 6-0, 7-5 |
| 1934 | U.S. Championships (2) |  Wilmer Allison |
6-4, 6-3, 1-6, 8-6 |
| 1935 | French Championships |  Gottfried von Cramm |
6-3, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 |
| 1935 | Wimbledon Championships (2) | Gottfried von Cramm |
6-2, 6-4, 6-4 |
| 1936 | Wimbledon Championships (3) | Gottfried von Cramm |
6-1, 6-1, 6-0 |
| 1936 | U.S. Championships (3) | Don Budge |
2-6 6-2 8-6 1-6 10-8 |
Runner-ups (2)
| Year | Championship | Opponent in Final | Score in Final |
| 1935 | Australian Championships | Jack Crawford |
6-2, 4-6, 4-6, 4-6 |
| 1936 | French Championships | Gottfried von Cramm |
0-6, 6-2, 2-6, 6-2, 0-6 |
Grand Slam Titles
Singles
- Australian Open (1934)
- French Open (1935)
- Wimbledon (1934, 1935, 1936)
- US Open (1933, 1934, 1936)
Doubles
- Australian Open (1934)
- French Open (1936)
Mixed doubles
- French Open (1932)
- Wimbledon (1935, 1936)
- US Open (1932)
Notes
- ↑ Writing in 1979, Kramer considered the best ever to have been either Don Budge (for consistent play) or Ellsworth Vines (at the height of his game). The next four best were, chronologically, Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, and Pancho Gonzales. After these six came the "second echelon" of Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Gottfried von Cramm, Ted Schroeder, Jack Crawford, Pancho Segura, Frank Sedgman, Tony Trabert, John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Björn Borg, and Jimmy Connors. He felt unable to rank Henri Cochet and René Lacoste accurately but felt they were among the very best.
- ↑ The History of Professional Tennis, Joe McCauley
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Perry, Fred. Fred Perry: An Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1984. ISBN 978-0091553005.
- Phillips, Carl. The Right Set: A Tennis Anthology. Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN 0375706461.
- McCauley, Joe. The History of Professional Tennis, 2001.
External links
- "Frederick John Perry", International Tennis Hall of Fame, Retrieved July 16, 2007.
- Donovan, Mike, 2007;"Fred Perry", The Official Website of Wimbledon 2007, Retrieved July 16, 2007.
- "Home Page", fredperry.com, Retrieved July 16, 2007.
- Roberts, John. "Obituaries: Fred Perry". February 3, 1995. The Independent via findarticles.com, Retrieved July 16, 2007.
| Male tennis players who have won 3 or more Grand Slam singles titles in one season | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1933: Jack Crawford (3) | 1934: Fred Perry (3) | 1938: Don Budge (4) | 1955: Tony Trabert (3) | 1956: Lew Hoad (3) | 1958: Ashley Cooper (3) | 1962, 1969: Rod Laver (4) | 1964: Roy Emerson (3) | 1974: Jimmy Connors (3) | 1988: Mats Wilander (3) | 2004, 2006, 2007: Roger Federer (3) | ||
Template:Tennis Career Grand Slam Champions
| ||
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