Fred Perry
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Fred Perry hitting a backhand volley |
Frederick John Perry (
May 18,
1909 â€"
February 2,
1995) in Stockport, Cheshire. was an
English tennis player and three-time
Wimbledon champion. He was the
World No. 1 player for four consecutive years, 1934 through 1938, the first three years as an amateur.
Born in
Stockport,
Cheshire,
England, his father was elected to the
British House of Commons as a
Labour Party member. Perry was a
table tennis world champion before taking up tennis at the relatively late age of 18. He had exceptional speed from his table tennis days and played with the
Continental grip, attacking the ball low and on the rise. He was the first player to win all four
Grand Slam singles titles, though not all in the same year. He is currently the youngest player to have achieved the Career Grand Slam, doing so at the age of 26. Perry is the last British player to win the Wimbledon men's singles title, winning it three times in a row and becoming an English icon.
In
1933 Perry 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.
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Perry hitting a smash as an amateur in 1934 |
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. In 1937 they played 61 matches in the United States, with Vines winning 32 and Perry 29. They then sailed to England, where they played a brief tour. Perry won 6 matches out of 9, so 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.
Perry is considered by some to have been one of the greatest male players to have ever played the game. In his 1979 autobiography
Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, called Perry one of the 6 greatest players of all time.
[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.]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. But this 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, so that all of the more recent great players are missing.
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Perry hitting his famous snapped forehand |
Kramer, however, has several caveats about Perry. He says that
Bill Tilden once called Perry "the world's worst good player." Kramer says that Perry was "extremely fast; he had a hard body with sharp reflexes, and he could hit a forehand with a snap, slamming it on the rise against Vine and Budge -- that was what did him in. 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."
Kramer also says that in spite of his many victories, both as an amateur and as a professional, Perry was an "opportunist, a selfish and egotistical person, and he never gave a damn about professional tennis. He was through as a player the instant he turned pro. He was a great champion, and he could have helped tennis, but it wasn't in his interest so he didn't bother." Kramer then recounts several instances in which it was clear to him that Perry was losing matches in which he had given up because he "wanted to make sure that the crowd understood that this was all beneath him."
Perry, however, recalled his days on the professional tour differently. He maintained "that there was never any easing up in his tour matches with Ellsworth Vine and Bill Tilden since there was the title of World Pro Champion at stake. He said 'I must have played 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.'"
[The History of Professional Tennis, Joe McCauley ] |
A statue of Fred Perry at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon |
A final comment from Kramer is that Perry unwittingly "screwed up men's tennis in England, although this wasn't his fault. The way he could hit a forehand â€" snap it off like a ping-pong shot â€" Perry was a physical freak. Nobody else could be taught to hit a shot that way. But the kids over there copied Perry's style, and it ruined them. Even after Perry faded out of the picture, the coaches there must have kept using him as a model."
Inside the Church Road gate at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in
Wimbledon, London, a statue of Fred Perry was erected in
1984 to mark 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.
Perry was inducted into the
International Tennis Hall of Fame in
Newport, Rhode Island in
1975. He died in
Melbourne,
Australia.
The Fred Perry
brand of clothing has been popular for many years. It is best known for the laurel logo on the left breast of its
tennis shirts. In the mid-
1950s and through the early
1960s many considered the Fred Perry brand of male tennis shirts to be the best available. The laurel logo on the shirt was
stitched into the fabric, for instance, rather than being merely ironed on, as with the Cochet crocodile featured on competing
Lacoste apparel. Later the brand became popular with
mods,
skinheads, and other youth sub-cultures.
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 Championships | 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 |
Singles
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Australian Open (1934)
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French Open (1935)
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Wimbledon (1934, 1935, 1936)
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US Open (1933, 1934, 1936)
Doubles
*Australian Open (1934)
*French Open (1936)
Mixed doubles
*French Open (1932)
*Wimbledon (1935, 1936)
*US Open (1932)
*
The History of Professional Tennis (2003), Joe McCauley
*
Fred Perry Clothing WebsiteList of male tennis players
