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Abstract
The summer of 2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Fred Perry, one of Britain's greatest sportsmen of the twentieth century. Perry is famous as the last British man to win Wimbledon, the first of his three successive victories coming 75 years ago in 1934. He also played a pivotal role in Britain's domination of the Davis Cup between 1933 and 1936. This article explores the paradox of Perry's career. While he became internationally renowned in the wake of his successes, during the 1930s and for many years afterwards he was largely unheralded in his homeland. Both his social background and his ruthless desire to win were at odds with the gentlemanly amateur ethos that dominated tennis before the Second World War, and it was only much later that his reputation was restored and enhanced as the years passed with no British player to emulate his achievements.
Notes
1. Jack Kramer (with Frank Deford), The game – my 40 years in tennis (London, 1981), pp. 19–20.
2. F.R. Burrow, The Centre Court and others (London, 1937), p. 192.
3. Ted Tinling, Tinling: Sixty years in tennis (London, 1983), p. 196.
4. Times, 7 July 1934.
5. Lawn Tennis and Badminton, 14 July 1934.
6. Fred Perry, Fred Perry: An autobiography (London, 1984), pp. 10–11.
7. Aspects of Perry's career are assessed in Mike Huggins and Jack Williams, Sport and the English 1918–1939 (Abingdon, 2006), especially chapter 3. But the only notable academic overview of British tennis since the First World War remains Helen Walker, ‘Lawn Tennis’, in Tony Mason, ed., Sport in Britain: A social history (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 245–75.
8. Reg Lansberry, ‘Fifty years to honor a winner’, World Tennis, July 1984, p. 73.
9. The LTA annual handbook, 1922 (London, 1922): Lancashire 61 clubs; Cheshire 45; Middlesex 129. See also Keith Gildart, ‘Samuel Frederick Perry’, in Gildart and David Howell, eds, Dictionary of Labour biography, Vol XII (London and Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 226–33.
10. Henry Wancke, ‘Interview: Fred Perry’, Tennis World (Britain), Aug. 1986, pp. 49–51; Perry, Autobiography, pp. 24–5.
11. Patrick Collins, in Ronald Atkin, ed., For the love of tennis (London, 1985), p. 172.
12. Huggins and Williams, Sport and the English, pp. 98–100. For an account of how upper middle-class amateur principles took root in tennis prior to the First World War, see John Lowerson, Sport and the English middle classes 1870–1914 (Manchester, 1995 edn), especially pp. 95–109.
13. Tinling, Sixty years in tennis, pp. 193–4.
14. Perry, My story (London, 1934), p. 24; British Pathé interview with Perry, 1970; E. Digby Baltzell, Sporting gentlemen: Men's tennis from the age of honor to the cult of the superstar (New York, 1995), pp. 189 and 221.
15. Dan Maskell, Oh I say! (London, 1989), pp. 78 and 109.
16. Perry interview with David Miller, Times, 18 May 1984; H.W. Austin and Phyllis Konstam, A mixed double (London, 1969), pp. 229–30.
17. Perry, Autobiography, p. 18; Tinling, Sixty years in tennis, p. 193.
18. Norah Cleather, Wimbledon story (London, 1947), p. 103.
19. Perry, Autobiography, p. 43.
20. Tinling, Sixty years in tennis, p. 194.
21. Perry, My story, p. 286.
22. Herbert Warren Wind, ‘The sporting scene. An old cab horse and two new ones’, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 1985, p. 81; Perry, My story, pp. 60–1.
23. Huw D. Evans, Ted Avory. A life in tennis (Wimbledon, 1995), p. 14.
24. Daily Telegraph, 31 July 1933.
25. Lawn Tennis and Badminton, 31 March 1934.
26. Max Robertson, ed., The encyclopedia of tennis (London, 1974), p. 189.
27. Mike Huggins, ‘BBC radio and sport 1922–39’, Contemporary British History, 21 (4) (2007), pp. 494–511. See also Richard Holt's essay in Jeff Hill and Jack Willliams, eds, Sport and identity in the north of England (Keele, 1996).
28. Tinling, Sixty years in tennis, pp. 167 and 196–7.
29. Kramer, The game, p. 60.
30. Ted Tinling, Love and faults: Personalities who have changed the history of tennis in my lifetime (New York, 1979), p. 144.
31. Alan Trengrove, The story of the Davis Cup (London, 1985), p. 116.
32. Perry, Autobiography, pp. 97–8.
33. Maskell, Oh I say!, p. 179.
34. Perry, Autobiography, p. 111; Lawn Tennis and Badminton, 5 Dec. 1936.
35. George Lott, ‘Inside tennis’, Atlantic Monthly (USA), Jan. 1938, pp. 77–81.
36. Joe McCauley, The history of professional tennis (Windsor, 2000), pp. 32–4.
37. Perry, Autobiography, p. 118; Herbert Warren Wind, ‘The sporting scene’, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 1985, p. 62.
38. Perry, Autobiography, p. 134; Ellsworth Vines III, The greatest athlete of all time (Bloomington, IN, 1985), p. 138.
39. Perry, Autobiography, pp. 140–1.
40. Alan Mills, Lifting the covers. The autobiography (London, 2005), p. 68; Perry, Autobiography, p. 141; Maskell, Oh I say!, p. 257.
41. Perry, Autobiography, pp. 179–85; Tinling, Sixty years in tennis, p. 154.
42. Bunny Austin wrote when meeting up with Perry: ‘He had married an enchanting wife – gay, full of life and with an irrepressible sense of humour about herself and Fred and life generally’: Austin and Konstam, A mixed double, p. 230.
43. Sunday Times, 5 Feb. 1985.
44. Norman Giller, ed., The book of tennis lists (London, 1985), p. 195; John Haylett, ‘Brits who ruled the waves’, Ace, March 2007.
45. Robertson, Encyclopedia of tennis, pp. 166–75.
46. The Times, 7 July 1984.
47. Perry, Autobiography, pp. 9–10 and 194; interview with David Miller, Times, 18 May 1984; John Roberts, Independent, 3 Feb. 1995.
48. Wancke, ‘Interview: Perry’, Tennis World, Aug. 1986, pp. 49–51; Richard Evans, Sunday Times, 5 Feb. 1985.
49. Roberts, Independent, 3 Feb. 1995.
50. Perry, Autobiography, pp. 78–9 and 108–10; Evans, Avory, p. 16.