Fred Perry

Frederick Towersey Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) was an English tennis and table tennis player and former world No. 1. He won 10 Majors, including eight Grand Slam tournaments and two Pro Slams single titles, as well as six Major doubles titles. Perry was the first player to win a "Career Grand Slam", lifting all four singles titles, which he completed at the age of 26 at the 1935 French Championships. He remains the only British player to achieve this feat. He won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships from 1934 to 1936 and was world amateur No. 1 player during those three years. Prior to Andy Murray in 2013, Perry was the last British player to win the men's Wimbledon championship and the last British player to win a men's singles Grand Slam title until Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open. Perry's first love was table tennis and he was World Champion in 1929. He began playing tennis aged 14 and his tennis career at 21, when in 1930 an LTA committee chose him to join a four-man team to tour the United States. In 1933, Perry helped lead the Great Britain team to victory over France in the Davis Cup; the team's first success since 1912, followed by wins over the United States in 1934, 1935, and a fourth consecutive title with victory over Australia in 1936. However, due to his disillusionment with the class-conscious nature of the Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain, the working-class Perry turned professional at the end of the 1936 season and moved to the United States where he became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 1939. In 1942, he was drafted into the US Army Air Force during the Second World War. After retirement, he founded the clothing label Fred Perry in London in 1952. He also had a career in broadcasting, working as a tennis summariser and reporter for BBC Radio from 1959 to 1994. Despite his unprecedented contribution to British tennis, Perry was not accorded full recognition by tennis authorities until later in life, because between 1927 and 1967 the International Lawn Tennis Federation ignored amateur champions who later turned professional. In 1984, a statue of Perry was unveiled at Wimbledon, and in the same year he became the only tennis player listed in a survey of 2,000 Britons to find the "Best of the Best" British sportsmen of the 20th century.