Bill Tilden

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Bill Tilden
The US Davis Cup team of 1929 from left to right: Frank Hunter , Bill Tilden, Wilmer Allison and John Van Ryn .

William Tatem "Bill" Tilden II , called "Big Bill" (born February 10, 1893 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † June 5, 1953 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American tennis player .

biography

He was the dominant tennis player in the 1920s and one of the best tennis players of all time. With the exception of the 1950s when Pancho Gonzales dominated the scene among professional tennis players, there was no other tennis player who dominated tennis for such a long period of time. In addition to his successes in Grand Slam tournaments with the US Davis Cup team, he won the trophy seven times.

Record Grand Slam winner in men's singles
rank player title
1. SwitzerlandSwitzerland Roger Federer 20th
2. SpainSpain Rafael Nadal 19th
3. SerbiaSerbia Novak Đoković 17th
4th United StatesUnited States Pete Sampras 14th
5. AustraliaAustralia Roy Emerson 12
6th SwedenSweden Bjorn Borg 11
AustraliaAustralia Rod Laver
8th. United StatesUnited States Bill Tilden 10
As of February 2, 2020

Unusual for a tennis player, he did not become a phenomenal player until the relatively late age of 27. Although he won some singles and doubles titles before 1920, he lost to Lindley Murray in 1918 and Bill Johnston in 1919 . After these defeats, he worked on his backhand in a friend's tennis hall all winter and was able to dominate tennis for a decade with the changed, more variable and more aggressive backhand hit. Tilden was in excellent condition with great speed and balance, and he was 1.88 m tall for his time. Although he seldom approached the net , this was particularly helpful on his cannon impact , one of his most effective strikes. Tilden won his last Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon in 1930 at the age of 37 . His record of ten Grand Slam titles was beaten by Roy Emerson in 1967 . In the same year Tilden also won the mixed doubles title in Paris. The partner there was Cilly Aussem , whose great career Tilden played a key role as a coach. Due to lack of money, he became a professional tennis player in 1931 and toured the United States and Europe with other top players for 15 years; however, the audience wanted to see him play above all else. Bill Tilden kept up with the younger players and tennis greats of the 1930s such as Ellsworth Vines , Fred Perry and Don Budge .

Bill Tilden was considered an intellectual among tennis players who passionately studied stroke technique, twist and cut and wrote three books on tactics and technique in tennis. He also published several, albeit unsuccessful, short stories.

In public opinion, Tilden was considered the greatest tennis player ever between 1920 and 1955, before Pancho Gonzales surpassed him in public.

In 1946 and 1949, Tilden, whose homosexuality was an open secret in the tennis scene, was sentenced to prison for homosexual harassment of young people. Socially ostracized, he was no longer invited to show tournaments and could no longer work as a trainer. Bill Tilden died impoverished in Los Angeles at the age of 60.

He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1959 .

Tilden holds numerous records in Grand Slam tournaments and on the tour. From 1920 to 1926 he won 51 matches in a row at Grand Slams and during this time won eight finals in a row (alongside Pete Sampras ). With seven titles he is the record winner of the US championships alongside Richard Sears and William Larned , where he reached eight finals in a row (alongside Ivan Lendl ) and ten finals in total. In addition, his match record of 71 wins and seven losses (91%) is unmatched to this day, from 1920 to 1926 he achieved 42 wins in a row in Forest Hills. On the tour he holds, among other things, the all-time records for the longest winning streak ever (98), and ended 1924 with 68 wins and no defeat. In addition, Tilden won 19 tournaments in a row between 1925 and 1926 (alongside Anthony Wilding ) and reached 52 finals without interruption from 1922 to 1926.

Grand Slam victories

Wimbledon
  • Singles - 1920, 1921, 1930
  • Double - 1927
Forest Hills
  • Singles - 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1929
  • Doubles - 1918, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1927
  • Mixed - 1913, 1914, 1922, 1923
Roland Garros
  • Mixed 1930

Professional tennis championships victories

United States Professional Championship
  • Singles - 1931, 1935
French Professional Championship
  • Singles - 1933, 1934

Varia

The Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov alludes to Tilden's pedophile inclinations in Part 2, Chapter 2, of his famous novel Lolita (first edition 1955), although he disguisedly calls him Ned Litam (read backwards: Ma Tilden).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bill Tilden in the "International Tennis Hall of Fame" (English; with picture)
  2. ↑ Article on Citizendium

literature

  • Frank Deford: Big Bill Tilden: the triumphs and the tragedy , New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976, ISBN 0-671-22254-6
  • Jon Marshall Fisher: I play for my life. Gottfried von Cramm and the best tennis match of all time : Biographies of Gottfried von Cramm, Bill Tilden, Don Budge, the three best male tennis players of the 1930s, Osburg-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 3-940731-31-5
  • Allen M. Hornblum: American Colossus: Big Bill Tilden and the creation of modern tennis , Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2018, ISBN 978-0-8032-8811-9

Web links

Commons : Bill Tilden  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Tilden, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tilden, William Tatem; Big Bill
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American tennis player
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, United States
DATE OF DEATH 5th June 1953
Place of death Los Angeles , California, United States