Karel Koželuh

Karel Koželuh
Karel Koželuh and Roman Najuch
Personnel
birthday	March 7, 1895
place of birth	Prague ,  Austria-Hungary
date of death	April 27, 1950
Place of death	Prague ,  Czechoslovakia
position	Center Forward
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1914–	DFC Prague
	Sparta Prague
	Vienna AC
	Teplitzer FK
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1917-1918	Austria	4 (1)
1919-1923	Czechoslovakia	2 (1)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1919	HAŠK Zagreb
1 Only league games are given.

Karel Koželuh (born March 7, 1895 in Prague ; † April 27, 1950 ibid) was a Czechoslovak world champion in professional tennis , European champion in ice hockey and football player for the Austrian and Czechoslovak national teams on the position of a center forward in the 1920s and 1930s .

Career as a football player

Karel Koželuh was an all-round talent and began practicing several sports in his youth. Before he started playing football, he also tried rugby and discovered his love for tennis at the age of 16 . While his five brothers decided to play tennis at a very early age, Karel was initially drawn to football , although he also repeatedly played different sports side by side. As a center forward Koželuh played from 1914 for the well-known Prague clubs DFC and Sparta , in the 1920s for the Vienna AC and briefly for the Teplitzer FK . In between, he also worked as a trainer at HAŠK Zagreb in 1919 . With DFC Prague , which was one of the best football clubs in Europe at the time, he often played friendly encounters against the strong Viennese clubs. In 1917, association captain Hugo Meisl appointed him to the Austrian national football team for the first time .

He made his debut for Austria on November 4, 1917, together with his DFC club colleague, Karel Wilda, in the 2-1 home defeat against Hungary in Vienna . He played his best game for Austria in 1918 in a 5-1 win over the Swiss national team in Vienna. Already in the first half he repeatedly pushed into the opposing penalty area and initiated the opening goal for his team with a nice presentation to Wilda. In the 80th minute he managed to crown his performance with the goal to make it 3-1. The other goals against Switzerland were scored by Karel Wilder, Jan Studnicka and Edi Bauer. The strength of Koželuh and his club DFC Prague at that time is also conveyed by the formation of the Austrians in Koželuh's third international match, which was played in Budapest on June 2, 1918 , but despite the DFC's parade storm with Koželuh, Wilda, Feller and Steuer against the then almost unbeatable Hungary with 0-2 was lost. In the same year, on October 2nd, Karel Koželuh played for Hugo Meisl's team for the last time and again lost 3-0 against ore rivals Hungary.

After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy , Karel Koželuh played for the newly formed 1st Czechoslovak Republic from 1919 to 1923 , where he repeatedly met other Czechoslovak players such as Josef Sedlacek or Jan Vaník , who were also included in the Austrian national team during their career. One of his best games for the Czechoslovak national team he completed on June 11, 1923 in a 3-0 win against Denmark in Idrætsparken in Copenhagen . Another highlight of his football career was the 5-1 win over Italy in Prague that same year. Karel Koželuh was able to celebrate great successes due to the fact that at that time there were neither world nor European championships in football, but with no national team.

Switch to ice hockey

During his time as a footballer at Sparta Prague , he also played more and more games in the club's ice hockey team and also made it into the Czechoslovak national team in this sport. Due to his success in ice hockey, he finally gave up his career as a soccer player in 1923 and concentrated - in addition to his passion for tennis - now on playing with the puck . In the same year Koželuh, together with Karel Pesek-Káda, who also came from the soccer team, took part with the Czechoslovak national ice hockey team in the European championships and finished third with his team behind France and Sweden. Things went even better for the universal sportsman two years later at the European Championships in 1925, when he was even European champion with the Czechoslovak team ahead of Austria and Switzerland. The fact that he was by no means a “follower”, but one of the most valuable players on his team, was proven by the winning goal in the last game against Switzerland, which made Czechoslovakia's triumph possible. Despite these great successes, he ended his short career as an ice hockey crack in 1925 and finally exchanged the ice hockey stick for the tennis racket. However, he was still active as an ice hockey coach, so he coached the team of the Bavarian champions SC Riessersee in January 1926 .

Career as a tennis player

Already during his activity as an ice hockey player Koželuh regularly played tennis tournaments as an amateur and had some successes. In 1912 he won 6-2 and 6-3 in Wiesbaden against Roman Najuch . After the European championship in ice hockey, he focused exclusively on tennis and switched to the professional field that same year . In his first year as a professional he won the singles at the French Pro Championships in 1925 at the age of 30 and was also named professional tennis world champion .

Koželuh developed into one of the best and most famous players in tennis and was known as the Fred Astaire on the center court because of his dancing leg movements and his speed, which he had trained as a football striker in the years before . A game against Bill Tilden in Madison Square Garden in New York even attracted more than 17,000 spectators. The Prague player was also known for his serve strength and for his stamina, with which he, as a "defensive player", often let his opponents despair, especially on the net.

In 1928 he moved into the final at the MFS Pro Championships in Boston (United States Pro Championship), but was defeated, as in 1930, by the American Vincent Richards . In return, the right-hander succeeded in defending his title at the French Pro Championships five times in a row in the years up to 1930. He celebrated his last triumph in this tournament in 1932. In the same year he also won the European Professional Tour and, after 1929, the title at the US Pro Championships for the second time. In 1934 and 1935 he failed at the US Pro only in the finals against Hans Nüsslein and the then superstar Bill Tilden. After his last victory in the final at this tournament against Bruce Barnes in 1937, the successful sportsman let his (already third) career slowly end. After his active career he coached the American Don Budge , the American and from 1947 to 1949 also the Czechoslovak Davis Cup team. On April 27, 1950, Karel Koželuh was tragically killed in a traffic accident in the Klánovice district of Prague .

Honors

In July 2006, more than fifty years after his death, Karel Koželuh received the highest honor in tennis when he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame . The Czech National Museum (Národní Muzeum) honored the occasion in July 2006 with an exhibition of the tennis idol's trophies.

titles and achievements

Soccer

• 4 international matches and 1 goal for the Austrian national soccer team
• 2 international matches and 1 goal for the Czechoslovak national soccer team

ice Hockey

• European champion 1925
• Bronze medal at the European Championships in 1923

tennis

• 7 × French Professional Singles Champion: 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932
• 1 × European Professional Tour Champion: 1932
• 3 × US Pro Singles Champion: 1929, 1932, 1937
• 1 × US Pro Doubles Champion: 1929
• 1 × World Professional Tennis Title: 1925

Web links

• Karel Koželuh in the "International Tennis Hall of Fame" (English; with picture)
• Report at tennisserver.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ AZ on the morning of February 7, 1926 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , digiPress
2. ↑ https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/professional-tennis-before-1926-part-i.268193