Richard Williams (tennis player)

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Richard Williams (1916)
Richard Williams (ca.1913)

Richard Norris "Dick" Williams II (born January 29, 1891 in Geneva , Switzerland , † June 2, 1968 in Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania ) was an American tennis player .

biography

Williams was born in Switzerland to the US lawyer Charles Duane Williams (1860-1912) and his wife Lydia Biddle White (1864-1946). Because of the father's health problems, the parents had moved to Switzerland and to nearby therapeutic baths. In 1911 Williams became Swiss tennis champion.

In April 1912, their son and father embarked as first class passengers on the luxury liner RMS Titanic . Richard wanted to study at Harvard and play tennis in the USA. Father Duane and Richard helped other passengers into the lifeboats after the collision with the iceberg. When there were no more boats, the two were still on the ship. His father was killed in the accident; he was killed by one of the falling chimneys. Before the sinking, Williams jumped into the sea. After the ship went down, Williams held onto a capsized lifeboat in the freezing water for six hours before being rescued.

The doctor on board the passenger ship RMS Carpathia , which rescued Williams, advised him to have his legs amputated because of the frostbite - a common measure at the time for severe frostbite of this kind. Williams, however, resisted this recommendation and recovered completely. Months later he reached the quarter-finals of the US Open and was defeated by the eventual winner Maurice McLoughlin . On July 18, 1912, he met Karl Howell Behr for the first time in a tournament in Boston , whom he had met on the Carpathia after the sinking of the Titanic .

He won the American tennis championships in 1914 and 1916 and doubles in 1925 and 1926. In 1920 he won in Wimbledon in doubles and in 1924 he won at the age of 34 years with 37-year-old Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman , the Mixed at the Olympic Games . In 1957 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame .

Web links

Commons : Richard Williams  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Titanic tennis champion . Tages-Anzeiger , August 26, 2019, p. 11
  2. ↑ Heiko Oldoerp: Two US tennis players survived the sinking of the Titanic: Karl Behr and Richard Williams met again after being rescued on the court , featured in the Sport program on Sunday April 15, 2012 on Deutschlandfunk
personal data
SURNAME Williams, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Williams, Richard Norris; Williams, Dick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American tennis player
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH 2nd June 1968
Place of death Bryn Mawr , Pennsylvania