Toomas Leius

Willem Maris and Toomas Leius (r.) (1959)

Toomas Leius (born August 28, 1941 in Tallinn ) is a former Estonian tennis player who started for the Soviet Union when he was active . After his active career, he worked as a tennis coach.

Life

Leius, who began tennis at the age of ten, was an enthusiastic athlete in his childhood who, in addition to tennis, also played table tennis, basketball, volleyball and soccer and in athletics. After he was able to record his first successes even against older opponents, he started in 1957 at the age of 15 at the Estonian men's tennis championships. He was able to compensate for the physical deficits through tactically clever play and surprisingly reached the semi-finals. At the Soviet championships he won the bronze medal. In the following year he was able to win both the Estonian and the Soviet championship title. Leius had his first international appearance in 1959 at Wimbledon. While he failed in the men's competition in the second round, he reached the final in the unofficial junior competition, where he was able to prevail 6: 3 7: 5 against Roger Taylor .

In the course of his career he reached the round of 32 twice at Wimbledon - in 1960 he lost to eventual winner Neale Fraser 4: 6, 1: 6, 8: 6 and 3: 6. In 1962 he started at the US Open , where he was eliminated in the second round. He celebrated his greatest success at the French Open in 1965 when he reached the quarter-finals, which he lost to the South African Cliff Drysdale without a fight under pressure from the Soviet government . At the Australian Open in 1969 he lost in the third round to Ray Ruffels and reached the quarter-finals of the doubles competition with John Brown . In the same year he and his partner Alexander Metreweli made it into the quarter-finals in Paris, which they lost against the later finalists Roy Emerson and Rod Laver with 1: 6, 2: 6 and 2: 6. In 1971 and 1972 he again reached the round of 32 in the doubles competition. The most successful Estonian tennis player, who was coached by Evald Kree , won 23 Estonian (nine singles, 14 doubles) and ten (four singles, six doubles) soviet championship title.

At the end of his career, Leius was sentenced to eight years in prison for manslaughter of his wife in the mid-1970s . Due to good conduct, he was released after five years, left Estonia and worked as a trainer in Uzbekistan , Georgia , Finland and Germany, among others . Leius, who completed his teacher training for sport and music at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute in 1970, returned to Estonia in 1997, where he was, among other things, temporarily captain of the Estonian Fed Cup team .

Awards

• Estonia's Sportsman of the Year 1961, 1963 and 1965

Web links

• ITF profile toomas leius (English)
• Davis Cup Stats toomas leius (English)
• Toomas Leius lihvib vääriskivi (Estonian, March 19, 1998)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gennady Fyodorov: Former Soviet Soccer Star Arrested for Killing Woman. In: themoscowtimes.com. September 23, 1997, archived from the original on March 9, 2016 ; accessed on April 6, 2017 .