Bill Johnston
William Johnston was an American
tennis champion. He was the co-World No. 1 player in 1919 along with Gerald Patterson.
Until
"Big Bill" Tilden began to defeat him regularly in 1920, Johnston had been the best American player for a number of years. He remained competitive with Tilden for the next seven or eight years, but was never again able to beat him in an important match. Together they won seven consecutive Davis Cup trophies, a record that still stands
as of the early 2000s.
Johnston was a small, frail-appearing man who suffered ill health from his Navy service in
World War I.
Encyclopedia
William Johnston was an American
tennis champion. He was the co-
World No. 1 player in 1919 along with Gerald Patterson.
Until
"Big Bill" Tilden began to defeat him regularly in 1920, Johnston had been the best American player for a number of years. He remained competitive with Tilden for the next seven or eight years, but was never again able to beat him in an important match. Together they won seven consecutive Davis Cup trophies, a record that still stands
as of the early 2000s.
Johnston was a small, frail-appearing man who suffered ill health from his Navy service in
World War I. He was renowned, however, for the power and deadliness of his
forehand drive, which he hit shoulder-high with a Western grip, and which was universally considered the best forehand of all time until the advent of
Pancho Segura and his two-handed forehand in the late 1940s. Johnston died of tuberculosis in 1946 at the age of 51.
Johnston was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in
Newport, Rhode Island, in 1958.
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