Dick Savitt
Encyclopedia
Richard "Dick" Savitt (born March 4, 1927) is a 6’ 3" and 185-pound right-handed American male former tennis player.
Savitt was ranked 2nd in the world in 1951. That year, at the age of 24, he won both the Wimbledon Singles Championship and the Australian Singles title. He retired the following year.
Savitt is one of three American men who have won both the Australian and British Championships in one year, following Don Budge
(1938) and preceding Jimmy Connors
(1974).
. He taught himself tennis at the age of 14, but never took a tennis lesson in his life. The self-taught Savitt played tennis well enough, however, to make the finals of the New Jersey Boys Championship and, for two years afterward, the National Boys Tennis Tournament before moving up to the junior ranks.
His first love was basketball, though, and when his family moved to Texas, he was an All-State forward and a co-captain of his El Paso, Texas
high school basketball team in 1944. In 1945 Savitt entered the Navy, and played on a service basketball team.
Despite considering tennis his "second" sport after basketball, he won the Texas University Interscholastic League
boys singles championship in 1944–45. Nationally he was the 8th-ranked junior tennis player, and the 17th-ranked amateur overall.
offered Savitt a basketball scholarship. He attended Cornell, where he majored in Economics, was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi
fraternity, and was elected a member of the Sphinx Head Society. However, two injuries, one to his knee, curtailed his basketball career.
Savitt resumed playing tennis. He became Cornell's tennis team captain, # 1 singles and doubles player, and the NCAA champion. In 1947 he was ranked # 26 in the U.S., and two years later he was ranked # 17. In both 1949 and 1950, as a junior and a senior, he won the Eastern Intercollegiate Tournament, and he won the doubles title with Leonard Steiner from 1948–50. In 1950 he also won the East Clay Court Tournament and the New York State Tournament. He was 57–2 in singles for his college career, and graduated in June 1950.
, losing to Art Larsen
.
Singles Championship. Along the way he beat Larsen, the # 1 US player, in straight sets, and Herbert Flam
, the # 2 US player.
He also won the Australian Open
Singles title, winning in straight sets in the 61-minute final. He became the first American since Don Budge, 13 years earlier, to win both Wimbledon and the Australian Open in one season.
Savitt also became the first Jewish player to win either tournament. In the Jewish parts of North London
, Savitt recalled, "Nobody knew tennis there, but after I won people started picking up rackets". In addition, he became the first Jewish athlete to appear on the cover of Time
magazine. The significance of a Jewish tennis player succeeding was rooted in the fact that tennis was still at the time primarily a country club
sport, and many country clubs often did not allow Jews in as members and did not allow them to use their courts. This, in turn, kept many Jewish tennis players from obtaining the training they needed to compete at the highest levels.
Savitt was ranked 2nd in the world in 1951. He was also ranked the # 1 player on the United States Davis Cup
Team.
6-4, 6-3, 6-4 to win the U.S. National Indoor championship. In September 1952, he beat Art Larsen 10-8, 6-3, 6-4 to win the Pacific Coast men's singles tennis championship.
Savitt had played and won his three early 1951 Cup matches, winning 9 of 10 sets, en route to leading the American team into the championship round against Australia. Allison Danzig
, the senior American tennis writer, called him America's best hope for victory. American Davis Cup coach Frank Shields
, however, did not permit him to compete against the Aussies whom, only months earlier, he had dominated at Wimbledon and in Australia. He had trounced Australia's top seed Ken McGregor
in three straight sets to win at Wimbledon, and won the Australian Singles championship, becoming the first non-Aussie to win that title in 13 years. He had also defeated Australia's best other player, Frank Sedgman
, 6–3, 2–6, 6–3, 6–1 in the same tournament. Ted Schroeder
, who had lost all three of his Davis Cup matches while losing 9 out of 10 sets in the process the year before and who was in semi-retirement, was chosen by Shield instead. Five of the top ten players in the U.S. publicly accused Shield of "obvious prejudice" in his choosing the team. Without Savitt playing singles, and with Schroder losing two of his three matches, the United States lost the 1951 Davis Cup to Australia.
The controversy spilled over into the next year, when the 1951 national rankings were bitterly debated at the January 1952 U.S. Lawn Tennis Association annual meeting. Members of the Association's Eastern, New England, Southern, Florida, and Texas delegations, whose chief spokesman was Gardnar Mulloy
, were in favor of Savitt being named the # 1 tennis player in the U.S. However, Frank Shields attacked Savitt in a "biting", "unprecedented" speech, which observers said swung the vote against Savitt. As it was reported by Time magazine, "the loudest talker was Frank Shields, non-playing captain of the losing U.S. Davis Cup team. Shields had ignored Savitt in the Davis Cup matches, had put his confidence in aging (30) Ted Schroeder ... who turned out to be the goat of the series. Shields was intent on keeping Savitt ranked ... at No. 3. Cried Shields: 'Never once in the past three months has Savitt looked like a champion. Not only that, but he was not the most cooperative player in the world while we were in Australia, and his sounding off brought discredit to the game. He was not a credit either as a player or a representative of America.'" Don McNeill
, the 1940 U.S champion, answered Shields's outburst by pointing out that players are ranked on their tennis ability, that personal prejudice should have nothing to do with ranking, and that Shields' remarks were "uncalled for". That met with "resounding applause" from the delegates. After the heated 5-hour session, one of the longest in U.S.L.T.A. history, President Russell Kingman called Shields's outburst "most unseemly." Australian Davis Cup team Harry Hopman
called his arguments as to why Savitt should not be ranked # 1 "weak".http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=m-8pAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ryMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3346,2423655&dq=frank-shields+davis-cup+savitt&hl=en Still, a never-before-required proxy vote was needed to decide the # 1 spot. Savitt was ranked the # 2 player in the U.S. by the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, behind Vic Seixas
and directly ahead of Tony Trabert
.
In February 1952, a distraught Savitt announced that he would play only one more tournament, the National Indoor Championships, and then retire from tournament tennis—at age 25. As his farewell statement, Savitt won the championship.
In 1981, he and his son, Robert, won the U.S. Father-Son doubles title.
s in both singles and doubles (with Mike Franks) at the 1961 Maccabiah Games
in Israel, the third-largest sporting event in the world. He was also very active in the Maccabi
movement. Savitt in addition helped develop the Israel Tennis Centers
, beginning in 1973. In 1998, he was the ITA
overseas tennis director.
In his 2007 book The Big Book of Jewish Sports Heroes: An Illustrated Compendium of Sports History and The 150 Greatest Jewish Sports Stars, author Peter S. Horvitz ranked Savitt the 9th-greatest Jewish athlete of all time.
in 1976. Savitt, who is Jewish, was also inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
in 1979. He was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Men's Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 1986. Savitt was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, and into the USTA Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 1999. He is also enshrined in the National Jewish American Sports Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Cornell University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978.
on Wall Street, and in 1985 joined Schroders
.
Savitt was ranked 2nd in the world in 1951. That year, at the age of 24, he won both the Wimbledon Singles Championship and the Australian Singles title. He retired the following year.
Savitt is one of three American men who have won both the Australian and British Championships in one year, following Don Budge
Don Budge
John Donald Budge was an American tennis champion who was a World No. 1 player for five years, first as an amateur and then as a professional...
(1938) and preceding Jimmy Connors
Jimmy Connors
James Scott "Jimmy" Connors is an American former world no. 1 tennis player....
(1974).
Early life
Savitt is Jewish, and was born in Bayonne, New JerseyBayonne, New Jersey
Bayonne is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. Located in the Gateway Region, Bayonne is a peninsula that is situated between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east...
. He taught himself tennis at the age of 14, but never took a tennis lesson in his life. The self-taught Savitt played tennis well enough, however, to make the finals of the New Jersey Boys Championship and, for two years afterward, the National Boys Tennis Tournament before moving up to the junior ranks.
His first love was basketball, though, and when his family moved to Texas, he was an All-State forward and a co-captain of his El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
high school basketball team in 1944. In 1945 Savitt entered the Navy, and played on a service basketball team.
Despite considering tennis his "second" sport after basketball, he won the Texas University Interscholastic League
University Interscholastic League
The University Interscholastic League is an organization that creates rules for and administers almost all athletic, music, and academic contests for public primary and secondary schools in the American state of Texas....
boys singles championship in 1944–45. Nationally he was the 8th-ranked junior tennis player, and the 17th-ranked amateur overall.
College
In 1946, Cornell UniversityCornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
offered Savitt a basketball scholarship. He attended Cornell, where he majored in Economics, was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi
Pi Lambda Phi
Pi Lambda Phi International Fraternity Inc. is a college social fraternity with 35 active chapters and four colonies in the United States and Canada....
fraternity, and was elected a member of the Sphinx Head Society. However, two injuries, one to his knee, curtailed his basketball career.
Savitt resumed playing tennis. He became Cornell's tennis team captain, # 1 singles and doubles player, and the NCAA champion. In 1947 he was ranked # 26 in the U.S., and two years later he was ranked # 17. In both 1949 and 1950, as a junior and a senior, he won the Eastern Intercollegiate Tournament, and he won the doubles title with Leonard Steiner from 1948–50. In 1950 he also won the East Clay Court Tournament and the New York State Tournament. He was 57–2 in singles for his college career, and graduated in June 1950.
Post-college tennis career
Savitt ranked in the world's top 10 four times between 1951 and 1957 (# 2 in 1951); and in the U.S. top 10 six times between 1950 and 1959. That was despite the fact that Savitt did not compete in 1953–55. Among Savitt's major victories were the 1951 Wimbledon singles championship and the 1951 Australian Open. The also won the 1952, 1958, and 1961 USLTA National Indoor Championships, becoming the first player to win that crown three times, and won the Italian doubles and the Canadian singles and doubles championships.1950
Without any coaching, in 1950 Savitt reached the U. S. Tennis Championship semifinals at Forest HillsWest Side Tennis Club
The West Side Tennis Club is a private tennis club located in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is currently an oasis within the City with 38 courts in all four surfaces , a junior Olympic swimming pool and many other amenities.It is most notable for hosting...
, losing to Art Larsen
Art Larsen
Arthur David Larsen was an American male tennis player best remembered for his victory at the U.S. Championships in 1950 and for his eccentricities...
.
1951
In 1951, at the age of 24, Savitt won the WimbledonThe Championships, Wimbledon
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
Singles Championship. Along the way he beat Larsen, the # 1 US player, in straight sets, and Herbert Flam
Herbert Flam
----Herbert Flam was an American tennis player.Considered to be one of the best male Jewish tennis players in history, he was ranked World No...
, the # 2 US player.
He also won the Australian Open
Australian Open
The Australian Open is the only Grand Slam tennis tournament held in the southern hemisphere. The tournament was held for the first time in 1905 and was last contested on grass in 1987. Since 1972 the Australian Open has been held in Melbourne, Victoria. In 1988, the tournament became a hard court...
Singles title, winning in straight sets in the 61-minute final. He became the first American since Don Budge, 13 years earlier, to win both Wimbledon and the Australian Open in one season.
Savitt also became the first Jewish player to win either tournament. In the Jewish parts of North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
, Savitt recalled, "Nobody knew tennis there, but after I won people started picking up rackets". In addition, he became the first Jewish athlete to appear on the cover of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine. The significance of a Jewish tennis player succeeding was rooted in the fact that tennis was still at the time primarily a country club
Country club
A country club is a private club, often with a closed membership, that typically offers a variety of recreational sports facilities and is located in city outskirts or rural areas. Activities may include, for example, any of golf, tennis, swimming or polo...
sport, and many country clubs often did not allow Jews in as members and did not allow them to use their courts. This, in turn, kept many Jewish tennis players from obtaining the training they needed to compete at the highest levels.
Savitt was ranked 2nd in the world in 1951. He was also ranked the # 1 player on the United States Davis Cup
Davis Cup
The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Britain and the United States. By...
Team.
1952
He made it to the semi-finals of the Australian Open in January 1952. In February 1952 he beat Bill TalbertBill Talbert
William Franklin "Billy" Talbert was an American tennis player and administrator.He was ranked in the U.S. Top 10 13 times between 1941 & 1954. He won nine Grand Slam doubles titles, and also reached the men’s doubles finals of the U.S. National Championship nine times. mainly with favorite...
6-4, 6-3, 6-4 to win the U.S. National Indoor championship. In September 1952, he beat Art Larsen 10-8, 6-3, 6-4 to win the Pacific Coast men's singles tennis championship.
Davis Cup snub, and retirement
Although at the top of his game, and only 25 years old, Savitt abruptly retired from competitive tennis after winning the 1952 U.S. National Indoor Singles Championships. He never publicly discussed the reason for his sudden retirement, but it was considered most likely the result of his snub by the US Davis Cup coach.Savitt had played and won his three early 1951 Cup matches, winning 9 of 10 sets, en route to leading the American team into the championship round against Australia. Allison Danzig
Allison Danzig
Allison "Al" Danzig was an American sportswriter who specialized in writing about tennis, but also covered college football, squash, many Olympic Games, and rowing. Danzig was the only American sportwriter to extensively cover real tennis, the precursor to modern lawn tennis.Danzig covered every...
, the senior American tennis writer, called him America's best hope for victory. American Davis Cup coach Frank Shields
Frank Shields
Francis Xavier Alexander Shields, Sr. was an amateur American tennis player of the 1920s and 1930s.-Tennis career:Between 1928 and 1945 he was ranked eight times in the U.S...
, however, did not permit him to compete against the Aussies whom, only months earlier, he had dominated at Wimbledon and in Australia. He had trounced Australia's top seed Ken McGregor
Ken McGregor
Kenneth Bruce McGregor was a former tennis player from Australia who won the Men's Singles title at the Australian Championships in 1952. He and his longtime doubles partner, Frank Sedgman, are generally considered to be one of the greatest men's doubles teams of all time...
in three straight sets to win at Wimbledon, and won the Australian Singles championship, becoming the first non-Aussie to win that title in 13 years. He had also defeated Australia's best other player, Frank Sedgman
Frank Sedgman
Frank Arthur Sedgman, born 29 October 1927, in Mont Albert, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was a tennis player who was arguably the world No.1 in 1952. In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, included Sedgman in his list of the 21...
, 6–3, 2–6, 6–3, 6–1 in the same tournament. Ted Schroeder
Ted Schroeder
Frederick Rudolph "Ted" Schroeder was an American tennis player who won the two most prestigious amateur tennis titles, Wimbledon and the U.S. National. He was the No. 1-ranked American player in 1942 and the No. 2 for 4 consecutive years, 1946 through 1949...
, who had lost all three of his Davis Cup matches while losing 9 out of 10 sets in the process the year before and who was in semi-retirement, was chosen by Shield instead. Five of the top ten players in the U.S. publicly accused Shield of "obvious prejudice" in his choosing the team. Without Savitt playing singles, and with Schroder losing two of his three matches, the United States lost the 1951 Davis Cup to Australia.
The controversy spilled over into the next year, when the 1951 national rankings were bitterly debated at the January 1952 U.S. Lawn Tennis Association annual meeting. Members of the Association's Eastern, New England, Southern, Florida, and Texas delegations, whose chief spokesman was Gardnar Mulloy
Gardnar Mulloy
Gardnar Putnam Mulloy is a tennis player primarily known for playing in doubles matches with partner Billy Talbert. When he was the Tennis Coach of the University of Miami, he recruited Pancho Segura for the tennis team. Pancho won three straight NCAA Singles Titles in 1943, 1944, and 1945,...
, were in favor of Savitt being named the # 1 tennis player in the U.S. However, Frank Shields attacked Savitt in a "biting", "unprecedented" speech, which observers said swung the vote against Savitt. As it was reported by Time magazine, "the loudest talker was Frank Shields, non-playing captain of the losing U.S. Davis Cup team. Shields had ignored Savitt in the Davis Cup matches, had put his confidence in aging (30) Ted Schroeder ... who turned out to be the goat of the series. Shields was intent on keeping Savitt ranked ... at No. 3. Cried Shields: 'Never once in the past three months has Savitt looked like a champion. Not only that, but he was not the most cooperative player in the world while we were in Australia, and his sounding off brought discredit to the game. He was not a credit either as a player or a representative of America.'" Don McNeill
Don McNeill (tennis)
William Donald McNeill was an American male tennis player. He was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma and died in Vero Beach, Florida, United States....
, the 1940 U.S champion, answered Shields's outburst by pointing out that players are ranked on their tennis ability, that personal prejudice should have nothing to do with ranking, and that Shields' remarks were "uncalled for". That met with "resounding applause" from the delegates. After the heated 5-hour session, one of the longest in U.S.L.T.A. history, President Russell Kingman called Shields's outburst "most unseemly." Australian Davis Cup team Harry Hopman
Harry Hopman
Henry Christian Hopman, CBE was a world-acclaimed Australian-American tennis player and coach, born in Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, and soon moving to Parramatta, a city adjoining Sydney and now effectively a suburb of the metropolis.Hopman was a student at Rosehill Public Primary school...
called his arguments as to why Savitt should not be ranked # 1 "weak".http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=m-8pAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ryMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3346,2423655&dq=frank-shields+davis-cup+savitt&hl=en Still, a never-before-required proxy vote was needed to decide the # 1 spot. Savitt was ranked the # 2 player in the U.S. by the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, behind Vic Seixas
Vic Seixas
Elias Victor Seixas, Jr. is an American former tennis player.Seixas was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of Portuguese Sephardi Jewish ancestry. After serving in World War II, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , where he was a member of Alpha Sigma of the Chi Psi...
and directly ahead of Tony Trabert
Tony Trabert
Marion Anthony Trabert is a retired American tennis champion and long-time tennis author, TV commentator, instructor, and motivational speaker...
.
In February 1952, a distraught Savitt announced that he would play only one more tournament, the National Indoor Championships, and then retire from tournament tennis—at age 25. As his farewell statement, Savitt won the championship.
Post-retirement tennis career
Savitt returned to the competitive tennis scene part-time in 1956, and though his limited tournament competition prevented him from receiving an official ranking, he was nonetheless considered the number one player in the United States. In 1958, Savitt moved back to New York for business reasons and launched a part-time comeback in tennis. That year, he won his second National Indoors title, and in 1961 he captured his third—while remaining a weekend player.In 1981, he and his son, Robert, won the U.S. Father-Son doubles title.
Style of play
In his prime, Savitt was considered the greatest back-court player in the game, with the hardest ground strokes. He also had a booming serve. Savitt was also enormously competitive. His contemporaries described him as almost driven, a man who hated to lose.Maccabiah Games; Israel
In 1961, he won gold medalGold medal
A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...
s in both singles and doubles (with Mike Franks) at the 1961 Maccabiah Games
1961 Maccabiah Games
The 1961 6th Maccabiah Games attracted 1,000 athletes from 27 countries.First-time countries included Guatemala and Congo-Kinshasa.The new Kfar Ha’Maccabiah Village served as home to the competing athletes....
in Israel, the third-largest sporting event in the world. He was also very active in the Maccabi
Maccabi (sports)
Maccabi may refer to:* The Maccabi World Union, Maccabiah Games or any one of the following sport organizations around the world:...
movement. Savitt in addition helped develop the Israel Tennis Centers
Israel Tennis Centers
Israel Tennis Centers is the largest tennis program for children in the world, reaching more than 350,000 families—5% of the Israeli population...
, beginning in 1973. In 1998, he was the ITA
Ita
Ita or ITA may refer to:* Itá, Paraguay* ITA Software, Inc., a travel industry software firm* Italian language, from its ISO 639-2 language code* Italy, from its ISO 3166-1 country code* Aeta, an ethnic group in the Philippine Islands...
overseas tennis director.
In his 2007 book The Big Book of Jewish Sports Heroes: An Illustrated Compendium of Sports History and The 150 Greatest Jewish Sports Stars, author Peter S. Horvitz ranked Savitt the 9th-greatest Jewish athlete of all time.
Halls of Fame
He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of FameInternational Tennis Hall of Fame
The International Tennis Hall of Fame is located in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. The hall of fame and honors players and contributors to the sport of tennis and includes a museum, grass tennis courts, an indoor tennis facility, and a court tennis facility.-History:The hall of fame and...
in 1976. Savitt, who is Jewish, was also inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame was opened July 7, 1981, in Netanya, Israel. It honors Jewish athletes and their accomplishments from anywhere around the world....
in 1979. He was inducted into the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Men's Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame in 1986. Savitt was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, and into the USTA Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 1999. He is also enshrined in the National Jewish American Sports Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Cornell University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1978.
After tennis
After his tennis career, Savitt entered the oil business in Louisiana. He then worked for Lehman BrothersLehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a global financial services firm. Before declaring bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth largest investment bank in the USA , doing business in investment banking, equity and fixed-income sales and trading Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (former NYSE ticker...
on Wall Street, and in 1985 joined Schroders
Schroders
Schroders plc is a British multinational asset management company with over 200 years of experience in the world's financial markets. The company employs 2,905 people worldwide who are operating from 32 offices in 25 different countries around Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East...
.
See also
- List of select Jewish tennis players