Vic Seixas, who received 15 Grand Slam tennis tournaments within the Fifties, died on Friday. The oldest dwelling Grand Slam champion, he was 100.
His dying was introduced by the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame, which didn’t say the place he died.
“From 1940 to 1968 Vic Seixas was the face of American tennis,” the Corridor of Fame declared when he was inducted in 1971.
At 6-foot-1 and about 180 kilos, Seixas (pronounced SAY-shuss) was recognized for his very good conditioning and endurance and was incessantly ranked among the many high 10 gamers in the USA. The famend Australian tennis determine Harry Hopman regarded him because the world’s No. 1 beginner of 1954.
Seixas received two Grand Slam singles championships, eight blended doubles titles and 5 males’s doubles championships. He captured his first males’s singles title when he bested Kurt Nielsen of Denmark at Wimbledon in 1953 and defeated Rex Hartwig of Australia within the 1954 singles closing of the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills, the forerunner of the U.S. Open.
Seixas, who remained an beginner all through his profession, performed in 28 U.S. championship tournaments at Forest Hills between 1940 and 1969. He missed the occasion solely when he was serving within the army throughout World Battle II.
“Even when he was off type, he pulled out huge matches by persevering lengthy after most males would have given in after which, fairly miraculously, forcing his method out of the slough of despond with a sustained streak of good volleying,” Herbert Warren Wind wrote in Sports activities Illustrated in 1958.
Along with his two Grand Slam singles triumphs, Seixas captured eight blended doubles titles, seven with Doris Hart and one with Shirley Fry. He additionally received a males’s doubles championship with Mervyn Rose and 4 extra with Tony Trabert.
He received 38 of 55 Davis Cup singles and doubles matches between 1951 and 1957, and he teamed with Trabert to defeat Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad to finish Australia’s four-year Davis Cup reign in 1954.
In 1966, at 42, Seixas performed 94 video games over 4 hours to defeat 22-year-old Invoice Bowrey of Australia within the Philadelphia Grass Championship. Later that yr, on the U.S. Nationals, Seixas, the event’s oldest entrant, defeated 19-year-old Stan Smith in 5 units.
Seixas, who received 56 singles titles general, retired from common event competitors in 1970 however continued to play in senior matches. His profession was nearing its finish when Open tennis, and the massive purses that went with it, was created in 1968.
“In 1953, once I received Wimbledon, I received a 25-pound voucher, which was price about $75 on the time,” Seixas informed the San Francisco tv station KPIX in 2018. “I needed to spend it in a retailer in Piccadilly linked to tennis. I bought a sweater.” When he received the U.S. Nationals in 1954, he added, “I didn’t even get a sweater — nothing.”
Elias Victor Seixas Jr. was born on Aug. 30, 1923, in Philadelphia. His mom, Anna Victoria (Moon) Seixas, was of Irish background. He informed The Philadelphia Inquirer in a 2019 interview that his father’s household left Portugal and emigrated to the Dominican Republic earlier than coming to the USA.
Though Seixas was at instances known as Jewish, he informed The Inquirer that neither guardian was “notably spiritual.” He added, “It’s fairly potential my father’s household was Jewish 500 years in the past, however I used to be introduced up and married in a Presbyterian church.”
Seixas’s father, who owned a plumbing provide firm, performed tennis at an area courtroom, and Vic started hitting balls as a teen. He was a tennis star on the William Penn Constitution Faculty in Philadelphia and at 17 performed in his first U.S. Nationals, successful his opening match earlier than being ousted.
He was a pilot within the Military Air Forces in World Battle II, stationed within the Pacific, after which attended the College of North Carolina, the place he was named a tennis all-American. He graduated in 1949.
Seixas thought of tennis a part-time endeavor and had anticipated that he would finally take over his father’s plumbing firm. As an alternative, he labored as a stockbroker as an alternative in Philadelphia from the Fifties to the early Nineteen Seventies. He later turned a tennis director for the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and at a Hilton resort in New Orleans.
He moved to the San Francisco space in 1989 and established a tennis program at a Marin County racket and seashore membership now often called the Membership at Harbor Level. He taught tennis and tended bar there till his mid-80s, when knee issues restricted his actions.
When Seixas was in his 90s and wanted a full-time care giver, a GoFundMe web page was created to assist cowl his medical bills.
On the suggestion of Stan Smith, Adidas signed him as an envoy for about $2,000 a month. “I requested them, ‘How lengthy is that this for?’” Seixas recalled in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle in September 2022. “They stated, ‘Till you die or we go bankrupt.’ So long as I can keep alive, I’m all proper.”
Seixas is survived by a daughter, Tori Seixas. His two marriages led to divorce.
Seixas drew on his longevity within the tennis world within the e book “Prime Time Tennis: Tennis for Gamers Over 40” (1983), which he wrote with Joel H. Cohen.
In his final years, Seixas was invariably requested by interviewers how he felt about being the oldest dwelling Grand Slam champion and the oldest member of the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame. His customary reply: “I’m pleased with it, however I’d reasonably be the youngest.”