Vic Seixas, who received 15 Grand Slam tennis tournaments within the Fifties, died on Friday. The oldest residing Grand Slam champion, he was 100.
His loss of life 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 identified for his excellent conditioning and endurance and was continuously ranked among the many prime 10 gamers in america. The famend Australian tennis determine Harry Hopman regarded him because the world’s No. 1 newbie 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 last of the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills, the forerunner of the U.S. Open.
Seixas, who remained an newbie 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 kind, he pulled out massive matches by persevering lengthy after most males would have given in after which, fairly miraculously, forcing his manner 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 12 months, 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 large purses that went with it, was created in 1968.
“In 1953, once I received Wimbledon, I obtained a 25-pound voucher, which was value 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 related 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 america.
Though Seixas was at occasions known as Jewish, he informed The Inquirer that neither mother or father was “significantly non secular.” He added, “It’s fairly doable 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 court docket, and Vic started hitting balls as a teenager. He was a tennis star on the William Penn Constitution College in Philadelphia and at 17 performed in his first U.S. Nationals, profitable 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-about tennis a part-time endeavor and had anticipated that he would ultimately take over his father’s plumbing firm. As a substitute, he labored as a stockbroker as a substitute in Philadelphia from the Fifties to the early Seventies. He later grew to become a tennis director for the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., and at a Hilton lodge in New Orleans.
He moved to the San Francisco space in 1989 and established a tennis program at a Marin County racket and seaside membership now often known as 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 mentioned, ‘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 resulted in 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 residing 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.”
