Bill Tilden

William Tatem “Bill” Tilden II , born with Philadelphia the February 10th 1893 and dead the June 5th 1953, is a player of American Tennis which was n° 1 world during first half of the years 1920. Large and thin, it was known under the name of “Big Bill”.

Importance of Tilden to tennis

Tilden was a champion of the years 1920 S and 1930 S which occupies a considerable place in the history of tennis. He was also perhaps the most paradoxical person in the history of any sport: homosexual which almost all alone changed the image of the tennis, which of effeminate sport of “country club”, played exclusively by people white and rich, equipped with long white pants or skirts until ankle, became an important sport played by robust and male athletes.

The effeminate image of the tennis of the Sirs during this time was so widespread that in a film of W.C. Fields the actor observed about two brothers: " One is a tennis player; the other is a guy enough viril."

In “Roaring Twenties”, the American decade madly devoted to the sports, Tilden was one of the five dominant characters, with the Baseball or Babe Ruth, the football or Red Grange, the Golf or Bobby Jones, and the Boxeur Jack Dempsey. However, thereafter, its career illustrates was tarnished by arrests and judgments for soliciting of minor boys.

Its size as player

Except one period prolonged in the 1950 S when Pancho Gonzales completely reigned on the professional circuit Sirs, one forever known only one era in tennis more dominated by only one player. Between 1920 and 1925 Tilden forever lost a summit meeting (although William Johnston beat it 3 times out of 4 in 1922) , especially in the meetings of the Coupe Davis, test which was at the time most important of all and by far. Among its many achievements, it gained the American championship six times of continuation and seven times in all. And of 1920 to 1926 it led the United States to the victory seven times of continuation in the Coupe Davis, an always unequalled record.

Single among the champions of tennis, Tilden became a large player only at the relatively advanced age 27 years. Before 1920 it gained some national titles of doubles but lost vis-a-vis Lindley Murray and “Little Bill” Johnston in the championships the simple ones in 1918 and 1919. During the winter of 1919-20 it is insulated in the Rhode Island, where, on a tennis court inside, it is involved to remake its relatively ineffective reverse. It was all that it was necessary. It reappears in the summer of 1920 with a new catch and a new powerful reverse and dominates world tennis during the remainder of the decade.

Large, thin, and dégingandé, with very long arms, enormous hands, and exceptionally broad shoulders, Tilden had what one called at the time a service " ball of canon". Although it could serve as the aces almost at will, it had little interest to go up to the net according to its service. For the majority, it employed cut or worked services, keeping its famous ball of gun for the moment critical of the match.

It was little known at the time, but with semi-point of the years 1920 the end of the average finger of its hand which held the racquette became infected and underwent an amputation. Tilden had also a chronic problem of knee which obstructed it seriously from time to time. That was also hidden of the public and did not seem to put obstacle at its long procession of victories.

In spite of its powerful service, Tilden preferred to play of the bottom of short, from where it dazzled its adversaries with these tactics always changants: a mixture of the trick, blows tankards and worked, lobs and of drops, then suddenly a powerful blow deeply with the corners. It could superbly type balls angles on almost impossible references and it did not like anything as much as an adversary which made great services and attacked with the net -- by a means or other Tilden would find a way of crossing it.

In 1941, when Bill Tilden was 48 years old, it made the turn of the United States by making a series of matches with Don Budge, which at this time was incontestably the best player of the world. Ray Bowers thinks that Budge probably beat Tilden 46-7 plus an equality (Joe McCauley proposes 51-7), with 49 matches completely informed and giving 43-5 plus an equality. Among all other tennis players, only Pancho Gonzales and Ken Rosewall were able to support such a level of size after their forty.

Although the stereotype of Tilden making its smash shows a power, a form, and a traditional leg movement, certain contemporaries considered that the smash was the only weakness of its play. Later commentators believed that a player of the years 1960 like Ken Rosewall, for example, could have exploited this weakness by the skilful use of the offensive lobs.

Tilden the intellectual

Tilden perhaps spent more time by analyzing tennis than no matter whom before or afterwards. He was the author of two books on the sport, The Art off Lawn Tennis (online text) and Match Play and the Spin off the Ball, this last being always available. Beyond its great physical gifts, he was an extremely cerebral player, a Master of strategy and tactics, expert to be adapted to the style of his adversary and to turn over his forces against itself. He was also famous for his art of setting in scene, which times transfered towards what its competitors could have called the “gamesmanship” (the use of the methods doubtful but not illegal to gain a play). He always tried to give of it to the spectators the value of their money and it often was written, but ever confirmed by Tilden itself, that he would intentionally lose the first sleeves of a match at end to prolong the battle and to make the match more interesting for him and the platform. (This was confirmed in 1963 by William Lufler, which played on the professional circuit with Tilden for some asses and which now wrote that Tilden often yielded the first sleeves.) In spite of its behavior of a little picturesque time, he believed especially in the sporting spirit at all costs and in beyond all other aspects of the play, including the score finale; he would yield with eagerness (and dramatically) a point to his adversary if he believed that the judge badly allotted this point to Tilden.

Tilden the large ace for the setting in scene on the tennis court was also show-off in the broader world. He was the author of several Nouvelle S and Romance S poor with, as hero, the tennis players badly included/understood but very fair-play, and he dreamed to be a high-speed motorboat with Broadway and Hollywood. Much of its time out the court -- like its money -- was devoted to these concerns with the failure the inevitable result.

Tilden the professional

In the end of the year the 1920 large known French players as the Four Musketeers finally tore off the Coupe Davis of Tilden and the United States, like its domination of the titles of simple Sirs to Wimbledon and Forest Hills. For a long time Tilden was scrambled with the directors draconiennement rigid of the United States Lawn Tennis Association concerning its incomes of journalist derived from the articles of tennis. It gained its last major championship in Wimbledon in 1930 at 37 years age but it could not gain titles any more at will. In 1931, of need for money, it was declared professional and he became member of the professional circuit which existed only since 1927. During the 15 years to be followed it crossed the United States and Europe with a handle of other players in a series of single representations, with Tilden always the player whom the platform paid to see. In spite of the presence of such great champions that Ellsworth Fortify, Fred Perry, and Don Budge like adversaries, it was Tilden which ensured the receipts of the counter - and which could be always defended against its adversaries much younger for a first sleeve or, from time to time, a whole match. In 1934 Tilden thinks of having reached the apogee of its potential tennistic at the age of… 41 years. Despite everything it could not dominate the king of the professionals of the time Ellsworth Vines. The two players met at least 60 times in 1934, Tilden gaining approximately 19 matches against 41 for Vines (American Lawn Tennis announced that at May 17th, at the end of the two professional rounds opposing the two players, Vines had gained 19 matches moreover than Tilden since the beginning of the year (on a little more than 50 matches) thus it is possible that Vines led to May 17th, 35 - the 16 then two players met at least 6 times the remainder of the year (Ray Bowers listed 5 matches tournaments and 1 match of round) all lost by Tilden. In 1945, when Tilden was 52 years old, him and Vinnie Richards, its partner of tennis for a long time, gained the championships of double professional Sirs - 27 years earlier, in 1918, they gained the title amateur of the United States. With the beginning of the year 1930, he was the trainer of Cilly Aussem, with which he gained Roland Garros in 1930 in mixed double.

Its place in the history

During about 35 years, of 1920 to 1955, Tilden was generally considered the largest player which forever lived, his only competitors being Vines and Budge. In the semiones, much of observers started to believe that Pancho Gonzales claimed this distinction. From now on, however, the public opinion transfered of Gonzales almost forgotten with the champions of the Open Ere, initially with Rod Laver, then with Björn Borg and John McEnroe, then with Pete Sampras, while maintaining, perhaps, with Roger Federer.

Tilden, which was one of the athletes most famous of the world during much of years, is recalled little today in spite of its former reputation. During its life, however, it was a blazing charactère which was never far from public eye, being actor with the theater and the cinema as much as tennis player. He was stopped twice, also, for the sexual misdemeanor with adolescent boys in the end of the year 1940; consequently he was imprisoned twice in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In 1950, in spite of its file legal, which did moved away it from the majority of the world of tennis, a poll by the Associated Press chose it like the largest tennis player of the half-century by a margin more important than that given to any other athlete of the other sports.

Its personal life

Born with the richness, Tilden lost his/her mother half-invalid when it had 15 years and, although his/her father was always alive with a large house and a large staff domestic, it was sent some houses of to be high near by a nonmarried aunt. It apparently was profondé marked by the subsequent loss of his father when it was 20 years old and it passed all his adult life trying to create a relation father-wire with a long succession of ballboys or young people protected from tennis, whose Vinnie Richards was most notable. In spite of its voyages everywhere in the world, Tilden lived in his/her aunt until the 48 years age. It especially did not have any sexual relationships of the whole with the women and apparently very few meetings sexual with the members of its sex to him before it was in its forty and increasingly effeminate, in the more open environment of Europe of the years 1930.

Although Tilden hardly drank, he smoked much and scorned what today would be considered, for an athlete, a salubrious lifestyle. During most of its life, its mode consisted of three enormous meals per day containing beefsteaks and of potatoes, with, perhaps, a chop of lamb from time to time.

Its time in prison for sexual offenses

Tilden was to stop for the first time on November 23rd, 1946 on the Sunset Boulevard with Los Angeles when it was caught with its hand in the pants of a teenager, a male male prostitute that Tilden solicited. It could charged of a crime (" the behavior impudic and lascif with a mineur") but was charged only with one offense (" the contribution of the delinquency of a mineur"). He was condemned to one year of prison but purged only seven months and half.

It was stopped second once on January 28th, 1949, having taken in its car hitch-hiker a 16 year old, with whom it made advances. The new charge could treated like a crime, but the judge condemned it only for one violation of his setting in freedom under monitoring with confusion with the new sorrow for the molestation. He purged ten months.

Apparently, after each arretation, Tilden believed sincerely that its famous name and its friendship with celebrities Hollywood iens such as Charlie Chaplin, would be sufficient to draw aside it from the need for defending oneself vigorously against the inculpations. Consequently, it treated the two inculpations like businesses of little importance.

After its release, Tilden was avoided even more. The majority of clubs of tennis prohibited it to make lessons on their premises and it had less pupils on the public courts.

Its death

Although Tilden was born with the richness and gained important sums during its long career, especially in the first years of the professional circuit, it spent them with full hand, with in lost much in Broadway for the spectacles which it wrote and produced and where it had the role of high-speed motorboat. He died in shortage in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 60. Its bags was packed for its departure for the US Pro Championship with Cleveland, Ohio, when it fell died from an attack.

Tilden was built-in the International Tennis Hall off Famed with Newport, Rhode Island, in 1959.

Results on the tournaments of the Large Slam

Wimbledon

Individual: 1920,1921,1930 Double
: 1927

US Championship

Individual: 1920,1921,1922,1923,1924,1925,1929
Individual (finalist): 1918,1919,1927
Double: 1918,1921,1922,1923,1927
Double (finalist): 1919,1926
Double mixed: 1913,1914,1922,1923
Double mixed (finalist): 1916,1917,1919,1921,1924

Roland-Garros

Double mixed: 1930 Individual
(finalist): 1927,1930, (Semi-finalist): 1929

Results on the Professional Championships of Tennis

Wembley Pro

Finalist: 1935,1936,1937,1938

US Pro Championship

Champion: 1931,1935

Roland-Garros Pro

Champion: 1934
Finalist: 1938

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