Word: tildenized
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...Babe Ruth. Jack Dempsey, Earl Sande. Bobby Jones. Red Grange, Walter Hagen and Man o' War, the gentlemanly game of tennis came out of the private clubs into the national limelight. The man responsible for this revolution was a lanky, hunch-shouldered, hawk-faced competitor named William Tatem Tilden II. He was the greatest tennis player the world has ever seen, the one man in any U.S. sport who was without a peer. He did not always look as good as he really was. Determined never to be bored, Big Bill often deliberately made a match close, simply...
...Davis Cup matches, Japan's Ichiya Kumagae sat in the stands at Forest Hills and excitedly watched his countryman, Zenzo Shimizu, whip Tilden in the first two sets 7-5, 6-4. Shimizu got within two points of match in the third set. Then Tilden shifted out of second gear. Playing faultlessly, he got off smashes, drop shots, over-spins, undercuts, volleys and cannonball serves the like of which the Japanese had never seen. He pulled out the third set, 7-5, romped through the next two, 6-2, 6-1. The Japanese went home without the cup, beaten...
...record unmatched: 31 U.S. titles, including a singles sweep from 1920 to 1925, three Wimbledon titles (he was the first American to win in England), eleven Davis Cup teams, including a phenomenal stretch from 1920 to 1925 when he never lost a match. Only one player ever got under Tilden's weather-beaten skin: France's Rene Lacoste, one of the famed "Four Musketeers" who wrested the Davis Cup from the U.S. in 1927. Remarked haughty Bill Tilden: "The monotonous regularity with which that unsmiling, drab, almost dull man returned the best I could hit ... often filled...
...Tennis Genius." Making a comeback, Tilden won the U.S. title in 1929, the Wimbledon in 1930, and then, at 38, turned pro. He beat the pros of his day: Vinnie Richards, Karel Kozeluh, Bruce Barnes. At 47, in 1940, Big Bill was still touring, and was still good enough to come from a hospital bed to trounce a 25-year-old redhead named Donald Budge, the 1938 U.S. amateur champion. Budge called Tilden "the only genius tennis has produced." Even in his late 505, grey and spare, he was still at it, still able, for one set, to summon...
Died. William Tatem ("Big Bill") Tilden II, 60, longtime international tennis champion and one of the U.S.'s great athletes; of a heart attack; in Hollywood (see SPORT...