Fred Perry

Working Class Hero

Britain dominated the world of lawn tennis in the mid-1930s thanks largely to Fred Perry. For three years he was the undisputed world number one, winning a string of major titles and making a vital contribution to Britain’s domination of the premier international competition in tennis, the Davis Cup.

Today Perry has iconic status, but it was not always so: this champion was once Britain’s unsung tennis hero. A hundred years on from his birth, it should not be forgotten that in his prime playing days, and for many years afterwards, Perry was acclaimed across the tennis world but was not universally admired in his homeland.

Journalists watching him defeat the Australian Jack Crawford to lift the Wimbledon crown in 1934 commented on the “strange lack of excitement” among spectators, and one American magazine went as far as to say: “Perry is not a popular champion at home”. In an incident that rankled for the rest of his life, Perry’s elation at taking the title turned to anger when he overheard a Wimbledon committee member saying to Crawford in the dressing room after the final that this was one day “when the best man didn’t win”.

A major factor in explaining this coolness towards Perry was his social background. The Perry family had northern working class roots and Fred only had the chance to take up tennis when his father, developing a career in left-wing politics, moved after the First World War to an area of London where suburban tennis clubs were expanding rapidly. Instead of being confined exclusively to the rich, tennis was becoming an option for aspiring families such as the Perrys.

But as he sought to make his way in the game, Fred Perry faced many who saw him as not ‘one of us’ – the traditional public-school educated middle classes who still dominated British tennis as players, administrators and officials. One insider summed up the attitude towards Perry when he first won a place on the Davis Cup team by saying: “as we’ve got to have the bloody upstart, we might as well knock him into shape and try and get the best out of him”. As the dressing room incident in 1934 illustrated, even winning Wimbledon did not remove all traces of this social prejudice.

Perry was not entirely a passive victim of the class distinctions in British society between the wars. His abrasiveness and refusal to “let people tell me what to do or order me about” made him enemies in tennis circles. Players in the 1930s were expected to behave with decorum; ‘gentleman Jack Crawford’ was known for his exemplary court manners. Fred Perry, by contrast, possessed a ruthless streak, refused to conceal his ambition and indulged in gamesmanship such as making offensive personal remarks to opponents.

Despite dominating the world scene, he offended the sensibilities of well-to-do Wimbledon spectators because his court persona was so much at odds with the ethos of the day.

It also mattered that tennis remained firmly wedded to amateur principles. The idea that the game should be played for pleasure not profit – and in the right spirit – had been rigorously enforced since the Victorian period by the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA). Lacking the pedigree and temperament of traditional gentleman amateurs such as Crawford, Perry clashed with the authorities as he was increasingly tempted to cash in on his global fame.

Simmering difficulties with the LTA continued until, at the end of 1936, he left Britain to join a small professional circuit living and touring mostly in the USA. This move enabled him to make large sums of money but meant he was banned from the world’s top amateur events, including Wimbledon and the Davis Cup.

At the start of 1937, Perry thus found himself a sporting outcast in his homeland. He was relieved of his honorary membership of the prestigious All England Club – awarded to him as Wimbledon champion – and when his professional tour visited Britain he was barred from appearing on the courts of any LTA-affiliated club. There was no campaign in Britain in the late 1930s to find and cultivate new champions in Perry’s wake. Instead, the most successful player the nation had produced became almost a non-person in the eyes of the tennis establishment.

After the Second World War, Perry built a new life based around business enterprises (notably the famous Fred Perry sportswear label), coaching and commentating. Based mainly in the USA, which he found less hidebound than Britain about social distinctions, his frosty relationship with the All England Club and the LTA improved slowly over the years, especially when tennis finally embraced professionalism after 1968.

Even so, it was only towards the end of his life that things really turned around for him and his reconciliation with the tennis establishment that had once shunned him was to become complete. The same bodies that had once turned their backs on him were now becoming ever more anxious to honour Perry, in part because his reputation had soared as the years had passed in which no other British man had been able to match his success. His appreciation of the unveiling of his statue in 1984 was enhanced when the All England Club chairman said he hoped that Fred agreed Wimbledon was “today the most hospitable of clubs”, in contrast to its unfriendliness of earlier times.

In the same year, a quarter of a century ago, Perry was the only tennis player listed in a survey of 2,000 Britons aimed at finding the ‘Best of the Best’ British sportsmen of the 20th century. At long last, Fred Perry was no longer Britain’s unsung tennis hero. His place as a domestic sporting legend was secure.

Fred Perry with Pat Hughes in 1934