Budge Patty, elegant 1950s tennis champion, dies at 97

Budge Patty, one of only three Americans to win the French and Wimbledon men’s singles tennis championships in the same year and a glamorous figure on the international tennis scene of the 1950s, died Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 97.

The International Tennis Hall of Fame announced his death in a hospital on Friday. He had lived in Europe for over 70 years and was living in Lausanne at the time of his death.

Patty honed his skills as a teenager at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and won the United States Junior Championship in 1941 and 42. But he settled in Paris after World War II and played mainly on the mainland and in Britain.

He was number one in the world in 1950, when he defeated Jaroslav Drobny, the Czech defector, in five sets to win the French Championships, then needed only four sets to beat Australia’s Frank Sedgman in the Wimbledon Championships. final. Don Budge, in 1938, and Tony Trabert, in 1955, are the only other American men to have won singles titles at both Grand Slam tournaments in a single year. (Trabert died in February at age 90.)

Known for her excellent all-round play, but above all for a strong forehand volley, Patty was usually in the top 10 of the world rankings between 1947 and 1957 and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., in 1977.

But he played sporadically in the United States Nationals in Forest Hills, Queens, never made it past the quarterfinals in singles, and he didn’t compete in the Australian Championships.

Patty was almost always described as handsome, elegant and a fashionable dresser. In late July 1950, anticipating Patty’s appearance in Forest Hills in a quest for a third major triumph that year, Allison Danzig, the New York Times longtime tennis writer, noted how Gussie Moran had created a sensation wearing a short skirt. and ready-to-wear cropped underwear at Wimbledon. Now men’s tennis has its glamor boy, she wrote.

Budge Patty has made them swoon on the French Riviera for the past few years, Danzig continued, adding: It wasn’t fair that someone so tall and handsome, with that je ne sais quoi that defies translation but forces capitulation, all his would have to spend time on the mainland when he had a good home in California.

But any Forest Hills fans who tended to swoon over Patty were disappointed. He injured his ankle in the doubles game in Newport in mid-August and was unable to compete in the United States Nationals later that summer.

John Edward Patty was born on February 11, 1924 in Fort Smith, Ark. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was young.

According to the Hall of Fame, he got his nickname when a brother, who considered him lazy, called him Budge to make it clear that he often didn’t.

After winning two junior championships, Patty joined the Army Air Forces during World War II. He captured the singles championship at an Allied military tournament on the French Riviera in September 1945. Three years later, he made Paris his home.

He had a French-born grandmother and an Austrian grandfather, and once remarked that I knew I loved Europe as a child.

Patty teamed up with Pauline Betz to win the 1946 mixed doubles at the French Championships and then lost to Frank Parker in the 1949 French singles final before capturing it the following year.

He played in every French and Wimbledon tournament from 1946 to 1960. Budge Patty’s perfect manners and superb tennis style made him a Wimbledon idol for 15 years, wrote E. Digby Baltzell in his book Sporting Gentlemen (1995).

His most memorable match was a marathon duel with Drobny in the third round of the 1953 Wimbledon Championships.

It lasted nearly four and a half hours over five sets and 93 games, ending in the fading light after 9pm when Patty succumbed after wasting six match points.

I could barely see anything and I was so tired I barely knew where I was, he told British newspaper The Telegraph in 2000, recalling the last moments.

At 33, Patty teamed up with 43-year-old Gardnar Mulloy to win the 1957 Wimbledon Men’s Doubles Championship.

Patty remained an amateur throughout his career, winning 46 singles championships.

He married Maria Marcina Sfezzo, the daughter of a Brazilian engineering magnate, in 1961. She survives him with two daughters, Christine and Elaine Patty.

In an interview with The Times in 1958, Patty, who at the time played four or five months a year while working for a travel agency in Paris and enjoying life in Europe, said that he didn’t expect to compete in his forties.

World-class players who did have never smoked, drank or went to bed later than 10am, he said. I, Ive chose to enjoy life.

But 50 years after his double triumph in Grand Slam tournaments, Patty began to get annoyed at how he was portrayed on the sports pages.

Tennis players then are like tennis players now, he told The Telegraph in 2000. When they see someone wearing a tie, they think they are strange. It was like, Wow, Budge is wearing a fitted jacket, he must be a secret agent. It was ridiculous. I never noticed.