Davis, Mike (tennis player)

Mike Davis, a native of Welsh Swansea , began playing tennis at age 11 in his hometown. ^[3] According to his own recollections, at first Mike used balls that flew from the territory of the local lawn tennis club to play football, but then he became addicted to tennis itself. He also said that he went in for this sport, imitating his brother Leighton, who was five years older than him ^[4] . As a teenager, Mike won the Wales Tennis Championships for four consecutive years in the age categories under 14 and under 16. For some time, Davis was the protégé of the famous English tennis player Fred Perry , but due to the explosive temperament and tantrums “in the style of John McEnroe ” the British Lawn Tennis Association deprived him of financial support. Thus, in order to continue playing tennis, Davis had to get up at three in the morning and go to work on the potato field. Later friends and neighbors gathered enough money to allow Mike to go to study with the famous Australian coach Harry Hopman ^[3] .

In the second half of the 1950s, Mike Davis became one of the leading tennis players in the UK, in 1957, 1959 and 1960, taking first place in the UK domestic ranking ^[5] . In 1954, he entered the fourth round of the Wimbledon singles tournament and since 1955 he played for the UK national team in the Davis Cup . In total, Davis spent 37 games for the national team in 15 matches in the European Zone, winning 15 of 22 wins in singles and 9 of 15 in doubles. In the Davis Cup, on his account there were victories over such rivals as Sven Davidson , Nikola Pietrangeli , Pierre Darmon and Wilhelm Bungert ^[6] .

The highest success in the amateur tennis career of Mike Davis was the entry in 1960 to the finals of the Wimbledon tournament in the men's doubles. There, Davis and his partner Bobby Wilson lost to Mexican Rafael Osuna and American Dennis Ralston ; this match marked the last appearance of the British in the Wimbledon men's final until 2012, when Scot Andy Murray became one of the leaders in world tennis ^[7] . However, shortly after this success, Davis finally broke with the Lawn Tennis Association, which expelled him from the national team and deprived him of membership in the All England club for harsh statements against the conservative tennis establishment. In response, Mike signed a contract with the director of a professional tennis tour, Jack Kramer , for the next eight years, retrained from an amateur to a professional ^[3] . He was never among the undisputed leaders of the tennis tour, but reached the quarter-finals in the professional championships of France and the USA, and in 1966 he became a semi-finalist of the Wembley Championship - a professional analogue of Wimbledon. The site of the International Tennis Hall of Fame , however, emphasizes that the main thing that Davis was brought over the years as a professional tennis player was a deep knowledge of the nuances of professional sports, which later allowed him to become a successful administrator and marketing expert ^[5] .

Grand Slam Tournament Finals Career

Men's Doubles (0-1)

At the beginning of his performances on the Kramer tour, in 1961, Mike Davis published an autobiographical book, Tennis Rebel , describing his confrontation with the then tennis leadership ^[3] . Later, even becoming part of the sports establishment, Davis remained an experimenter and reformer.

In 1968, oil tycoon Lamar Hunt offered Davis the post of deputy director of the new World Championship Tennis (WCT) professional tour. In 1969, Davis became the executive director of the tour and remained in this position until 1981. During this time, he achieved a significant increase in public attention to professional tennis. Already in 1970, the WCT tour, in which 32 athletes played 20 tournaments, paid participants more than a million dollars a year - each tennis player was guaranteed an income of 50 thousand ^[3] . As WCT tournaments turned into a popular television show (as early as 1972, the final of the tour between Rod Laver and Ken Roswall gathered 21.3 million spectators from the screens ^[3] ), Davis changed the color of the balls used from white to orange, and then to yellow, because these colors were better visible to the audience against the backdrop of the blue artificial turf on the TV screens. Only ten years later Wimbledon switched to yellow balls. American viewers complained that they did not distinguish between players who were wearing standard white suits for tennis at that time, and Davis allowed the color form in WCT matches. Since tournament sponsors needed screen time for advertising, Davis introduced 90-second breaks in the game every two games at the WCT under Davis. WCT was also one of the first places where a tie-break was introduced ^[8] .

In 1981, Davis moved from WCT to the Association of Professional Tennis Players (APR) as a marketing director. After some time, he took over the post of executive director in this organization, having achieved the transformation of a structure mired in debt into a profitable enterprise. In 1987, Davis made a new transition - now to the International Tennis Federation (ITF), where he became both general manager and director of marketing. In 1990, at the initiative of Davis, ITF established the Grand Slam Cup - the final tournament of the year in which 16 tennis players met, who during the season showed the best results in four Grand Slam tournaments . The tournament was notable for its high prize pool - $ 6 million annually, of which two million were awarded to the winner ^[7] .

In the last years of his life, Davis, who lived in Sarasota (Florida) ^[9] , was the general manager of the men's and women's tournament in Connecticut , which takes place a week before the US Open . In 2012, his name was included in the lists of the International Tennis Hall of Fame ^[5] . He died in the 80th year of life, leaving behind his wife Mina and four children ^[3] .

• Biography on the website of the International Tennis Hall of Fame
• Singles Results in Tennis Archives Database
• Profile on the Davis Cup website