American tennis player who won 15 grand slams during his career including the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1953
The American tennis player and former Wimbledon champion Vic Seixas, who has died aged 100, did not win 15 grand slam titles during a 30-year career by serving his opponents off the court or overpowering them from the ground. Instead Seixas relied on extraordinary conditioning, an indefatigable workrate, hair-trigger reflexes and sheer force of will to compensate for any technical shortcomings.
Seixas’s fleet-footed athleticism, aggressive net-rushing and superb volleying were tailor-made for the All England Club, where the grass courts were then sown with a seed mix conducive to faster play. He made a surprise run to the semi-finals on his Wimbledon debut in 1950, losing to the eventual champion Budge Patty, then won it three years later as the second seed, coming through a five-set quarter-final epic against Lew Hoad, and another five-setter against Australia’s Mervyn Rose in the semis, before a straight-sets destruction of the unseeded Dane Kurt Nielsen in the final.