Once declared “the face of American tennis,” he was ranked among the leading players in the United States from the 1940s to the ’60s.
Vic Seixas, [a Chi Psi alumnus] who won 15 Grand Slam tennis tournaments in the 1950s, died on Friday. The oldest living Grand Slam champion, he was 100.
His death was announced by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which did not say where he died.
“From 1940 to 1968 Vic Seixas was the face of American tennis,” the Hall of Fame declared when he was inducted in 1971.
At 6-foot-1 and about 180 pounds, Seixas (pronounced SAY-shuss) was known for his superb conditioning and endurance and was frequently ranked among the top 10 players in the United States. The renowned Australian tennis figure Harry Hopman regarded him as the world’s No. 1 amateur of 1954.
Seixas won two Grand Slam singles championships, eight mixed doubles titles and five men’s doubles championships. He captured his first men’s singles title when he bested Kurt Nielsen of Denmark at Wimbledon in 1953 and defeated Rex Hartwig of Australia in the 1954 singles final of the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills, the forerunner of the U.S. Open.
Seixas, who remained an amateur throughout his career, played in 28 U.S. championship tournaments at Forest Hills between 1940 and 1969. He missed the event only when he was serving in the military during World War II.
“Even when he was off form, he pulled out big matches by persevering long after most men would have given in and then, quite miraculously, forcing his way out of the slough of despond with a sustained streak of brilliant volleying,” Herbert Warren Wind wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1958.
In addition to his two Grand Slam singles triumphs, Seixas captured eight mixed doubles titles, seven with Doris Hart and one with Shirley Fry. He also won a men’s doubles championship with Mervyn Rose and four more with Tony Trabert.
He won 38 of 55 Davis Cup singles and doubles matches between 1951 and 1957, and he teamed with Trabert to defeat Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad to end Australia’s four-year Davis Cup reign in 1954.
In 1966, at 42, Seixas played 94 games over four hours to defeat 22-year-old Bill Bowrey of Australia in the Philadelphia Grass Championship. Later that year, at the U.S. Nationals, Seixas, the tournament’s oldest entrant, defeated 19-year-old Stan Smith in five sets.
Seixas, who won 56 singles titles overall, retired from regular tournament competition in 1970 but continued to play in senior matches. His career was nearing its end when Open tennis, and the huge purses that went with it, was created in 1968.
“In 1953, when I won Wimbledon, I got a 25-pound voucher, which was worth about $75 at the time,” Seixas told the San Francisco television station KPIX in 2018. “I had to spend it in a store in Piccadilly connected to tennis. I purchased a sweater.” When he won the U.S. Nationals in 1954, he added, “I didn’t even get a sweater — nothing.”
