Dick Savitt, who has died aged 95, was one of the most controversial tennis players of his era. Not for the manner in which he won Wimbledon in 1951 nor, indeed, the Australian Championships the same year, but for his fractious relationship with the US Lawn Tennis Association and the Davis Cup captain of the time, Frank Shields.
Savitt has been called the greatest Jewish tennis player of all time and, to date, no one has really challenged him on that score despite the emergence of such fine players as Brad Gilbert and Aaron Krickstein from the US and Amos Mansdorf from Israel. But, in the 50s, there was no escaping the fact that Savitt’s Jewishness worked against him.
