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.
