Fred Perry
Fred Perry was a British tennis and table tennis star born on May 18, 1909, in Stockport, England. He rose to become the world’s number-one amateur from 1934 to 1936 and was the first man to win a Career Grand Slam in singles, completing all four major titles by 1935 at the age of 26. He remains the only British player to do this.
Perry won eight Grand Slam singles titles: the Australian Open (1934), the French Open (1935), Wimbledon (1934–1936), and the US Open (1933–1934–1936). He also won two professional major titles later in his career and collected several doubles titles.
He helped Great Britain win the Davis Cup four years in a row (1933–1936). Before focusing on tennis, he was a world champion in table tennis in 1929. Perry turned professional in 1936, moved to the United States, and became a citizen in 1939. He served in the US Army Air Force during World War II.
After retiring from playing in 1959, Perry became a long-time BBC radio tennis commentator and broadcaster. In 1952 he founded the Fred Perry clothing label in London, famous for its laurel-wreath polo shirt. The brand became a global label and was later bought by a Japanese company in 1995, though the Perry family stayed involved for a time.
Perry’s legacy includes a bronze statue at Wimbledon (unveiled in 1984) and various memorials in his hometown of Stockport. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of his era and the last British man to win Wimbledon until Andy Murray in 2013. Fred Perry died on February 2, 1995, in Melbourne, Australia, after an accidental fall.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:37 (CET).