Dick Savitt
| Full name | Richard Savitt | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country (sports) |
 United States
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| Born |
March 4, 1927 Bayonne, New Jersey |
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| Height | 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) | |||||||||
| Turned pro | 1944 (amateur tour) | |||||||||
| Retired | 1952 (played part-time afterwards) | |||||||||
| Plays | Right-handed (one-handed backhand) | |||||||||
| College | Cornell University (57–2 record in singles) | |||||||||
| Int. Tennis HoF | 1976 (member page) | |||||||||
| Singles | ||||||||||
| Highest ranking | No. 1 (July 1951, NY Times) | |||||||||
| Grand Slam Singles results | ||||||||||
| Australian Open | W (1951) | |||||||||
| French Open | QF (1951, 1952) | |||||||||
| Wimbledon | W (1951) | |||||||||
| US Open | SF (1950, 1951) | |||||||||
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Medal record
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Richard "Dick" Savitt (born March 4, 1927) is a right-handed American former tennis player.
In 1951, at the age of 24, he won both the Australian and Wimbledon men's singles championships. Savitt was mostly ranked World No. 2 the same year behind fellow amateur Frank Sedgman, though was declared World No. 1 by The New York Times and The Owosso Argus-Press following his Wimbledon victory. He retired the following year.
Savitt is one of four American men who have won both the Australian and British Championships in one year, following Don Budge (1938) and preceding Jimmy Connors (1974) and Pete Sampras (1994 & 1997).
Savitt is Jewish, and was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. He taught himself tennis at the age of 14, but never took a tennis lesson in his life. The self-taught Savitt played tennis well enough, however, to make the finals of the New Jersey Boys Championship and, for two years afterward, the National Boys Tennis Tournament before moving up to the junior ranks.
His first love was basketball, though, and when his family moved to Texas, he was an All-State forward and a co-captain of his El Paso, Texas high school basketball team in 1944. In 1945 Savitt entered the Navy, and played on a service basketball team.
Despite considering tennis his "second" sport after basketball, he won the Texas University Interscholastic League boys singles championship in 1944–45. Nationally he was the 8th-ranked junior tennis player, and the 17th-ranked amateur overall.
In 1946, Savitt matriculated to Cornell University. He attended Cornell, where he majored in Economics, was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity, and was elected a member of the Sphinx Head Society. However, two injuries, one to his knee, curtailed his basketball career.
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