John Barrett (tennis)
| Full name | John Edward Barrett MBE |
|---|---|
| Country (sports) |
 United Kingdom
|
| Born |
April 17, 1931 Mill Hill, London |
| Height | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) |
| Plays | Left-handed |
| Int. Tennis HoF | 2014 (member page) |
| Singles | |
| Grand Slam Singles results | |
| Australian Open | 2R (1955) |
| French Open | 3R (1955, 1961) |
| Wimbledon | 3R (1953, 1954, 1955, 1958) |
| US Open | 3R (1953) |
| Doubles | |
| Grand Slam Doubles results | |
| Australian Open | 2R (1955) |
| Wimbledon | 3R (1956) |
| Mixed doubles | |
| Grand Slam Mixed Doubles results | |
| Wimbledon | QF (1960, 1961, 1966) |
John Barrett MBE (born 17 April 1931) is a former tennis player, TV commentator and author. He was born in Mill Hill, North West London, the son of Alfred Edward Barrett, a leaf tobacco merchant, and Margaret Helen Barrett (née Walker). He had one sister, Irene Margaret Leppington (1925–2009), a research chemist. His father had the rare distinction of having played both for Leicester Tigers RFC as a wing three-quarter and for Leicester Fosse FC (the former Leicester City) as a wing half.
Educated at University College School in Hampstead, he was a prominent British junior tennis player and won the National Schoolboy title in 1948. He also played three years of junior country rugby for Middlesex, captaining an unbeaten team in his last year. He was twice the Royal Air Force tennis champion during his period of National Service which he completed before going up to St. John's College, Cambridge (1951–1954), where he gained an honours degree in History. He represented Cambridge in three winning years against Oxford, captaining the team in his last year, and twice represented Oxford and Cambridge in the biennial match against Harvard and Yale for the Prentice Cup, winning in 1952 and losing in 1954.
He went on to compete at Wimbledon for eighteen years from 1951, reaching the third round of the singles on four occasions and the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles three times. At his peak he was ranked as his country's fifth best singles player. His doubles successes included the capture of the 1953 National Covered Court title with Don Black of Rhodesia and the 1956 Asian Doubles with Roger Becker. In 1956 he became a Davis Cup player and was appointed captain of the British Davis Cup team for the years 1959-1962. Three years later he established and ran the LTA Training Squad, known as "The Barrett Boys" which set new standards of fitness in British tennis between 1965 and 1968.
In 1955 he had joined Slazengers Ltd., the sports equipment firm, as a trainee executive and remained with them for 39 years rising to become the International Promotions Director for tennis and a member of the Board of Directors until his retirement in 1994. During his time with the company he became the tennis correspondent of the Financial Times in 1963, a post he filled as a freelance contributor until 2006. In 1986 he joined the team that compiles the daily crossword for the pink paper and still compiles a themed crossword for each year's Wimbledon.
To mark the start of open tennis in 1968 he launched the BP International Tennis Fellowship in association with the oil company. This was a junior development programme open to all young boys and girls who had won an age-group singles title at any junior tournament on the LTA's official list of events. The following year he published "The BP Yearbook of World Tennis" to record the events of that momentous first year of open competition. In 1971 the title was changed to World of Tennis and he edited and contributed to it for the next 32 years. From 1981 to 2001, when the last issue was published, this bible of the game was also the official yearbook of the International Tennis Federation (ITF).
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