Wilberforce Eaves
 | ||||||||||||
| Full name | Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country (sports) | Great Britain | |||||||||||
| Born | 10 December 1867 Melbourne, VIC, Australia | |||||||||||
| Died | 10 February 1920 (aged 52) London, England | |||||||||||
| Plays | Right-handed (one-handed backhand) | |||||||||||
| Singles | ||||||||||||
| Career record | 341-96, (78.3%) [1] | |||||||||||
| Career titles | 39 [1] | |||||||||||
| Grand Slam singles results | ||||||||||||
| Wimbledon | F (1895AC, 1896AC, 1897AC) | |||||||||||
| US Open | F (1897Ch) | |||||||||||
Medal record
| ||||||||||||
Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves MBE (10 December 1867 – 10 February 1920) was an Australian-born tennis player from the United Kingdom. At the 1908 London Olympics he won a bronze medal in the Men's Singles tournament.[2]
Biography
He reached the Men's Singles All-Comers' final at the Wimbledon Championships in 1895 and lost against Wilfred Baddeley despite having had a match point in the third set. In 1897 he became the first non-American to reach the final in the U.S. National Singles Championships. He lost the final in five sets to American Robert Wrenn.[3]
Eaves won the Welsh Championships in 1895 and the Irish Championships in 1897, defeating Wilfred Baddeley in a five-set final. He became the Scottish singles champion in 1901 and won the British Covered Court Championships, played on wooden courts at Queen's Club in London three consecutive times from 1897 until 1899.[4] He won against seven-time tournament champion Ernest Lewis and Wimbledon champions Laurence Doherty and Harold Mahony in the respective finals.
He served as a civil surgeon in the Boer War, and took a temporary commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first week of World War I, on 10 August 1914, being promoted to Captain after a year's service.[5]
Grand Slam finals
Singles (1 runner-up)
| Result | Year | Championship | Surface | Opponent | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loss | 1897 | U.S. Championships | Grass |  Robert Wrenn |
6–4, 6–8, 3–6, 6–2, 2–6 |
See also
References
- ^ a b "Wilberforce Eaves: Career match record". thetennisbase.com. Tennis Base. Retrieved 19 October 2017.
- ^ "Wilberforce Eaves Olympic Results". sports-reference.com. Archived from the original on 18 April 2020. Retrieved 27 January 2014.
- ^ Collins, Bud (2010). The Bud Collins History of Tennis (2nd ed.). [New York]: New Chapter Press. pp. 415, 455, 688. ISBN 978-0942257700.
- ^ "Obituary". British Medical Journal. 1 (3086): 276. 21 February 1920. PMC 2337269.
- ^ "Commemorative Roll - Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
External links
- 1867 births
- 1920 deaths
- 19th-century British people
- 19th-century male tennis players
- British Army personnel of World War I
- British male tennis players
- British people of Australian descent
- Members of the Order of the British Empire
- Olympic bronze medallists for Great Britain
- Olympic medalists in tennis
- Olympic tennis players of Great Britain
- Royal Army Medical Corps officers
- Sportspeople from Melbourne
- Tennis people from Victoria (Australia)
- Tennis players at the 1908 Summer Olympics
- Medalists at the 1908 Summer Olympics