Bunny Austin
|
|
Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin (August 26, 1906 – August 26, 2000) was a British tennis player. As of 2004 he was the last male British tennis player to reach the final of Wimbledon, achieving that in 1932 and 1938. He was also a finalist at the 1938 French Open. Along with Fred Perry, he was a vital part of the British team that won the Davis Cup three times from 1933-35. He is also remembered as the first tennis player to wear shorts.
Austin was brought up in South Norwood, London. The nickname Bunny came from a comic strip, Wilfred. Encouraged by his father, who was determined that he become a sportsman, he joined Norhurst Tennis Club aged six.
Tennis career
While still an undergraduate at Cambridge University he reached the semi-finals of the men's doubles at Wimbledon in 1926. By the 1930s he was ranked in the world's top ten players. In his first Wimbledon men's singles final in 1932 he was beaten by Ellsworth Vines of the United States in three sets.
In 1933 he decided that the traditional tennis attire, cricket flannels, weighed him down too much. Instead he asked his tailor to create some prototype shorts. The same year he and Fred Perry helped win the Davis Cup for Britain.
In his Wimbledon career Austin reached the quarter-finals or better ten times. In 1938 he played Don Budge in the final, but won only four games. The next year he was seeded first but lost in an early round. It was the last time he played at Wimbledon.
Personal
He married actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931, and together they were one of the celebrity couples of the age. Austin played tennis with Charlie Chaplin, was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, and met both Queen Mary and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Austin and his wife worked for the cause of the Oxford Group throughout the 1930s, promoting it in the United States during World War II. According to Austin's friend Peter Ustinov, Austin was "disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club because he was a conscientious objector". His membership of the club was "lapsed" until being restored in 1984.
Austin's autobiography, A Mixed Double, was published in 1969.
After a serious fall in 1995 Austin moved to a nursing home at Coulsden, Surrey. He died in 2000 on his 94th birthday.