The amateur years
United States · born Hayward, California, 1925 · died 2012 · left-handed · 1950 US champion at Forest Hills
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1950
US champion at Forest Hills, seeded 11th
No. 3
World ranking in 1950, and US No. 1
3
Wimbledon quarter-finals, 1950, 1951 and 1953
4
Surfaces on which he won US national titles: grass, clay, hard and indoor
4-0
Davis Cup singles record, 1951 to 1952
Arthur David Larsen was born on 17 April 1925 in Hayward, California, started playing at 11 and was winning tournaments at the Olympic Club in San Francisco at 14. At 18 he went into the army, and for three years he did not hit a ball. He landed at Omaha Beach in June 1944. Back home, on his doctor's advice, he took up tennis again, played for the University of San Francisco team that won the 1949 NCAA title, and pushed Pancho Gonzales to five sets at Forest Hills in 1948 and 1949.
In 1950, seeded 11th, he won the US Championships at Forest Hills. Every match from the second round on went to at least four sets: he beat Jaroslav Drobný, Dick Savitt in the semi-finals and Herbie Flam in the final, from two sets to one down. That November he won the New South Wales title in Sydney, beating Frank Sedgman in the final. He was ranked US No. 1 and world No. 3 for 1950.
He reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals three times, the Australian semi-finals in 1951 and the French final in 1954, where he lost to Tony Trabert. With US titles on clay in 1952, on hard courts in 1950 and 1952 and indoors in 1953, he became the first man to win the American national championships on all four surfaces. He was never picked for a Davis Cup Challenge Round.
On 10 November 1956 he crashed his motor scooter on a highway near Castro Valley, California. He was in a coma for three weeks, lost the sight in one eye and was partly paralysed, and never played competitively again. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1969 and died on 7 December 2012, aged 87; he was buried with military honours.
| US Championships 1950 | Semi-final: beat Dick Savitt 6-3, 10-8, 7-9, 6-2. Final: beat Herbie Flam 6-3, 4-6, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3. The top two seeds, Budge Patty and Frank Sedgman, were out by the third round. He was the first left-hander to win the title since John Doeg in 1930 |
|---|---|
| New South Wales 1950 | Won at White City, Sydney, in November, beating Ken McGregor and then Frank Sedgman 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 in the final: the two Australians who had played the singles in that year's Davis Cup Challenge Round |
| Wimbledon | Quarter-finals 1950: lost to Frank Sedgman 10-8, 7-5, 5-7, 3-6, 5-7 after leading by two sets. 1951: lost to Dick Savitt, the champion, 1-6, 4-6, 4-6. 1953: lost to Mervyn Rose 3-6, 3-6, 14-16 |
| Queen's Club 1950 | Runner-up to John Bromwich, 2-6, 4-6 |
| US Championships, other years | Semi-final 1951, lost to Frank Sedgman, the champion. Quarter-finals 1949 and 1954, lost to Pancho Gonzales and Ken Rosewall |
| New South Wales Championships | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1950 | Men's singles | |
| US Championships | ||
| 1950 | Men's singles | |
Leading grass titles only: the grass majors, tour-level grass events since 1968 and the leading grass championships before 1968. † single source; ‡ sources disagree. Roll of champions
"There's no fun going about killing balls like a butcher"
The person behind the player.
Superstitions
He tapped net posts, umpires' chairs, doorways and people, a set number of times a day. Dick Savitt explained the system: "Every day was a onesie day, or a fivesie day, that's what he called them, and if he happened to run into you on, say, a threesie day, he'd tap you three times."
Source: International Tennis Hall of Fame, quoting The New York Times obituaryOn court
Before serving he would tilt his head to listen to advice from an imaginary eagle on his shoulder. He smiled at birds flying over the court, took them for luck, and counted eagles as the best omen of all. He also never stepped on a line and liked to serve with the ball that had won him the last point.
Source: Sports History Weekly; Tennis.comNormandy, 1944
He landed at Omaha Beach and fought inland as a tommy-gunner. He recalled American bombers attacking his own unit by mistake: "Suddenly out of nowhere, a fleet of bombers began strafing and bombing us." After the war a doctor told him to take up tennis, and he said the open-air exercise was the only thing that cured his nerves.
Source: Tennis.com, "Last Tap", 2012Training
Asked whether Larsen understood training, Dick Savitt said: "That's the understatement of a lifetime. I don't think he knew what the word 'training' was." Savitt remembered him walking on court in long trousers with his pockets full of cigarettes, yet fit enough to play all day.
Source: Tennis.com, "Last Tap", 2012Paris, early 1950s
Playing a doubles final with Gordon Forbes, Larsen set himself for an overhead on set point, then turned the racquet at the last moment and dropped the ball over the net off the butt of the handle for a winner. "Scared you badly, eh kid?" he asked Forbes afterwards.
Source: Tennis.com, "Last Tap", 2012, from Gordon Forbes's A Handful of SummersCastro Valley, November 1956
He lost control of his Italian motor scooter on a Northern California highway on 10 November 1956. Three weeks in a coma left him without the sight of one eye and partly paralysed, and his playing days were over at 31.
Source: International Tennis Hall of FameFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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