The early years
Great Britain · born Lyndhurst, Hampshire, 1868 · died 1928 · right-handed · the oldest Wimbledon singles champion
All playersBack to the rankings
3
Wimbledon singles titles: 1901, 1908, 1909
41
Years and 182 days old at his 1909 title, the oldest men's champion
30
Wimbledon singles entries, 1888 to 1922, a record
64-26
Wimbledon singles match record
2
Olympic gold medals, indoors at Queen's Club, 1908
Arthur William Charles Wentworth Gore was born at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, on 2 January 1868, the third son of Augustus Wentworth Gore, late of the 7th Hussars, and Emily Curzon; the novelist Catherine Gore was his grandmother. Around 1875 the family moved to Dinard in Brittany, and he was educated in France, not at Harrow as is often stated. He left school at 15 and at 16 went to work in the City of London as an apprentice clerk to a wine merchant.
He played his first tournament at the London Athletic Club in 1887, won his first title on grass at Stevenage in 1888 and entered Wimbledon for the first time that summer. He won the Scottish Championships in 1892 and 1893, the North London Championships five times and the Kent Championships at Beckenham in 1900 and 1906. In 1900 he beat Laurence Doherty at Dublin, Beckenham and Wimbledon and captained Britain's first Davis Cup team. In 1901 he beat Reginald Doherty in the Challenge Round to take the Wimbledon title, ending Doherty's run of four in a row.
Laurence Doherty took the title from him in 1902, but Gore won it again in 1908, at 40, and in 1909, at 41, when he also won the doubles with Herbert Roper Barrett. The pair won the indoor doubles gold at the 1908 Olympics, where Gore also took the singles. He played Davis Cup in 1900, 1907 and 1912, the last year on a winning team, and reached the 1912 Challenge Round at 44. He played the Wimbledon singles until 1922 and the doubles until 1927, entered the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006, and died in Kensington on 1 December 1928, aged 60.
| Wimbledon singles finals | 1899: lost to Reginald Doherty 1-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 after leading by two sets. 1901: beat Reginald Doherty 4-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-4. 1902: lost to Laurence Doherty 6-4, 6-3, 3-6, 6-0. 1907: lost to Norman Brookes 6-4, 6-2, 6-2. 1908: beat Herbert Roper Barrett 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4. 1909: beat Major Ritchie 6-8, 1-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 from two sets down. 1910: lost to Tony Wilding 6-4, 7-5, 4-6, 6-2. 1912: lost to Wilding 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 |
|---|---|
| Wimbledon doubles | 1909 with Roper Barrett, beating Stanley Doust and Harry Parker 6-2, 6-1, 6-4. Lost the 1908 and 1910 finals with Roper Barrett to Ritchie and Wilding, 6-1, 6-2, 1-6, 9-7 and 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 |
| Davis Cup, Worple Road, 1907 | In the Challenge Round he and Roper Barrett beat Norman Brookes and Tony Wilding 3-6, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, 13-11, though Australasia won the tie 3-2 |
| Records | Oldest men's singles champion at Wimbledon (41 years and 182 days in 1909) and oldest singles finalist (44, in 1912). His 155 Wimbledon matches in singles and doubles ranked seventh all time when the Hall of Fame wrote his citation |
| Wimbledon | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1901 | Men's singles | |
| 1908 | Men's singles | |
| 1909 | Men's doubles | with Herbert Roper Barrett |
| 1909 | Men's singles | |
| Scottish Championships | ||
| 1892 | Men's singles | |
| 1893 | Men's singles | |
| Kent Championships (Beckenham) | ||
| 1900 | Men's singles | |
| 1906 | Men's singles | |
| Queen's Club | ||
| 1900 | Men's singles | |
| Surrey Championships (Surbiton) | ||
| 1907 | Men's singles | |
| Northern Championships | ||
| 1908 | 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
"This was on the magnificent sands at Dinard, which a receding tide left sufficiently hard to enable us ... to mark out a court with a stick."
The person behind the player.
Dinard, 1877 to 1878
The Gore boys learned the game on the beach at Dinard, where the tide left the sand hard enough to mark out a court with a stick. Gore said he never had a lesson worth the name; there were almost no coaches, so he learned by playing, against his brothers and a few other small boys, in the year Spencer Gore, no relation, won the first Wimbledon.
Source: Derek Sculthorpe, Never Say Die (Pitch Publishing, 2024), sample chapterDinard, 1880
He won his first tournament, a mixed doubles handicap, at the age of 12, and the win gave him the nickname 'Baby'. It stuck for the rest of his career, long after he had become the oldest man ever to win Wimbledon.
Source: Derek Sculthorpe, Never Say Die (Pitch Publishing, 2024), sample chapterLondon, 1884 to 1887
None of the Gore brothers went to university. Arthur left school at 15 and at 16 became an apprentice clerk to a wine merchant in the City, as his elder brother Charles had done. At 19 he joined the committee of the London Athletic Club at Stamford Bridge and gave the club the cup for its ladies' singles, the first of many trophies he presented to clubs.
Source: Derek Sculthorpe, Never Say Die (Pitch Publishing, 2024), sample chapterQueen's Club, 1908
The covered court singles at the 1908 Olympics began at Queen's Club straight after the English covered court championships on the same courts, and drew a poor entry. Gore, 40, needed only two wins: he came from behind against Josiah Ritchie, who later won the outdoor gold, and was relieved to beat George Caridia in straight sets in the final.
Source: OlympediaWimbledon, 1888 to 1927
Gore entered the Wimbledon singles 30 times between 1888 and 1922, a record, and went on playing the doubles until 1927. The Hall of Fame worked out his totals: 342 sets won against 207 lost, and 2,811 games won against 2,342.
Source: International Tennis Hall of FameFree membership: player news, the grass court Atlas, the rankings and the grass season calendar.
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