John Herbert ("Jack") Crawford (22 March 1908 - 10 September 1991) was an Australian tennis player of the 1930s. He was the World No. 1 player for 1933.
Born in Urangeline, near Albury, New South Wales, Crawford won a number of major championship titles, although he is best known, perhaps, for something he did not do - complete the tennis Grand Slam five years before Don Budge accomplished the feat for the first time.
In 1933 Crawford won the Australian, French, and British championships, needing to win the American championship to complete the slam. An asthmatic who suffered in the muggy summer heat of Long Island, he was leading the Englishman Fred Perry in the finals of the championship by two sets to one when his strength began to fade. He ended up losing the match, and tennis immortality, by the final score of 3–6, 13-11, 6–4, 0–6, 1–6.
In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, included Crawford in his list of the 21 greatest players of all time.[1]
He was also known for taking a shot of whiskey between sets if the game was tense.
Crawford was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 1979.
[edit] Grand Slam Tournament wins
- Australian Championships:
- singles champion - 1931-33, 1935
- doubles champion - 1929-30, 32, 1935
- mixed doubles champion - 1931-33
- ^ Writing in 1979, Kramer considered the best ever to have been either Don Budge (for consistent play) or Ellsworth Vines (at the height of his game). The next four best were, chronologically, Bill Tilden, Fred Perry, Bobby Riggs, and Pancho Gonzales. After these six came the "second echelon" of Rod Laver, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Gottfried von Cramm, Ted Schroeder, Jack Crawford, Pancho Segura, Frank Sedgman, Tony Trabert, John Newcombe, Arthur Ashe, Stan Smith, Björn Borg, and Jimmy Connors. He felt unable to rank Henri Cochet and René Lacoste accurately but felt they were among the very best.
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