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FAMOUS TENNIS PLAYER

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 6/29/2020 11:18:09 AM

Vic Seixas

Elias Victor Seixas Jr. is an American former tennis player. Thirteen times he was ranked in the Top Ten in the US between 1942 and 1956. In 1951 Seixas was ranked No. 4 in the world, two spots below Dick Savitt, while he was No. 1 in the U.S. ranking, one spot ahead of Savitt. In 1953, Seixas was ranked No. 3 in the world by Lance Tingay, and was also cited as being the World No. 1 in the Reading Eagle newspaper the same year. In his career he won 15 Major championships. He won both Wimbledon and the US Open in singles. He also won the Australian Open, French Open (twice), and US Open (twice) in doubles, and the French Open, Wimbledon (four times), and US Open (three times) in Mixed Doubles. Seixas was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the Blue Gray National Tennis Classic Hall of Fame, the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, and the Southern Conference Hall of Fame. Early life Seixas was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Anna Victoria (Moon), who was of Irish descent, and Elias Victor Seixas Sr., who was born in Brazil, of Portuguese Sephardi Jewish ancestry and, while Vic is often described as being Jewis, he was actually brought up Presbyterian and married in a Presbyterian church. He attended and graduated from the William Penn Charter School, where he was a tennis star. He served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II for three years, which interrupted his tennis career. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where he was a member of Alpha Sigma of the Chi Psi fraternity. He was 63-3 at UNC, won the Southern Conference singles championship in 1948 and the doubles championship in 1949, and was an All American. He graduated in 1949, the same year that UNC awarded him the Patterson Medal, the school's top medal in athletics. During the course of his lengthy career, Seixas won scores of singles, doubles, and mixed doubles titles. He entered the US Championships men's singles a record 28 times between 1940 and 1969. He was ranked in the Top Ten in the US thirteen times between 1942 and 1956. In 1951 Seixas was ranked No. 4 in the world.