Billy Knight obituary: British tennis star of the 1950s

It did not take long for a group of Australian tennis starlets to issue Billy Knight with an apt nickname when he arrived in the country in the winter of 1953.

Visiting for a six-month development stint, the reigning junior Wimbledon champion lugged a trunk bearing his initials, WAK. Given his ferocious whacking of the ball it was perhaps inevitable that his new friends, including the future world No 1s Fred Stolle and Neale Fraser, dubbed Knight “Waka”.

A powerful left-hander, Knight bashed his way through a long career as one of the best British players of the 1950s and early 1960s, appearing at Wimbledon for 15 successive years. He was later appointed head of men’s national training at the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), becoming an important influence on an emerging Tim Henman and captaining the British Davis Cup team.

Henman was late to bloom physically and his early results on the junior tour hardly implied that he might mature into a player who ultimately attained a highest world ranking of fourth and reached six Grand Slam semi-finals. But Knight saw something special and admired the teenager’s mentality and work ethic. He advised Henman to prioritise junior tournaments ahead of gym sessions and entrusted him to David Felgate, an up-and-coming coach who became Henman’s mentor.

“He obviously had more talent than other people,” Knight told the Independent. “He knew and felt the game much better. And he understood what he had to do to get better.” They became friends and Knight was a regular presence backing Henman from a seat in the players’ boxes at Wimbledon and Roland-Garros.

Knight was popular with the players, who respected his dedication and motivational skills, but the LTA was not always a harmonious workplace as significant investments failed to produce world-beaters. Tony Pickard acrimoniously departed as Davis Cup captain in 1994 after four successive losses and Knight replaced his former international doubles partner.

Knight’s first tie as captain was a sobering relegation play-off against Romania on grass in Manchester in 1994. He gave Henman his debut and the 19-year-old partnered Jeremy Bates to a doubles win. However, Britain lost the tie by three matches to two, Bates and Mark Petchey having succumbed to inexperienced lower-ranked opponents in the singles. Knight’s second and last tie was a 5-0 defeat away to Slovakia on clay in 1995. That year he handed the captaincy to David Lloyd and stepped down from his training role.

There were happier memories from Knight’s period representing Britain as a player, such as reaching the Davis Cup semi-finals in 1963. He won 27 of his 43 matches, including a straight-sets victory over the Spanish icon Manuel Santana (obituary, December 13, 2021), during a 1959 tie on clay in Barcelona.

Unusually for a British player, Knight was comfortable on clay. He possessed a formidable top-spin forehand and high-kicking serve and was a fierce competitor with excellent stamina who knew that his best chance of beating superior opponents was to tire them out over five sets.

William Arthur Knight was born in Northampton in 1935 to Alfred, who ran a furniture business, and Ivy (née Stokes), who provided vital support as she accompanied her son to junior tournaments. He attended Northampton Grammar School. His older sister, Jean, was a gifted sportswoman who also competed at Wimbledon, including as Billy’s doubles partner. He did not pick up a racquet in earnest until he was about 11 but quickly excelled in tennis and table tennis.

British tennis was in the doldrums amid the nation’s post-war economic struggles while Australia was a rising power with modern coaching techniques that emphasised fitness and a winning mentality, so a spell Down Under was logical after Knight took the Wimbledon boys’ title aged 17 in 1953. He won the boys’ singles in 1954 in what is now the Australian Open, defeating a tremulous future great, Roy Emerson, in the final. But two years of National Service then slowed his progress.

In 1959, his best year, he won the mixed doubles at the French Championships (now the French Open) with Yola Ramírez, a Mexican who was his fiancée at the time. They defeated Renée Schuurman of South Africa and the Australian, Rod Laver, in the final. Knight also reached the quarter-finals of the singles at Roland-Garros and won tournaments in Germany, France and Austria.

However, after contracting a serious case of viral meningitis in Colombia in 1960 he struggled to regain his strength and suffered severe headaches at the end of matches. He also needed to devote more time to the family business after his parents were involved in a car crash in 1962 that killed his mother. Knight still managed to win the British Hard Court Championships in 1963 and 1964, adding to his 1958 victory.

He made the fourth round of the Wimbledon men’s singles four times and the semi-finals of the mixed doubles on two occasions. He liked to roll into the All-England Club in a Jaguar sports car, though tennis was hardly a lucrative or flashy pursuit in the amateur pre-Open era. In addition to travel expenses, trophies and watches, Knight received a silver cigarette case for his success at a tournament in Scandinavia. It was a useful prize given the smoking habit he had acquired during his service in the RAF. He often requested a pot of tea and a cigarette for sustenance in the break before a decisive fifth set.

At the Wimbledon players’ party in 1963 he met Jill (née Beavan), an LTA secretary; they married the following year. She died in 2012. They have three children — Rachel, who works in pastoral education, Jeremy, an English teacher in Spain, and Daniel, who works for the Post Office — and five grandchildren.

Knight’s passion for tennis was lifelong and instinctive. Groggy as he came round after a knee operation in 2014, he started mumbling about the importance of correct racquet string tensions before stepping on court.

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