Henry "Harry" Edward Likas Jr. of San Francisco, and later Belvedere-Tiburon, California, was an

Intercollegiate Tennis Association The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) is the governing body and coaches association of college tennis, both an advocate and authority, overseeing men’s and women’s varsity tennis at all levels – NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NC ...

Hall of Fame inductee most notable for winning the 1948

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Tennis Singles Championship.

Early life

Harry Likas was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California, on February 27, 1924. He started playing Northern California and National Junior tournaments. Likas was rated the number one youth in the nation and won the Boy’s California Championship. At 18, Likas was selected to be on the National

Junior Davis Cup Junior Davis Cup and Junior Billie Jean King Cup are the international team events in junior tennis (16-and-under age category). History Competitions were launched by the ITF in 1985 as the 16-and-under World Youth Cup, and rebranded in 2002 under ...

team. After graduating from Lowell High School in San Francisco, Likas went on to play tennis for the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

where he eventually won the 1948 NCAA singles championship beating Vic Seix. He beat five future

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * ...

champions:

Jaroslav Drobný Jaroslav Drobný (; 12 October 1921 – 13 September 2001) was a World No. 1 amateur tennis and ice hockey champion. He left Czechoslovakia in 1949 and travelled as an Egyptian citizen before becoming a citizen of the United Kingdom in 1959, w ...

Bob Falkenburg Robert Falkenburg (January 29, 1926 – January 6, 2022) was an American amateur tennis player and entrepreneur. He is best known for winning the Men's Singles at the 1948 Wimbledon Championships and for introducing soft ice cream and American f ...

Budge Patty Edward John Patty (February 11, 1924 – October 4, 2021), better known as Budge Patty, was an American world no. 1 tennis player whose career spanned a period of 15 years after World War II. He won two Grand Slam singles titles in 1950. He was ...

Dick Savitt Richard Savitt (March 4, 1927 – January 6, 2023) was an American tennis player. In 1951, at the age of 24, he won both the Australian and Wimbledon men's singles championships. Savitt was mostly ranked world No. 2 the same year behind fellow ...

. He also defeated world Champion

Pancho Gonzales Ricardo Alonso "Pancho" González (May 9, 1928 – July 3, 1995), known sometimes as Richard Gonzales, was an American tennis player. He won 15 major singles titles, including two U.S. National Singles Championships in 1948 and 1949, and 13 P ...

Later life

Likas would serve on the board of the

United States Tennis Association The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the national governing body for tennis in the United States. A not-for-profit organization with more than 700,000 members, it invests 100% of its proceeds to promote and develop the growth of tennis, ...

(USTA Nor Cal division), then known as the Northern California Tennis Association, NCTA). In his role as a board member, he transitioned the old

Pacific Coast Championships The Pacific Coast Championships was an annual men's tennis tournament. It was the second-oldest ongoing tennis tournament in the United States and ran from 1889 until 2013. Its final edition, known by its sponsored name SAP Open, was an ATP World ...

, a tournament he had won as a junior, into a money tournament - the

Fireman's Fund Fireman's Fund Insurance Company was an insurance company based in Petaluma, California which provided personal and commercial property and casualty insurance products in the United States. The company was a principal U.S. subsidiary of Allianz, ...

Open International. The tournament was played at the Round Hill Country Club in

Alamo, California Alamo (Spanish: ''Álamo''; meaning "Poplar tree") is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Contra Costa County, California, in the United States. It is a suburb located in the San Francisco Bay Area's East Bay regi ...

and, due to Likas' role, was televised nationally on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

. He married Ann Katharine Jessup in 1950, and had four children and was active in the securities business and coached professional tennis players.

References

External links

*
University of San Francisco Athletics Hall of Fame

USTA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Likas, Harry 1924 births 2017 deaths American male tennis players San Francisco Dons men's tennis players Tennis players from San Francisco