Roger Becker (6 February 1934 – 6 November 2017)
Obituaries-Roger Becker
/ref> was a British tennis player
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball co ...
. Besides tennis, Becker competed in cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...
, football, and golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...
; all were well within his grasp. However, in 1949 he chose tennis to the dismay of the players of the other sports. In 1952, Becker played in the Davis Cup
The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and is contested annually between teams from competing countries in a knock-out format. It is described by the orga ...
at 18 years of age, the youngest British player to have done so at the time. His record stood until 2005 when it was broken by Andy Murray
Sir Andrew Barron Murray (born 15 May 1987) is a British professional tennis player from Scotland. He was ranked world No. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 41 weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2016. Murray ...
at the age of 17. He later served as Paul Hutchins
Paul Raymond Hutchins (5 April 1945 – 14 March 2019) was a British tennis player and Davis Cup player.
He was the longest serving British Davis Cup captain, being in charge for 31 matches and 13 years, including the 1978 final.
Biography
B ...
' coach for a time.
References
External links
Guardian article
1934 births
2017 deaths
English male tennis players
British male tennis players
Tennis people from Greater London
Professional tennis players before the Open Era
{{UK-tennis-bio-stub