Tuesday, December 11, 2018

J. Donald Budge History Maker


A few years ago before he died, I had the occasion to meet the great tennis champion J.Donald Budge at a tennis awards banquet. He was getting an award and I was receiving an award for the Black Tennis Foundation of Philadelphia Inc. During my remarks I spoke about his breaking racial barriers by playing an exhibition match in 1940 against Jimmie McDaniel at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club in New York. The mecca of black tennis at that time.  McDaniel was arguably the top negro player of that era.

Budge was the first man to win what is known today as the "Grand Slam" of tennis. The four major championship events Austrailian,, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open in the same year at the age of 23, becoming the first and youngest to do so. A record that still stands today. Budge won the match 6-1, 6-2. When I mentioned McDaniel playing him in my remarks, Budge shouted out "he was a hell of a player." Throughout history there have always been people willing to stand up for equal rights and humane treatment for all people.

This was truly one of the highlights of my long involvement in the sport of tennis.