Budge, Don

Don Budge, byname of John Donald Budge, (born June 13, 1915, Oakland, Calif., U.S.—died Jan. 26, 2000, Scranton, Pa.), American tennis player who was the first to win the Grand Slam—i.e., the four major singles championships, Australia, France, Great Britain, and the United States—in one year (1938).

Budge was active in sports as a boy but was not particularly interested in tennis. In the first tournament he entered, however, Budge won the California state boys’ singles (1930). Representing the United States four times (1935–38) in international team competition for the Davis Cup, he won 25 of 29 matches, and in 1937 he led the U.S. team to its first victory since 1926. At Wimbledon in 1937 and again in 1938 he won not only the singles but also the men’s doubles (with Gene Mako) and the mixed doubles (with Alice Marble). In the U.S. tournament at Forest Hills, New York, he won four titles: two singles (1937–38) and two men’s doubles (1936 and 1938, with Mako). For his feats in 1937 he became the first tennis player to be awarded the James E. Sullivan Memorial Trophy as the outstanding U.S. amateur athlete of the year.

Budge likely would have won more Grand Slams had he not turned professional in late 1938; at the time the tournaments were only open to amateurs. He became a dominant player on the professional circuit, though a shoulder injury suffered during military training in the early 1940s hampered his game. A strong and tenacious competitor, Budge was famous for his backhand, which he used as an offensive rather than a defensive stroke. He wrote Budge on Tennis (1939) and in 1964 was elected to the National Lawn Tennis Association Hall of Fame.