Billy Knight, who has died aged 90, was a stalwart of British tennis long before Andy Murray changed the landscape of the game in the UK.
During the 1950s and 60s – an era that saw his compatriots Mike Davies, Bobby Wilson and Mike Sangster struggle to challenge the dominance of Australian and American players – Knight racked up 47 singles titles, won 21 of his 34 Davis Cup matches and earned a grand slam title at Roland Garros by teaming up with Mexico’s Yola Ramirez to win the French mixed doubles crown. Earlier he had been a Wimbledon and Australian junior champion.
Unusually for a British player, Knight was a clay court specialist. With a game based on powerful ground strokes and an effective left handed serve, he won the British Hard Court Championships at Bournemouth three times (in 1958, 1963 and 1964) and, on the slowest of red clay courts in Hamburg, took the German title over the South African No 1, Ian Vermaak, in 1959.
Later he captained the British Davis Cup team in the 90s, a non-playing role in which he was praised by the former British No 1 Jeremy Bates as “a tough and motivational leader and popular, too, because no one cared more about the players and British tennis in general”.
Billy was born in Northampton to Ivy (nee Stokes) and her husband, Alfred Knight, who owned a furniture store in the town and introduced his son to tennis at the age of 11.
By 16, while still at Northampton grammar school – where he showed an insatiable curiosity for knowledge, soaking up the history of the Hindu religion, Greek philosophy and Javanese art – Billy had prefaced his success in tennis by becoming the British junior table tennis champion. At 17 he won the Wimbledon junior title in 1953, defeating India’s Ramanathan Krishnan, and the following year he took the Australian junior title with a surprisingly decisive straight set victory over the future grand slam champion Roy Emerson.
Even at that young age Knight showed fierce loyalty to the cause, as well as a supportive attitude to playing colleagues. In 1952 he and Tony Pickard were selected by the Lawn Tennis Association to winter in Australia, playing tournaments.
Davies, a future British No 1, was left to his own devices and had to find his own sponsor to pay for the six-week boat trip over there. The liner Orantis was heading for Sydney, but docked for a few hours in Melbourne on the way. Keen to sightsee, Davies was getting dressed at 5am when he heard a knock on his cabin door: it was his pal Billy. “No sightseeing!” Knight said. “I have entered you in a tournament starting today and you have a match this morning!”
Even with Knight as his partner, Davies was playing on sea legs and they lost to Pickard and the Frenchman Jean-Noel Grinda.
Knight’s best showing in the Wimbledon singles was to reach the fourth round, which he did on four occasions, in 1957, 1959, 1961 and 1964, while his most notable effort in any grand slam singles competition was to appear in the quarter finals of the French Open in 1959, the same year he and Ramirez beat Rod Laver and Renée Schuurman to take the mixed doubles there. In 1957, in partnership with the Australian Jill Langley, he made it to the Australian Open mixed doubles final, losing to an Australian pair, Mal Anderson and Fay Muller.
His Davis Cup career began as a player in 1955, and over the following nine years he played 43 matches in the competition, including doubles, winning 27 of them and appearing in the squad that made it to the semi-finals in 1963.
The year before that, Knight had been struck by tragedy when his mother, who had been his constant companion at tournaments throughout his early career, was killed in a car crash that also seriously injured his father. He insisted on making himself available for the British team in the Davis Cup shortly afterwards, despite the new responsibilities that had been thrust upon him because his father, temporarily immobilised, needed help at the furniture shop.
Appearing in the Europe zone semi-final in Milan on a day of suffocating heat – a match I found myself covering – he played Fausto Gardini, the long-limbed clay court wizard who was nicknamed the Spider of Milan. Bamboozled by the Italian’s artistry in the first set, Knight lost it 6-1 but had no intention of giving in. Ignoring the fervent support of the Milanese crowd, he chased everything in sight and somehow managed to take the second set 8-6. But by the time he had lost the third 6-3, he had nothing left, and lost the fourth 6-1.
Everyone knew Billy would take the defeat hard, but it was more than that. Missing the team dinner, he disappeared into Milan, drank too much and needed some sympathetic care from his team mates for the rest of the weekend.
However, some light came into Knight’s life, when, at the 1964 Wimbledon players’ party, one of the Lawn Tennis Association secretaries, Jill Beaven, dragged him off the sofa and insisted they dance. They were married later that year.
Knight played his final singles tournament in 1971 at the Cumberland Hard Court Championships. After he stopped playing, he continued to run the family furniture store while also doing some coaching.
Jill died in 2012. He is survived by their three children, Rachel, Jeremy and Daniel, and five grandchildren, Daisy, Jess, Josh, Bella and Arthur.
