Larned, "Bill" (William A.)
Tennis
b. Dec. 30, 1872, Summit, NJ
d. Dec. 16, 1926
Larned won the intercollegiate singles championship in 1892, when he was a student at Cornell. However, he was unsuccessful in the national championships until 1901, when he won the singles title at the age of twenty-eight. He went on to win six more national championships, in 1902 and from 1907 through 1911, tying him with Dick Sears and Bill Tilden with seven singles titles.
He was forced to retire after 1911 because of rheumatic fever, which he had contracted while serving in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" in 1898.
An all-around athlete, Larned captained the St. Nicholas hockey team in 1896-97 and was also a fine horseman, golfer, and rifle shot. He invented the steel-framed racquet in 1922 and founded a company to manufacture it. Partially paralyzed by spinal meningitis, he committed suicide shortly before his fifty-fourth birthday.