Jaroslav Drobný

Jaroslav Drobný (; 12 October 1921 – 13 September 2001) was a world No. 1 amateur tennis and ice hockey champion. He left Czechoslovakia in 1949 and travelled as an Egyptian citizen before becoming a citizen of the United Kingdom in 1959, where he died in 2001. In 1951, he became the first and, to date, only Egyptian to win the French Open, while doing likewise at the Wimbledon Championships in 1954. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1983. He played internationally for the Czechoslovakia men's national ice hockey team, and was inducted in the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame.

Tennis career Drobný began playing tennis at age five, and, as a ball-boy, watched world-class players including compatriot Karel Koželuh. Drobný played in his first Wimbledon Championship in 1938, losing in the first round to Alejandro Russell. After World War II Drobný was good enough to be able to beat Jack Kramer in the fourth round of the 1946 Wimbledon Championship before losing in the semifinals. In 1951 and 1952, he won the French Open, defeating in the final Eric Sturgess and then retaining the title the following year against Frank Sedgman. Drobný was the losing finalist at Wimbledon in both 1949 and 1952 before finally winning it in 1954 by beating Ken Rosewall for the title, the first left-hander to capture Wimbledon since Norman Brookes.

He won three singles titles at the Italian Championships (1950, 1951, and 1953).

Drobný was ranked World No. 1 amateur in 1954 by Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph.

Defection After the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, Drobný became increasingly dissatisfied with the way the communist propaganda used him for its purposes. At the time, he was Czechoslovakia's most renowned athlete together with the long-distance runner Emil Zátopek. Increasingly, it was becoming apparent to Drobný that he was no longer able to travel freely to tournaments and he grew dissatisfied with the new regime. This ultimately resulted in his defection from his native land.

Drobný defected from Czechoslovakia together with a fellow Czech Davis Cup player Vladimír Černík while playing at a tennis tournament in Gstaad, Switzerland on 15 July 1949, after disobeying instructions from the USSR government to not play. "All I had", he wrote later, "was a couple of shirts, the proverbial toothbrush and $50." Drobný and Černík were the core of the Czechoslovak Davis Cup team. Twice, the two of them had carried their country to the Davis Cup semifinals, losing to Australia in 1947 and in 1948. Drobný won 37 of his 43 Davis Cup matches. Drobný is the only male tennis player who ever won a Wimbledon singles title while wearing glasses. Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova are the only female Wimbledon champions wearing glasses. Arthur Ashe, who was known for playing with spectacles, had switched to contact lenses by the time he won Wimbledon in 1975.

Drobný has won the most clay court titles of any one player (over 90).

Ice hockey career From 1938 to 1949 Drobný played center in the Czechoslovak ice hockey league. Drobný could have become the first ever European player to start in the National Hockey League when the Boston Bruins put him on their reserve in 1949. Apparently, he was offered $20,000 to come over to play for Boston but he refused, preferring to remain playing amateur ice hockey and retain the flexibility to play tennis during the summers. The first European to play in the NHL eventually became Ulf Sterner from Sweden when he started for the New York Rangers for the first time on 27 January 1965.

Jaroslav Drobný (r), playing for Egypt, being congratulated by 18-year-old Lew Hoad (l) after Drobný's victory in the final of the 1953 Italian Championships in Rome.

Autobiography In 1955, Jaroslav Drobný published his autobiography titled Champion in Exile. He was married to Rita Anderson Jarvis, onetime English tournament player. He died 13 September 2001 in Tooting, London a month before his 80th birthday.

Grand Slam finals

Singles: 8 (3 titles, 5 runners-up)

Doubles: 4 (1 title, 3 runner-up)

Mixed Doubles: 1 (1 title) ResultYearChampionshipSurfacePartnerOpponentsScoreWin 1948 French Championships Clay Patricia Canning Todd Doris Hart Frank Sedgman 6–3, 3–6, 6–3

Grand Slam singles performance timeline

1 Drobný did not play. His opponent got a walkover.

In popular culture Ivan Blatný wrote a poem called Wimbledon which addresses Drobný.