John Donald ("Don" or "Donnie") Budge (June 13, 1915 – January 26, 2000) was an American tennis champion who was a World No. 1 player for five years, first as an amateur and then as a professional. He is most famous as the first player, male or female, and only American male to win in a single year the four tournaments that comprise the Grand Slam of tennis and second male player to win all 4 Grand Slams in his career after Fred Perry. He won 10 Majors of which six Grand Slams and four Pro Slams, the latter achieved on three different surfaces. Budge was considered to have the best backhand in the history of tennis, at least until the emergence of Ken Rosewall in the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in Oakland, California, Budge was the son of a Scottish immigrant and former football player - his father had played several matches for the Rangers reserve team before emigrating to the United States. Growing up, he played a variety of sports before taking up tennis. He was tall and slim and his height would later help what is still considered one of the most powerful serves of all time.^{[citation needed]} Budge studied at the University of California, Berkeley in late 1933 but left to play tennis with the U.S. Davis Cup auxiliary team.

Frank Kovacs (1919–1990) was an American tennis player in the mid-century; he was known as the "Clown Prince of Tennis" for his on-court antics but was a good enough player to be each year from 1940 to 1951 one of the best five in the world. He stood 6 ft 4 inches tall and had a backhand as good as Donald Budge.

His father was a Hungarian immigrant upholsterer. Probably the most eccentric major player ever,^{[citation needed]} stories of his antics are still told in the tennis world. Once, serving for a match point, he tossed three balls in the air - hitting the middle one for an ace. He was known to jump into the stands to applaud his opponents, and once staged a sit-down strike during a match. He often stopped play so that he could complain about the heavy nap on the balls, and would then shove the offending balls into his mouth so that he could chew on the nap.

Although he showed flashes of brilliance^{[citation needed]} his career results were relatively disappointing. It was said of him that on the right days, when he was briefly "in the zone", he could be unbeatable: Fred Hawthorne, reporter for New York Herald-Tribune who watched nearly all the early matches of the 1941-1942 pro tour thought that Kovacs at his best reached "sheer brilliancy never before excelled", but at other times Frank played "surprisingly poor tennis." For instance in his first pro match, on December 26, 1941 he gave Donald Budge a tennis lesson and as late as 1952, at 33, he was still able to defeat Pancho Gonzales then the best pro in the world.

William Tatem Tilden II (February 10, 1893 - June 5, 1953), nicknamed "Big Bill," was an American tennis player. He is often considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Tilden was the World No. 1 player for seven years, he won 14 Majors including ten Grand Slams and four Pro Slams. Bill Tilden dominated the world of international tennis in the first half of the 1920s. During his 18 year amateur period of 1912-30, he won 138 of 192 tournaments, and had a match record of 907-62, a winning percentage of 93.6 percent.

Tilden was born into a wealthy Philadelphia family bereaved by the death of three older siblings. He lost his semi-invalid mother when he was 18 and, even though his father was still alive and maintained a large house staffed with servants, was sent a few houses away to live with a maiden aunt. The loss at 22 of his father and older brother marked him deeply. After several months of deep depression, and with encouragement from his aunt, tennis, which he had taken up starting at age five, became his primary means of recovery. According to his biographer, Frank Deford, because of his early family losses Tilden spent all of his adult life attempting to create a father-son relationship with a long succession of ball boys and youthful tennis protégés, of whom Vinnie Richards was the most noted. In spite of his worldwide travels, Tilden lived at his aunt's house until 1941 when he was 48 years old.

William Richards (6 October 1874 – 12 February 1926) was an English footballer who played as a centre-forward.

Richards was born in West Bromwich and turned professional with West Bromwich Albion in July 1894. He scored on his debut to help Albion beat Wolves 5–1 in September 1894. Richards picked up a runners-up medal in the 1895 FA Cup Final and was the club's top scorer in the 1895–96 and 1898–99 seasons. He was transferred to Newton Heath in April 1901 for a £40 fee and the following year moved to Stourbridge on a free transfer. In September 1904 he joined Halesowen Town, where he ended his playing career, retiring in April 1907. He died in West Bromwich in 1926.

Frederick John Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) was a championship-winning English tennis and table tennis player who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slams and two Pro Slams. Perry won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships between 1934 and 1936 and was World No. 1 four years in a row. Perry also became the last British player to win the men's Wimbledon championship in 1936.

Perry was the first player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles (though not all in the same year) and completed this "Career Grand Slam" at the age of 26. Although Perry began his tennis career aged 18, he was also a Table Tennis World Champion in 1929.

In 1933, Perry helped lead the Great Britain team to victory over France in the Davis Cup; the team's first success since 1912, followed by wins over the United States in 1934, 1935, and a fourth consecutive title with victory over Australia in 1936.

Perry was acclaimed across the tennis world, but was not universally admired in his homeland, and was widely ostracised by the tennis establishment for turning professional after completing a hat-trick of Wimbledon singles triumphs. After becoming disillusioned with the class-conscious nature of the Lawn Tennis Club of Great Britain, the working-class Perry moved to the United States before becoming a naturalised US citizen in 1938. In 1942, he was drafted into the US Air Force during the Second World War.