Shropshire Magazine

In Wimbledon month, Neil Thomas looks back to a time when Shropshire could boast a champion of its own

JT Hartley, Shropshire’s very own Wimbledon champion.

It is difficult to imagine that a little-known Shropshire-born clergyman called John Hartley could have much in common with tennis superstar Roger Federer.

Hartley was of fairly modest means, while Swiss-born Federer is a multi-millionaire.

Federer’s face is recognised across the globe, whereas Hartley is barely known within his native county.

Yet they share a common achievement: both are multiple Wimbledon singles champions.

Yes, Shropshire boasts a men’s singles title winner. It’s an eye-catching record, particularly when you consider that the entire country has failed to throw up one for 72 years (assuming, as I write, that Andy Murray won’t go the distance this year).

Many have tried since Fred Perry lifted the trophy back in 1936. The likes of Mark Cox and Roger Taylor in the 1970s and Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman in the 1990s and early 2000s all flirted with Wimbledon glory (none more so than Henman with four semi-finals).

Yet none can match Hartley’s achievement as a twice winner of the famous championships at SW19.

The name JT Hartley is immortalised in the All England Club hall of fame and record books. John Thorneycroft Hartley could rightfully claim to be one of Shropshire’s most illustrious sons.

In all he played in three finals and was clearly the Boris Becker or Andre Agassi of his era. He lost his title to William Renshaw who went on to win a record six more championships in eight years – clearly the Roger Federer or Pete Sampras of his day.

The fact is, though, that you have to go back quite a way to find their day.

Hartley was born in Tong, near Shifnal, on January 9, 1849, attended Harrow and Oxford, and became a clergyman. Those years of practice on the vicarage lawn helped him to lift his first title in the summer of 1879.

Students of tennis will tell you that 30 is a relatively late age to become men’s singles champion.

Mind you, triumph in Hartley’s day was possibly more straightforward. This was the age when gentlemen wore full-length cream flannels and cricket sweaters and moved about court only marginally faster than Fred Perry’s statue. It’s as well that it was more than a century before service-speed rayguns, which may have seen some players pulled over for dawdling. Today’s serves of up to 140mph would doubtless have been regarded as unsporting and a ‘dashed bad form’.

Not that competitors hung around much. One four-set final was done and dusted in 48 minutes and an hour-long match would have been seen as a marathon. Mind, it was still an amateur sport in those days and players probably contested the final in their lunch hour before hailing a Hansom cab back to work or rushing home to get the tea on.

Advantage

To be fair Hartley did have a major advantage over Murray, Henman, Rusedski et al. In his day a British winner was guaranteed by the simple expedient of there being no foreign entries. It was not until 1884, four years after Hartley’s second triumph, that a trio of Americans, James Dwight, Arthur Rives and Richard Sears became the first overseas competitors.

Hartley, in fact, won only the third ever championship. Yet even in its infancy it was still clearly an all-consuming summer passion for the British tennis fan. Records reveal that 1,100 spectactors saw him defeat Vere St L Goold 6–2, 6–4, 6–2 in the All Comers’ Final.

Hartley, renowned as a steady basecourt player with a persistent return of serve, was clearly not expecting to reach the final, to be held on Monday, and had arranged no cover for Sunday services back in his Yorkshire parish. He made a 500-mile round trip by train at the weekend to fulfil his ecclesiastical duties.

He was the only clergyman ever to win Wimbledon and by supreme irony Irishman Goold was convicted of murder in Monte Carlo in 1907. A clear case of good triumphing over evil.

The format in those early years was for the All Comers’ winner to then play the defending champion in a one-off challenge match to decide the championship.

But in 1879 Patrick Hadow, of Middlesex, did not defend his title and Hartley was awarded the championship on a walkover. He won prize money of 12 guineas and silver cup worth 25 guineas. This year men’s champion will pick up a cheque for £750,000.

The following year Hartley only had to turn up for the final and take on All Comers’ winner, Herbert Fortescue Lawford, of Bayswater, London. Hartley won 6–3, 6–2, 2–6, 6–3.

Hartley clearly had a following by then and two temporary stands had to be erected on the Centre Court to accommodate the 1,300 fans who watched the final.

In 1881 Hartley’s reign came to an end as he lost to All Comers’ winner, the young Charles Renshaw, who revolutionised the men’s game.

If Wimbledon is ever again to see a Shropshire star on its fabled courts, the chances are that tennis clubs such as this one at Cound will have been part of the story.

‘All comers’ might conjure up an image of a mass influx of racquet-wielding challengers, but the first championship in 1877 attracted a grand total of 22 players. Each forked out a guinea entry fee for the privilege of bounding about the manicured surfaces of the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, as it was called in those days to emphasise the pre-eminence of croquet in the set-up.

Hartley went on to become a canon, was Rural Dean of Ripon and died on August 21, 1935, in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, at the grand age of 86.

Now we’re in the age of jet travel, schoolchildren on computers and three-car families. There are televisions in virtually every Western home and sport is a truly shared global experience.

Like a character in an HG Wells story, John Thorneycroft Hartley would barely recognise such a world. Millions tune in to follow Andy Murray’s Wimbledon exploits, cheering every winning shot of a man who has yet to win a Grand Slam title.

Twice a Wimbledon champion, how famous would J T Hartley be today?