AP
In this July 29, 1932 file photo, Sidney Wood, Jr., left, winner of the men's singles finals, receives the Seabright Championship Bowl from Holcombe Ward, chairman of the Tennis Committee, after defeating Gregory Mangin in Sea Bright, N.J. Wood, who in 1931 became the only uncontested winner of a Wimbledon final, died Saturday, January 10, 2009. He was 97.
The son of a mining engineer who once was a partner of the legendary Wyatt Earp in a Nevada mining claim, Sidney Wood overcame childhood illnesses to become a world class tennis player on Wimbledon’s Centre Court, in 1927, at the tender age of 15. A few years later, in 1931 at the age of 19, he won the Gentlemen’s singles championship at the All England Lawn Club.
Born in Black Rock, Connecticut, in 1911, Wood spent his early years in California when his father, Sidney, Sr., moved the family to the YouBet mining camp there. Three years later the family moved to Berkeley. According to Wood, he was a semi-invalid during that time, between the ages of four and eight, but he liked to hit the tennis ball so his father built him a court out of crushed stone from the mine’s rock pile. He says laughingly, "The ball never bounced straight, which accounted for my very short backswing."
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