John Herbert Crawford, known as Jack Crawford, was a great Australian tennis player of the 1930s who is largely forgotten today. He was born March 22, 1908, in Albury, New South Wales, Australia, and died September 10, 1991. Although he won a number of major championship titles, he is best known, perhaps, for nearly completing the Grand Slam achievement of winning the major four titles in a single year five years before Don Budge accomplished it for the first time.

Career

In 1933 Crawford had won the Australian, French, and British (Wimbledon) championships before coming to the United States to compete in the American championships at Forest Hills. An asthmatic who suffered in the muggy summer heat of Long Island, he was leading the Englishman Fred Perry in the finals of the championship by two sets to one when his strength began to fade. He lost the match, and tennis immortality, by the final score of 3-6, 13-11, 6-4, 0-6, 1-6.

He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 1979.