Owen Davidson, Who Won 8 Grand Slams With Billie Jean King, Dies at 79

Owen Davidson, an Australian tennis participant who fashioned a dominant combined doubles workforce with Billie Jean King within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, profitable eight Grand Slam titles together with her, together with 5 doubles titles with different companions, died on Friday in Conroe, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He was 79.

The trigger was most cancers, his longtime buddy Isabel Suliga mentioned.

Davidson got here of age throughout a heyday for Australian tennis, with friends like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe and Margaret Court.

Unlike these gamers, Davidson didn’t have vital success in singles tennis, by no means advancing past the semifinals of a Grand Slam match. But his congeniality, sportsmanship, lob-inducing serve and adroitness in volleys made him one of many sport’s strongest doubles gamers.

From 1965 to 1974, he gained 11 main combined doubles titles and two males’s doubles titles. In 1967, he swept each main combined doubles occasion, profitable the Australian Open along with his countrywoman Lesley Turner Bowrey after which profitable the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with King.

Davidson and King educated collectively beginning in 1964 within the suburbs of Melbourne with the Australian nice Mervyn Rose. On her first day in camp, King felt despatched across the court docket “like a pinball” fielding photographs from Davidson, she recalled in her 2021 autobiography, “All In.”

“I’ve always said the Australian men made me No. 1, and those sessions were an important part of it,” she wrote.

The duo gained their first Grand Slam in 1967 on the French Open.

“I played mixed with so many great players, but I couldn’t win with the others,” King recalled in a cellphone interview, mentioning main males she had partnered with, like Newcombe and Dennis Ralston.

She and Davidson, conversely, struck a harmonious steadiness between her optimism and competitiveness and his steadiness and modesty. “He wasn’t Mr. Exuberant,” she mentioned. “He’s more Steady Eddy.”

Davidson’s athletic strengths included his highly effective overhead on his weak proper aspect; his serve, which King in comparison with a cricket bowler’s supply; and his workforce play on the web.

“He let me take a lot of volleys that most guys would not,” King mentioned. “They would get in and try to take the volley first.”

That was significantly helpful throughout the duo’s epic face-off towards Court and Marty Riessen at Wimbledon in 1971.

Davidson and King misplaced the primary set 3-6 and gained the following one 6-2. The closing set remained undecided after 27 video games.

“We all four would be at net, just pounding away at each other,” King mentioned.

Wimbledon’s guidelines then stipulated {that a} closing set needed to be gained by two video games. King noticed the solar starting to set, threatening to delay the conclusion of the match to the following day.

“I said to him, ‘Owen, we have to finish this, we cannot wait until tomorrow,’” King recalled. “I’m kind of the cheerleader. He said, ‘OK. Let’s go.’”

Davidson and King gained the ultimate set 15-13.

Owen Keir Davidson was born on Oct. 4, 1943, in Melbourne.

As a singles participant, he gained the primary recreation of the so-called Open Era, when the main tennis tournaments welcomed each amateurs and professionals.

In that recreation, in April 1968 on the West Hants Tennis Club of Bournemouth, a city on the coast of southern England, Davidson, who was a professional, beat the British newbie John Clifton, 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 8-6. He misplaced within the quarterfinals to Rosewall.

He additionally reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 1966, upsetting Emerson however shedding to the Spanish participant Manuel Santana.

Davidson’s first marriage, to Angie Davidson, led to divorce. His second marriage, to Arlene Davidson, lasted about 20 years, till her demise a few decade in the past.

He is survived by his son from his first marriage, Cameron, and a brother, Trevor. He lived close to Conroe in The Woodlands, a deliberate neighborhood whose nation membership Davidson had labored at as a tennis professional on and off since 1974.

With King lobbying on his behalf, Davidson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010.

Every time King referred to as Davidson, he gave the impression to be watching Tennis Channel. “What do you think of this player or that player?” she recalled him asking. He had, King mentioned, “a good eye for who was going to do well and who wasn’t.”