player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameKarel
LastnameKozeluh (Koželuh)
GenderMale
CountryCzechoslovakia
Date of birth1896-03-07
Place of birthPraha, Czechoslovakia
Date of death1950-04-27
Place of deathKlanovice, Czechoslovakia

About

The following piece was translated from the original article in Czech, which can be accessed here: https://sport.aktualne.cz/tenis/zahadna-nehoda-vzala-zivot-legendarnimu-ceskemu-vseumelovi-u/r~af500e9e884811eab1110cc47ab5f122/

In 1950, a mysterious accident took the life of the legendary Czech jack-of-all-trades. 70 years have passed since then.

The interwar years were blessed with multi-talented athletes who mastered several disciplines at the highest level. The most brilliant example was Karel Koželuh, who died tragically in a car accident on April 27, 1950.

He scored goals as a member of the football team “iron” Sparta, won the title of European champions with a hockey stick in his hands, and was even one of the best in the world in tennis. Karel Koželuh was born in 1895 in Prague, into a large and poor family of bakers. Almost all of his siblings had athletic talent.

At the age of fourteen, he was already working for an apartment and food as a tennis coach in Munich, where he went after Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk himself interceded for him with his parents, (perhaps because he and the later president shared the same date of birth: March 7.

Koželuh drew significant attention to himself for the first time in 1914, when, as a nineteen-year-old youth, he started in attack for Sparta, where he met, for example, the king of comedians, Vlasta Burian, who at that time was defending the goal for Letenská. Although he played only 46 games for Sparta, Koželuh scored 34 goals.

He later put the perfect physical condition he had acquired from playing football and hockey to excellent use on the tennis courts. He destroyed his opponents in professional tournaments with shots from the baseline, which he distributed tirelessly to the sidelines.

In 1925, Koželuh became world professional tennis champion for the first time, after which he was welcomed in Prague by several tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters. He won the world professional tennis championships tournament, later called the Bristol Cup, six more times. Earlier in the same year, he had helped Czechoslovakia win gold at the European Championships in Strbské Pleso and Staré Smokovec, when the match against Switzerland was decided by a single goal.

Although Koželuh could not participate in amateur tennis tournaments, including the majors, because he made a living from tennis, he gained increasing admiration. During his tennis career, he won three U.S. professional championships (1929, 1932 and 1937) and a similar tournament in France in 1930.

“The faster the ball goes to Koželuh’s side of the court, the faster it comes back,” the press proclaimed in his heyday. American tennis player Vinnie Richards, in turn, declared that Koželuh was: “The Fred Astaire of the tennis court, on which he dances while sending flawless shots over the net.”

In New York, Koželuh played in front of spectators at a sold-out Madison Square Garden; in Los Angeles his art was admired by stars like Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo; he taught the basics of tennis to a little boy named George Walker Bush, who later became the U.S. president.

After the end of his tennis career, Koželuh remained loyal to the white sport as a coach. Don Budge, winner of the Grand Slam in 1938, also passed through his hands. Between 1947 and 1949, Koželuh was captain of the Czechoslovakian Davis Cup team.

When the communists came to power in Czechoslovakia, Koželuh’s sports goods store on Wenceslas Square in Prague was confiscated, so he began to work as a physical education officer at a company called Stavobet. On April 27, 1950, Koželuh was travelling by car with a colleague after a company party. On a completely clear stretch of road in Újezd nad Lesy, near Prague, they ran into a truck. Koželuh and the driver succumbed to their injuries, so there was no one to explain the mysterious accident.

In addition, Koželuh’s wife Miroslava ended up behind bars for three years after the communists sentenced her for keeping unregistered jewelry if the form of gold trophies and prizes.

In July 2006, Karel Koželuh was posthumously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. He thus joined Jan Kodeš, Hana Mandlíková, Jaroslav Drobný, Ivan Lendl, Martina Navrátilová and Jana Novotná. Koželuh's great-niece Miroslava Bendlová was part of the Czechoslovakian team that won the Federation Cup in 1975 and also reached the quarter-finals of the women’s singles event at the French Open in 1978.

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5 thoughts on “player”

Nick says:

February 4, 2026 at 7:37 am

Hello! I’d like to bring to your attention that after recent updates to the site, the player search has become less efficient. Specifically:

1. A single search now returns no more than 30 results.
2. The alphabetical order of the results is gone.
3. As far as I understand, it’s now impossible to find a player by two or three letters, while three-letter last names are very common (for example, Lee, Dod, etc.; Tommy Ho can only be found by his full name).
4. It’s also impossible to find a player by their last name and first initial if they also have a middle initial. E.g., searching for “A. White” returns results like “A. White” and “T.A. White,” but not “A.G. White”. This was previously the exact opposite, and it would be great to combine the previous and current options so that the same search for “A. White” would return all three results.
5. Results now also include last names/first names that contain last names/first names from the search. E.g., the query “Bell” returns results like “Campbell,” while the query “Clint” returns results like “McClintock.” This is debatable, as it could, on the other hand, find players with double last names or players with last names close to the ones you search (like “Carroll” – “O’Carroll”). However, it’s probably better to eliminate cases like the second example, where a word in the query is the middle of the returned result. Because if someone searches for a player using the query “Clint,” a player with the last name “McClintock” is unlikely to be relevant and would clutter the results.

I hope these issues are resolved, as I believe this would help many site users. Thanks in advance!

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Nick says:

February 4, 2026 at 7:41 am

Regarding point 4, I’d like to add that a similar problem exists with full names. For example, Reginald Arthur Gamble can be found by searching for “Arthur Gamble,” but not “Reginald Gamble.”

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Roland Mittelberger says:

February 12, 2026 at 11:11 pm

New South Wales Hard Court Championship 1924

Round 1:
E.A. Busby vs. S.L. Barden 6-1 4-6 6-1
C.V. Todd vs. A. Lloyd (AUS) 6-0 6-0
A.G. Gavin vs. Dr. H.T. Illingworth 4-6 6-2 9-7
B. Whiteley vs. J.W. Elliott walkover
A. Fitzgerald vs. R.M. Kidston 6-4 3-6 6-4
G.J. Perry bye
S. Cameron bye
G. Collins bye
A.N. Peach bye
W.J. Matchett vs. E. Orth 7-5 5-7 6-4
P. Laverack vs. W.M. Blekemore 6-4 3-6 6-3
Ron P. Bulman vs. R.O. Palmer 6-1 6-1

1. S.L. Barden (AUS)

2. J.W. Elliott (AUS)

3. E. Orth (AUS)

4. W.M. Blekemore (AUS)

5. Ron P. Bulman (AUS) is in your database R.P. Bulman

6. R.O. Palmer (AUS)

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Roland Mittelberger says:

February 17, 2026 at 11:24 am

From: 1952 Apr 11 – 1952 Apr 15 Source: The Age

Bendigo Easter Tournament 1952

Surface: Grass
Place/court: Bendigo, Quarry Hill Tennis Club Courts

Semifinals:
L.B. Brodie vs. W.H. Beischer 6-1 6-3
J.K. Wilson vs. W.E. Anstee 4-6 6-3 6-4

Final: 1952-04-15
L.B. Brodie vs. J.K. Wilson 6-3 6-2

W.H. Beischer (AUS)

Bendigo Easter Tournament:

Surface: Clay from 1913 – 1928
Surface: Grass from 1929 – present

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Roland Mittelberger says:

February 18, 2026 at 3:58 pm

Bendigo Easter Tournament 1952

Place/court: Bendigo, Quarry Hill Tennis Club Courts

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