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

    In the 1960s and ’70s, he and King dominated mixed doubles tournaments. He was also known for his congeniality, sportsmanship and skill at the net.Owen Davidson, an Australian tennis player who formed a dominant mixed doubles team with Billie Jean King in the 1960s and ’70s, winning eight Grand Slam titles with her, along with five doubles titles with other partners, died on Friday in Conroe, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He was 79.The cause was cancer, his longtime friend Isabel Suliga said.Davidson came of age during a heyday for Australian tennis, with peers like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe and Margaret Court.Unlike those players, Davidson did not have significant success in singles tennis, never advancing beyond the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament. But his congeniality, sportsmanship, lob-inducing serve and adroitness in volleys made him one of the sport’s strongest doubles players.From 1965 to 1974, he won 11 major mixed doubles titles and two men’s doubles titles. In 1967, he swept every major mixed doubles event, winning the Australian Open with his countrywoman Lesley Turner Bowrey and then winning the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with King.Davidson and King trained together starting in 1964 in the suburbs of Melbourne with the Australian great Mervyn Rose. On her first day in camp, King felt sent around the court “like a pinball” fielding shots 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 won their first Grand Slam in 1967 at the French Open.“I played mixed with so many great players, but I couldn’t win with the others,” King recalled in a phone interview, mentioning leading men she had partnered with, like Newcombe and Dennis Ralston.She and Davidson, conversely, struck a harmonious balance between her optimism and competitiveness and his steadiness and modesty. “He wasn’t Mr. Exuberant,” she said. “He’s more Steady Eddy.”Davidson competing in 1966 against Tom Okker of the Netherlands at Wimbledon. Davidson went on to reach the semifinals.PA Images, via Getty ImagesDavidson’s athletic strengths included his powerful overhead on his weak right side; his serve, which King compared to a cricket bowler’s delivery; and his team play at the net.“He let me take a lot of volleys that most guys would not,” King said. “They would get in and try to take the volley first.”That was particularly useful during the duo’s epic face-off against Court and Marty Riessen at Wimbledon in 1971.Davidson and King lost the first set 3-6 and won the next one 6-2. The final set remained undecided after 27 games.“We all four would be at net, just pounding away at each other,” King said.Wimbledon’s rules then stipulated that a final set had to be won by two games. King saw the sun beginning to set, threatening to delay the conclusion of the match to the next 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 won the final set 15-13.Owen Keir Davidson was born on Oct. 4, 1943, in Melbourne.As a singles player, he won the first game of the so-called Open Era, when the major tennis tournaments welcomed both amateurs and professionals.In that game, in April 1968 at the West Hants Tennis Club of Bournemouth, a town on the coast of southern England, Davidson, who was a pro, beat the British amateur John Clifton, 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 8-6. He lost in the quarterfinals to Rosewall.He also reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 1966, upsetting Emerson but losing to the Spanish player Manuel Santana.Davidson in 2011 with a statue of himself. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame the year before.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesDavidson’s first marriage, to Angie Davidson, ended in divorce. His second marriage, to Arlene Davidson, lasted about 20 years, until her death about a decade ago.He is survived by his son from his first marriage, Cameron, and a brother, Trevor. He lived near Conroe in The Woodlands, a planned community whose country club Davidson had worked at as a tennis pro 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 called Davidson, he seemed to be watching Tennis Channel. “What do you think of this player or that player?” she recalled him asking. He had, King said, “a good eye for who was going to do well and who wasn’t.” More

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    Don January, Who Won the 1967 P.G.A. Title, Is Dead at 93

    He won 10 tournaments in 10 different years on the PGA Tour and was an early star on the senior Champions Tour.Don January, who won the 1967 P.G.A. Championship and became one of the early stars on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade, died on Sunday at his home in Dallas. He was 93. His death was announced by the PGA Tour.“I’m just a damned old pro from Dallas, Texas, who was lucky enough to have a swing that lasted for a while,” January told Sports Illustrated in 1998, the year before he retired.January, who turned pro in 1955, won 10 PGA Tour events in 10 different years, most notably the 1967 P.G.A. Championship, when he defeated his fellow Texan Don Massengale by two strokes in a playoff at the Columbine Country Club near Denver. Six years earlier, he was beaten by Jerry Barber in a P.G.A. Championship playoff.January, at 46, won the Vardon Trophy for the PGA Tour’s lowest scoring average, 70.56, in 1976, the same year he captured the Tournament of Champions. He played on victorious Ryder Cup teams in 1965 and 1977.The idea for a Senior Tour received a boost in 1979 when Roberto De Vicenzo teamed with Julius Boros to defeat Tommy Bolt and Art Wall Jr. on the sixth hole of a playoff in the Legends of Golf, a made-for-television competition in its second year, showcasing two-man teams of older players.January in 2015 at the Greats of Golf Scramble at the Woodlands Country Club in Texas. He was an early star on golf’s Senior Tour, winning 22 events in its first decade.Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire/Corbis, via Getty Images“I was playing on the regular tour at New Orleans and didn’t see the show,” January recalled in a 1985 interview with The Los Angeles Times. “But all we heard the rest of 1979 on the tour was what a sensation it was.”In January 1980, January met with his fellow pros Gardner Dickinson, Sam Snead, Bob Goalby, Dan Sikes and Boros to help lay the groundwork for the PGA Tour to create a Senior Tour.As January remembered it, his small group of pros “decided there might be a market for a modest tour,” though “we had no idea it would grow the way it did.”January won the Senior Tour’s first event, the Atlantic City Seniors, which attracted 50 pro golfers and 12 amateurs age 50 or older. He earned only $20,000 (the equivalent of about $73,000 today) for capturing the June 1980 tournament, but senior events, now part of the Champions Tour, have proved a lucrative showcase for many of the game’s leading players 50 and over.January won the tour’s P.G.A. Seniors’ Championship in 1982, and three years later he became the first player with $1 million in winnings as a senior (about $2.8 million in today’s money). He gained his 22nd and final senior victory in 1987.Donald Ray January was born on Nov. 29, 1929, in Plainview, Texas, the son of a roofing contractor. The family moved to Dallas when he was a child, and he began hitting golf balls at age 8 on a municipal course.January played on N.C.A.A. championship teams at North Texas State College in Denton (now the University of North Texas), then served in the Air Force before turning pro. His first PGA Tour victory came in 1956, when he won the Dallas Centennial Open. He lost four times in playoffs before besting Massengale in an 18-hole playoff at the 1967 P.G.A. Championship.January quit the PGA Tour in 1972 to design golf courses, but the venture proved unsuccessful financially, and he returned two years later. His last regular tour victory came in 1976, in the MONY Tournament of Champions (now the Sentry Tournament of Champions, held in early January on the island of Maui in Hawaii), though he continued to play on the regular tour until 1984 while competing as a senior player.He is survived by a daughter, Cherie Depuy; two sons, Tim and Richard; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.He was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1979.For many years, January sponsored the Don January Golf Classic in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to fund scholarships at the University of North Texas.A lanky 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, January was an unflappable figure as he walked the courses, his shirt collar tucked up. As he told The Dallas Morning News in 1999: “People thought I was a cool cat from east Dallas. All I was trying to do was to keep the back of my neck from sunburn so I could sleep on it.”His dry wit was in evidence after he won the P.G.A. Championship, when he was asked about his approach to golf. “Just tee up and hit it,” he said, “and when you find it, hit it again.” More

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    Willis Reed, Hall of Fame Center for Champion Knicks, Dies at 80

    He was beloved by New York fans for his willingness to play hurt, as memorably exemplified in the decisive Game 7 of the 1970 N.B.A. finals at Madison Square Garden.Willis Reed, the brawny and inspirational hub of two Knicks championship teams that captivated New York in the early 1970s with a canny, team-oriented style of play, died on Tuesday. He was 80.His death was confirmed by his former teammate Bill Bradley, the former United States senator. He said Reed had congestive heart issues. It was not clear where Reed died, but he had been under treatment at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Bradley said.Reed was notably absent last month, for health reasons, when the Knicks celebrated their 1972-73 championship team during a 50th-anniversary halftime ceremony at Madison Square Garden attended by many former members of that squad, including Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas. Reed spoke to the crowd in a prerecorded video.In an era when Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain were the more celebrated big men, Reed was a highly skilled 6-foot-9 center with a resolute physicality that was much admired over a 10-year career, though it was marred by injury and ended at 31.It was Reed’s willingness to play hurt that brought him his greatest measure of respect and fame, and his grittiness was never more exemplified and celebrated than on May 8, 1970, in the decisive game of the National Basketball Association finals.Days earlier, he had torn a right tensor muscle, which originates in the hip and extends to the thigh, while driving to the basket on Chamberlain during the first quarter of Game 5 at Madison Square Garden — a game the Knicks rallied to win without him. Saving whatever he had left for a possible Game 7, he sat out Game 6 in Los Angeles, in which Chamberlain scored 45 points.When the Knicks went out to warm up before the start of Game 7, Reed stayed behind in the trainer’s room for treatment. As everyone in the packed Garden anxiously awaited word on whether he would play, he made his way stiff-legged through the players’ tunnel and emerged to a crescendo of cheers to join his teammates, who were already warming up.“You’re five stories above the ground and I swear you could feel the vibrations,” Reed said in 2009. “I thought, this is what an earthquake must feel like.”Limping noticeably, he hit his first two southpaw jump shots for his only points of the game. Frazier carried the Knicks from there, with 36 points and 19 assists, and the Knicks, with a 113-99 victory, clinched the franchise’s first title.In 1990, around the 20th anniversary of Game 7, Reed told The New York Times: “There isn’t a day in my life that people don’t remind me of that game.”Heroism Under DuressHis threshold for tolerating pain — however much dulled that night by pregame injections of carbocaine, a powerful derivative of novocaine — has for decades been invoked as a standard measure, a “Willis Reed moment,” for athletic heroism under physical duress.“It was the best example of inspiration by an individual in a sporting event I’ve ever seen,” Bradley once said.Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.After his playing days, Reed was a coach or executive for the Knicks, the New Jersey Nets and the New Orleans Hornets. He was part of the Nets’ front office when the team lost consecutive N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003. He also coached at Creighton University from 1981 to 1985, and was an assistant coach in the N.B.A. for the Atlanta Hawks and the Sacramento Kings.Reed, a Louisiana native, was an avid outdoorsman. His hobby fit his playing persona as a rugged, proud man whose patience wore thin with those who challenged or crossed him.The Knicks’ starting five after winning a playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks in 1970. From left were Dick Barnett, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Reed. Dan Farrell/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty ImagesOn Oct. 18, 1966, at Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Lakers learned the hard way that Reed was no one to fool with. Beginning his third season with the Knicks, Reed was embroiled in a battle with the Lakers’ Rudy LaRusso, a bruising 6-foot-7 forward. Throughout the game, Reed had been complaining to the officials about LaRusso’s tactics, but when his pleas were ignored he acted on his own.Lined up at the free-throw line late in the third quarter, Reed elbowed LaRusso to the side of the head. On the way up court, LaRusso responded with a chopping punch. Reed, in a sudden fury, shook off Darrall Imhoff’s bear hug from behind and floored the 6-foot-10 Imhoff, cutting him near the eye; he broke the nose of John Block, a 6-foot-9 rookie, who had foolishly stepped into his space; and he finally chased LaRusso into the Lakers’ bench, throwing wild punches and sending several of the players fleeing from Reed’s range.A grainy black-and-white film of the melee surfaced in 2014 in an ESPN documentary on the Knicks teams of the early 1970s. In the film, “When the Garden Was Eden,” Reed sheepishly called it “a good fight.”He also recalled being upset that none of his teammates had joined the fray and noted their reticence in the postgame locker room. Barnett later said that he had remarked, “Man, you were winning.”A Gentle GiantOff the court, Reed was a much gentler giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Within the Knicks organization, he was known to be generous with teammates in an era when financial rewards in professional sports were not as substantial as they are today.“Willis would always take the rookies under his wing,” Frazier, a Hall of Fame guard on those championship teams, was quoted as saying in “Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks,” written by Dennis D’Agostino and published in 2003. “He would loan you his car or money. That was his personality.”He was also recognized as a natural leader. Shortly after the brawl with the Lakers, he was named team captain — a role he had filled for his high school basketball and football teams and during his junior and senior seasons as a star at the historically Black Grambling College (now Grambling State University). He was just 24.Reed after the Knicks beat the Lakers on May 8, 1970. Off the court, he was a gentle giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Associated Press‘We Made the Best of It’Willis Reed Jr. was born on June 25, 1942, in Hico, La., the only child of Willis and Inell Reed. As a young boy, he lived on a 200-acre farm owned by his grandparents, Baptist teetotalers who preached commitment and hard work.When Reed reached school age, his parents moved about 10 miles away to Bernice, a town of three square miles in north central Louisiana that was then a thriving lumber and agricultural community. His father worked in a sawmill factory, and his mother worked as a domestic.Reed grew up with an acute sense of what Jim Crow law meant: separate but not really equal. “Didn’t have the houses the white folks have, didn’t have a car,” he said in 2009. “But the situation was what it was. We made the best of it in Bernice until it changed.”Still, Reed always maintained, he never harbored ill feelings for white people. He believed that attending an all-Black high school, Westside, a few miles from Bernice, provided role models for him he might not have had in an integrated school.Reed attempted to block a shot by Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics in a mid-1960s game at Madison Square Garden.Ken Regan/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMost prominent was the school’s basketball coach, Lendon Stone, who wore a jacket and tie to school every day and demonstrated to Reed that he could avoid the backbreaking work his father did.Reed majored in physical education at Grambling and planned on being a teacher until he became a dominant player, averaging 26.6 points and 21.3 rebounds per game as a senior. The Knicks drafted him with the first pick of the second round in 1964, after 10 other players had been chosen. With their first-round pick, the Knicks selected another big man, Jim Barnes, who had beaten Reed out for a spot on the 1964 United States Olympic team.Reed believed he was better than Barnes and most of the other first-round picks, and he was determined to prove it. When he was offered his first Knicks contract, for $11,000 with a $3,000 signing bonus, he told Eddie Donovan, the team’s general manager, that he wanted a bigger bonus. Told that the team wanted him to earn it on the court, Reed accepted the challenge and vowed to make Donovan pay him after the season.As team captain, Reed took his leadership responsibilities seriously, and Red Holzman, his coach, relied on him to motivate and police teammates as the Knicks improved dramatically from the middle to the late 1960s.They narrowly missed making the N.B.A. finals in 1969, losing a tough six-game series to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. With Russell retired by the next season, the Knicks reeled off 17 early-season victories in a row, equaling a record then held by Boston.Reed battled for the ball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks, then known as Lew Alcindor, in a 1970 Eastern Division playoff game.Associated PressTriumphs and ChallengesThey appeared to be a team of destiny. But along the way to the championship there were significant challenges, one of which was internal and demanded Reed’s exceptional leadership to quell a festering internal conflict.In mid-January of that season, Cazzie Russell, the Knicks’ best offensive substitute, was late to a practice on an off-day in Detroit. Driving out of Ann Arbor, where he was visiting with friends, Russell was pulled over by the police and ordered out of the car at gunpoint. When he produced a driver’s license, the officers apologized and explained that an African American male with a beard had broken out of prison. Russell, who was African American, had a beard.Upon arriving at practice, upset by what he considered to be a case of racial profiling, Russell began throwing elbows at the Knicks’ white players, in particular Bradley, a college rival at Princeton who had joined the Knicks after Russell and who eventually took his starting forward position.Reed halted the scrimmage, approached Russell and asked what he was doing. In “The Open Man,” a diary of the 1969-70 season, the Knicks’ Hall of Fame forward Dave DeBusschere recalled that Russell blurted out, “Be quiet, Uncle Tom.”For Reed, a child of the segregated South, it was deeply offensive to be spoken to in such a way, especially in front of his teammates. Russell quickly realized the risk he had taken. He had made his N.B.A. debut in 1966 on the night Reed brawled with the Lakers.Reed returned to Madison Square Garden in 2010 to join his former teammates in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Knicks’ first championship.Jason Szenes/The New York TimesBut when Reed was at Grambling in the early 1960s, his team occasionally competed against white teams in the national small-college tournament. His coach, Fred Hobdy, admonished his players about allowing the incendiary issue of race to infect their mental preparation and execution.“He used to say, ‘Listen, you guys are athletes, and you don’t need to be out there demonstrating — the best thing you can do is what you do best,’” Reed said in 2009.On the Knicks, which had Black and white players, Reed intuitively recognized the danger of the team splintering or Russell being emasculated if he overreacted to the insult.Reed stepped forward and issued a blunt warning to Russell: Be quiet, play the right way, or “this Uncle Tom will be kicking some ass.” Given a moment to gather himself, Russell apologized.The Knicks kept winning, and Russell helped them hold off the Baltimore Bullets in the decisive game of a first-round playoff series, on a night when Bradley played poorly and the team needed a fourth-quarter lift.Recalling the incident in 2010 when he was back in New York for a 40th-anniversary celebration, Russell called Reed “an amazing man.”Bradley said the incident with Russell captured the essence of Reed, whom he called “a strong and selfless leader, who was the heart of our team.“Even as the league’s M.V.P.,” Bradley continued, “he knew that the individual was never as important as the team, and that points were transitory, championships were forever.”Reed’s greatest triumphs were the two championships in New York, but his most deflating career moment also came at Madison Square Garden. On Nov. 10, 1978, he was summoned there by Sonny Werblin, the Garden’s president, and fired just 14 games into his second season as Knicks coach, despite having made the playoffs in the previous season.Reed did return to the Knicks in a nominal administrative role around the turn of the century. But he accepted an offer to join the New Orleans front office as vice president of basketball operations in June 2003. His widowed mother’s health was failing, and he relished the opportunity to be closer to the home he had built for her in Bernice.The plan went awry when Inell Reed died four months later.Reed’s survivors include his second wife, Gale Kennedy, and a daughter, Veronica, whom he had with his first wife, Geraldine (Oliver) Reed. A son, Karl, also from his first marriage, died in 2017 at 53. In 2005, the New Orleans franchise was temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, approaching his 65th birthday, Reed retired from basketball.On a lush, sprawling property not far from Grambling, with oak trees and man-made streams, Reed built a home far from the bright lights of New York, where he could count on being recognized and extolled by baby boomers on sight.Upon his retirement, Reed told The Times, “Call me in Louisiana and my wife will tell you I’ve gone fishing.” More

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    Just Fontaine, Record-Setting French Soccer Star, Dies at 89

    His stellar career was cut short by injury, but he made his mark by scoring 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup.Just Fontaine, the French soccer star who scored a record 13 goals at the 1958 World Cup, died on Wednesday. He was 89.Fontaine’s former club Reims and the French soccer federation announced his death, but did not say where he died or cite a cause.Fontaine took six games to achieve his feat at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, when he was a last-minute inclusion on the French squad.Entering the tournament, Fontaine, a forward, was little known outside the French league. Yet he tormented opponents with his speed and finishing touch, even though had to borrow a pair of cleats after damaging his own boots in practice.Fontaine scored four goals in the third-place game against West Germany, and he could have had five if he had taken the penalty kick.In addition to his feats with the national team, Fontaine won the French league title four times, won the French Cup and reached the final of the 1959 European Cup during his career with Casablanca, Nice and Reims.The French soccer federation said there would be tributes to Fontaine across France this weekend, with a “minute of homage” that will also be observed on Wednesday before French Cup games at Toulouse, Marseille and Nantes.The highest scorer at a World Cup tournament is now acknowledged with the Golden Boot award. FIFA did not begin presenting that award until after Fontaine set the record.“Beating my record? I don’t think it can ever be done,” Fontaine told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. “The person who wants to beat me has a massive task, doesn’t he? He has to score two goals per game over seven games.”Playing in the days when no substitutions were allowed, France lost in the semifinals, 5-2, to a Brazil team featuring the 17-year-old Pelé.The men’s record for most goals scored in a World Cup career is 16, by the Germany striker Miroslav Klose, who played in four tournaments. Fontaine, who broke the record of 11 goals scored by the Hungary striker Sandor Kocsis at the 1954 tournament, played in only one World Cup.The Brazil striker Marta has scored 17 goals in five Women’s World Cup tournaments.Fontaine scored 200 goals in 213 games, including 30 goals in 21 games for France. But his career was cut short when he was only 28.Renowned for his lightning pace and ruthless finishing, Fontaine suffered a serious leg fracture after a mistimed tackle in March 1960. He retired as a player just after his 29th birthday. He briefly coached France’s national team before going on to coach Luchon, Paris Saint-Germain, Toulouse and the Moroccan national team.Just Fontaine was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Aug. 18, 1933. Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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    John Motson, BBC’s Voice of Soccer for Five Decades, Dies at 77

    The broadcaster announced English soccer’s biggest moments, including 10 World Cups.John Motson, the soccer commentator whose animated voice was inseparable from many of the sport’s biggest moments over his 50 years at the BBC, died on Thursday. He was 77.The BBC confirmed his death, citing a statement from his family. The family did not specify a cause but said he “died peacefully in his sleep.”The network turned to Mr. Motson, who retired in 2018, for its top matches, including 10 World Cups, 10 European Championships and 29 F.A. Cup finals. He also offered analysis on “Match of the Day,” the BBC’s weekly highlights show.“John Motson was the voice of a footballing generation,” the BBC director-general, Tim Davie, said in a statement, adding that “like all the greats behind the mic, John had the right words, at the right time, for all the big moments.”Mr. Motson, often known by his nickname, “Motty,” was born on July 10, 1945, in Salford, England. He dreamed of becoming a print reporter, starting his career when he left school at 16 at the weekly Barnet Press and the daily Sheffield Morning Telegraph, according to a 2008 profile in The Independent.He was selected to participate in a local radio station’s experiment that relied on print reporters. An editor, after hearing his work on the radio, told him: “John, on the evidence of this copy, I really think you should try the world of the voice,” he told The Independent.He thrived on local radio, and joined the BBC in 1968 before starting on “Match of the Day” in 1971. He went on to become the station’s leading voice, calling nearly 2,500 games in his career, including more than 200 involving England’s national team.He was also in Hillsborough Stadium in 1989, when policing mistakes and overcrowding led the deaths of 97 fans of Liverpool’s team. The tragedy, which also saw more than 700 fans injured, has remained in the news decades later.For many soccer fans in Britain, the news of his death inspired remembrances of their favorite calls, many of which were attached to beloved games as they grew to love the sport. Gary Lineker, the current host for “Match of the Day,” was among those paying tribute, saying on Twitter that Mr. Motson was a “quite brilliant commentator and the voice of football in this country for generations.”Mr. Motson is survived by his wife, Anne, and son, Frederick, according to the BBC. More

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    Red McCombs, Car Salesman Turned Media Mogul, Dies at 95

    A Texas entrepreneur, he co-founded the media giant Clear Channel, owned pro sports teams and created more than 400 businesses in a variety of industries.Red McCombs, a former Texas used car dealer who became a billionaire entrepreneur by venturing into an array of successful businesses, including the media giant Clear Channel Communications and several professional sports teams, died on Sunday at his home in San Antonio. He was 95.His family announced his death but did not state the cause.Mr. McCombs was a flamboyant wheeler-dealer who created more than 400 businesses across an array of industries, including oil, real estate, cattle, insurance, movies and racehorses, often selling them at a substantial profit. At various times he owned a pro football team, the Minnesota Vikings, and two pro basketball teams, the San Antonio Spurs and Denver Nuggets.But his heart was in the automobile business, where he began as a standout car salesman in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1950. He went on to start his own dealership, and then expanded it into a network that at its peak in 1998 included more than 100 outlets, making it the largest car dealership in Texas and sixth largest in the United States.“I was an entrepreneur before I knew what the word was and certainly before I could spell it,” Mr. McCombs said in a 2006 radio interview. “New deals, new opportunities, new ventures are always a part of my life.”A University of Texas alumnus and a passionate Longhorns football fan, Mr. McCombs parlayed his love of sports into ownership of a minor-league baseball team in Corpus Christi in the 1950s.Then he bought the Dallas Chaparrals of the old American Basketball Association in 1973, relocated the team to San Antonio for the 1973-74 season and changed its name to the Spurs.When the A.B.A. and N.B.A. merged in 1976, he played a key role in having the Spurs included in the merger. He sold the team in 1982 and acquired the Nuggets, only to sell that franchise in 1985 for $19 million, nearly twice what he’d paid for it. He then repurchased the Spurs for $47 million before selling it in 1993 for $75 million (about $157 million in today’s money).In a statement on Monday, the N.B.A. commissioner, Adam Silver, called Mr. McCombs “a driving force in creating the modern N.B.A.”In 1998, Mr. McCombs purchased the N.F.L.’s Minnesota Vikings for $246 million, but grew impatient with futile attempts to build a new stadium for the team in the Minneapolis area. He sold the Vikings for $600 million in 2005.He also played a key role in bringing Formula One racing to Austin by investing in the Circuit of the Americas, the Austin track where the annual U.S. Grand Prix race has been held since 2012.In a statement on Monday, the Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, called Mr. McCombs “a true Texas titan across sports, media, business and philanthropy” who had “followed his dreams.”Mr. McCombs’s most lucrative venture was Clear Channel, which he co-founded with Lowry Mays in 1972, when they purchased a local radio station in San Antonio, KEEZ-FM, for $125,000. (Mr. Mays died in September at 87.)The two men continued to acquire radio stations, then television stations and billboards around the country. Aided by the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which allowed media conglomerates to own an unlimited number of stations, they built the company into the world’s largest owner of radio stations; by 2000, Clear Channel owned more than 1,200.The company eventually expanded into event promotion, live music and sports management. Mr. Lowry oversaw the business, but Mr. McCombs was instrumental in seizing opportunities to expand, according to John Hogan, the company’s former chairman and chief executive.“He was steadfast in support of the notion that when the telecommunications regulations changed in 1996, we had to move quickly and aggressively, and that those who were slow and hesitant would get left behind,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview for this obituary.Though the company was often criticized for homogenizing radio programming in a way that eliminated much of the local flavor of independent radio stations, the formula was extremely profitable. When Mr. Lowry began to see signs that the internet would disrupt its well-oiled strategy, he and Mr. McCombs sold the company in 2006 for $17.9 billion to a private equity group led by Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners. As part of the deal, the group agreed to take on more than $8 billion in the company’s debt.The timing was perfect for selling. Clear Channel’s fortunes plunged almost immediately. In 2014, the company split into Clear Channel Outdoor, for the billboard business, and iHeartMedia, for the radio stations and other media properties.Red McCombs, left, arrived in Denver in 1983 after buying the Denver Nuggets basketball team. At right was Carl Scheer, the team’s president and general manager.Duane Howell/The Denver Post, via Getty ImagesBilly Joe McCombs was born in the tiny West Texas town of Spur on Oct. 19, 1927. His father, Willie Nathan McCombs, was a sharecropper and later an auto mechanic. His mother, Gladys McCombs, came from a family of farmers.Billy, whose shock of red hair earned him the lifelong nickname “Red,” showed an entrepreneurial bent as early as age 9, when he began selling bags of peanuts to migrant cotton pickers. He was 15 when his family moved to Corpus Christi, where he became a standout high school football player, eventually winning a scholarship to Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. He left college to serve in the Army for two years before returning and enrolling at the University of Texas in 1948 on the G.I. Bill.But he dropped out to start a business career. He landed a job at the local Ford dealership in Corpus Christi and realized that he had found his calling. Just 22, he set a goal of selling a car a day and, by his account, managed to accomplish that feat for three years straight.In 1950, he married Charline Hamblin, who died in 2019 at 91. He is survived by their three daughters, Lynda McCombs, Marsha Shields and Connie McNab; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.After selling new cars for several years, Mr. McCombs realized that he could make more money selling used cars, he wrote in his autobiography, “Big Red: Memoirs of a Texas Entrepreneur and Philanthropist” (2010). New cars, he thought, were all alike, but “every used car is unique” and had a story to tell.“People like stories about the things they might be interested in buying,” he wrote.In 1957, at 29, he opened his first new car dealership, in Corpus Christi. But it sold Edsels, a Ford brand that would become synonymous with automotive failure. Though he sold many cars, he said, he knew that the brand would not survive. (The Edsel was discontinued in 1959.)“I was selling it myself and I could see the resistance,” he said. “We had to shoehorn everyone into it, and after I’d sold them to all my friends, I had nowhere to go. It was time to move on.”He moved to San Antonio in 1958 and there befriended Mr. Mays. The two soon began buying up radio stations, ultimately turning Clear Channel Communications into a behemoth. Mr. McCombs knew the power of radio and outdoor advertising from his experience with auto dealerships.He did his own radio and television commercials for 25 years, becoming a Texas celebrity along the way. He struggled for years with alcoholism and nearly died at age 48 after a serious case of hepatitis. He gave up alcohol then, and often spoke candidly about his addiction.In 2000, Mr. McCombs and his wife gave a gift of $50 million to the University of Texas business school — the single largest donation in the school’s history at the time. It was renamed the McCombs School of Business. He and his wife also donated $30 million to the university’s MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.Mr. McCombs was a major donor to Republican politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and President Donald J. Trump.Of all of his business achievements, Clear Channel was his most significant, Mr. McCombs declared in his autobiography. “I would never have thought I could ever have had a chance to do something like Clear Channel,” he wrote. “That’s why I don’t really believe in long-term plans. There was no way I could have ever planned Clear Channel.” More

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    Chris Ford, Who Made a 3-Point Mark in the N.B.A., Dies at 74

    He helped the Celtics win a title and coached them in the ’90s, but he may be remembered more for sinking what was hailed as the league’s first 3-point shot. Or was it?Chris Ford, who played guard for the Boston Celtics when they won the 1981 N.B.A. championship and later coached the team along with two others in the N.B.A., but who was perhaps best remembered for making the first 3-point shot in the league’s history, died on Tuesday. He was 74.Ford’s family announced his death through the Celtics but did not provide details. The Press of Atlantic City reported that he died in Philadelphia after having a heart attack this month.The N.B.A. instituted the 3-pointer in its 1979-80 season, borrowing the idea from the former American Basketball Association, which had merged with the N.B.A. in 1976. On Oct. 12, 1979, the opening night of the season, Ford was behind the arc when he caught a pass from guard Tiny Archibald and shot the basketball over the outstretched hand of the Houston Rockets’ Robert Reid with 3 minutes 48 seconds left in the first quarter.But Kevin Grevey of the Washington Bullets also hit a 3-point shot that night, in another early-evening game, against the Philadelphia 76ers. After that game, a reporter told Grevey that he had “just set a record that would never be broken,” according to an account by The New York Times in 2021.Three nights after those season-openers, the N.B.A. issued a news release saying that Ford was, in fact, the 3-point pioneer, since the Celtics-Rockets game had started 35 minutes before the Bullets-Sixers matchup. Still, it was unclear at what exact time of the evening each 3-point basket was made.The three-pointer went on to become perhaps the most dominant offensive weapon used in the N.B.A.Ford joined the Celtics early in the 1978-79 season in a trade with the Detroit Pistons. He played with Boston through the 1981-82 season. After serving as an assistant coach with the Celtics, he was the team’s head coach for five seasons in the 1990s. He later coached the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Clippers.Ford during a game in 1994. He coached several N.B.A. teams, including the Boston Celtics, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Clippers.Gary Stewart/Associated PressChristopher Joseph Ford was born on Jan. 11, 1949, in Atlantic City, N.J. He helped take Villanova to three N.C.A.A. tournament appearances, including a trip to the 1971 national championship game, where the Wildcats lost to U.C.L.A., coached by John Wooden.At 6 feet 5 inches, Ford was tall for a guard of his era. He averaged 15.8 points a game during his collegiate career and was selected by the Detroit Pistons in the second round of the 1972 N.B.A. draft.In his first season with the Celtics, Ford averaged what became a career-high 15.6 points a game and was voted the team’s most valuable player. He averaged 9.2 points a game with 3.4 assists for his N.B.A. career. He was an assistant coach for the Celtics for seven seasons under their former guard K.C. Jones, and then succeeded Jimmy Rodgers as the team’s head coach. Ford held the post from the 1990-91 season to 1994-95 season. He compiled a 222-188 record with four playoff appearances.He was the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks from 1996 to 1998, and of the Los Angeles Clippers from 1998 to 2000. He began the 2003-4 season as an assistant coach for the 76ers and coached the final 30 games of that season after Coach Randy Ayers had been fired.According to The Boston Globe, Ford is survived by his wife, Kathy; their children, Chris Jr., Katie, Anthony and Michael; and seven grandchildren.Kevin Grevey said he did not revisit the possibility that it was he, not Ford, who had made the N.B.A.’s first 3-pointer until more than a decade after those games, when he ran into the reporter who had told him in October 1979 that he had made history.Grevey said he would look into the matter further, but as he told The Times in 2021, “I swear I don’t care.”But 3-pointers were hardly the only weapon that Ford had.According to CBS Boston, Ford was reported to have dunked at least once on the Hall of Famer Julius Erving, one of the most famous dunkers in N.B.A. history, whose nickname was Dr. J. That inspired Ford’s teammates to give Ford a nickname of his own: “Doc.” More

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    Dick Savitt Dies at 95; Won Australian and Wimbledon Tennis Titles in 1951

    He was the second American to win both Grand Slam tournaments in the same year, and he was ranked among the world’s top 10 players four times.Dick Savitt, the tennis Hall of Famer who won the men’s singles championships at the 1951 Australian and Wimbledon Grand Slam tournaments but dropped out of full-time play a year later while at the height of his game, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his son, Bob.Savitt became the second American to win both the Australian and Wimbledon men’s titles in a calendar year. Don Budge had accomplished the feat in 1938. Only Jimmy Connors (1974) and Pete Sampras (1994 and 1997) have matched them.Savitt was ranked among the top 10 American players six times in the 1950s and among the world’s top 10 four times, even though after 1952 he confined his Grand Slam tournament play to the United States Nationals at Forest Hills, Queens. He bested leading American players in domestic tournaments while pursuing a business career.He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1976.In 1951, Savitt defeated Ken McGregor, a native of Australia, in the Australian championships. “The Australian was a big shock to the tennis world,” Savitt told Nancy Gill McShea in an interview for the International Tennis Hall of Fame 60 years later. “It put me on the map.”He reached the semifinals of the 1951 French championships but lost to Jaroslav Drobny, who went on to win the singles title. He needed only 61 minutes to defeat McGregor again in the Wimbledon final, becoming the first Jewish player to win the Wimbledon singles championship.Savitt appeared on the cover of Time magazine’s Aug. 27, 1951, issue on the eve of the U.S. Nationals, the forerunner of the U.S. Open. “What he has got is a simple, overpowering attack; a smashing serve and deep, hard-hit ground strokes that keep his opponent scrambling in the backcourt, on the defensive,” Time wrote.Savitt, who stood a sturdy 6-foot-3 and often wore down his opponents, reached the semifinals at Forest Hills. Hampered by a knee infection, he lost to his fellow American Vic Seixas.Savitt was selected for the 1951 U.S. Davis Cup team, which was hoping to avenge its loss to Australia in the 1950 cup finals, formally known as the challenge round. Savitt, ranked as the squad’s No. 1 player, won singles matches in the early rounds. But Frank Shields, the nonplaying captain of the team, removed him from cup play afterward and replaced him with Ted Schroeder, who had been in semiretirement. Shields said he hadn’t been happy with Savitt’s overall play in the previous few months.Savitt and many of his fellow American players were stunned that he was passed over, but Savitt chose not to comment on being cut. The United States lost to Australia, 3-2, in the challenge round.The next year, Savitt reached the semifinals of the Australian championships. After losing there to McGregor, he said he was stepping away from the international tour.But he won the U.S. National Indoor Championships in 1952, 1958 and 1961, becoming the first player to capture that title three times. In 1961, he captured singles and doubles gold medals at the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics, held in Israel. He later helped develop tennis centers there.Savitt at his home in Manhattan last year.Carly Zavala for The New York TimesTennis trophies on a bookshelf at Savitt’s home. He was ranked among the top 10 American players six times in the 1950s.Carly Zavala for The New York TimesRichard Savitt was born on March 4, 1927, in Bayonne, N.J., the only child of Morris and Kate (Hoberman) Savitt. His father was a food broker who had a business that pursued marketing opportunities for producers.He taught himself to play tennis in his early teens when he was a ball boy at the Berkeley Tennis Club in Orange, N.J., mostly by watching some of the game’s greatest players, including Jack Kramer, Bobby Riggs and Pancho Segura, competing there in New Jersey state tournaments.“I had never seen tennis like that before,” Savitt said in his Hall of Fame interview. “I immediately got Don Budge’s book on tennis to learn how to hit strokes correctly.”But Savitt’s first love was basketball. When his family moved to El Paso in the early 1940s, hoping that the warmer weather would ease his mother’s skin problems, he became an all-state high school basketball player. But he also continued to play tennis and was highly ranked nationally in the junior division.Savitt entered Cornell University in 1946 on a basketball scholarship after serving during World War II in the Navy, which had assigned him to play on basketball teams to entertain service personnel. But injuries hampered him, so he turned to tennis once more and won Eastern collegiate singles and doubles titles. He graduated in 1950 with a degree in economics.In addition to his son, from his marriage to Louise Liberman, which ended in divorce in 1963, Savitt is survived by three grandchildren. His second wife, Annelle Warwick Hayes, died in 2013. Savitt and his son, Bob, who had played on the tennis team at the College of Wooster in Ohio, won the U.S. Father and Son doubles title in 1981.Savitt worked on rigs drilling for oil in Texas and Louisiana and then became a longtime investment banker in New York after leaving full-time tennis.The amateur tennis world where he flourished offered trophies for victories, but no prize money.“You either kept playing and taking under-the-table type payments or you ended up teaching at a club,” Savitt told The Star-Ledger of Newark in 2011. “I didn’t want to do that. I had to decide to keep playing a few more years or get out of the game and go to work in a normal position. That’s what I did.”Maia Coleman More