Early life and education
Cox was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School in Leicester and Millfield School in Somerset. He obtained an economics undergraduate degree from Downing College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge University Lawn Tennis Club. Upon graduating from Cambridge, Cox was employed by a stockbroking firm, and only turned professional in 1970. As he later admitted to sports writer James Buddell, "[I] never really thought of tennis as a career. There was no view of open tennis, so when I initially left university, playing felt like a gap year — great fun, and the expenses helped keep my head above water." [4]
Career
Cox played his first tournament on 3 November 1958 at the Torquay Indoor Championship. [5] During his career, he won twenty-four singles titles [5] [2] [3] and three doubles titles spanning both the pre-Open Era and Open Era, and reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. National Championships (in 1966) and the Australian Open (in 1971). He also played for Great Britain's Davis Cup team, and was on the team that reached the 1978 final against the United States. [6] He won 23 of his Davis Cup matches and lost 12. [7]
Following the establishment of the Open Era in men's tennis in 1968, Cox went down in history as the first amateur player to beat a professional when he defeated the American Pancho Gonzales in the second round of the British Hard Court Championships at Bournemouth, in a match that went to five sets and lasted two and a quarter hours. He followed this up for good measure by beating two times Wimbledon Champion Roy Emerson in the next round. [8] [9] It was after his victory over Emerson that Time magazine referred to Cox as a "giant killer", a reputation he strengthened further by achieving big upset wins over No. 1 seed Rod Laver at the 1971 Australian Open and over No. 2 seed Ken Rosewall at the 1972 US Open. [10] [11] [12] [13] During his career, Cox maintained positive head-to-head records over several top players, such as Guillermo Vilas (whom Cox defeated 6–1, 6–1 at the Memphis Open in 1977, a year when Vilas lost only 14 out of 154 matches), Manuel Orantes, Lew Hoad, Roscoe Tanner, Jan Kodes and Ivan Lendl. [14] [15]
Some of Cox's finest moments came late in his career; a notable triumph was at the 1976 Stockholm Open, when at the age of 33 he won the title after knocking out world No. 1 Jimmy Connors and Manuel Orantes (respectively the reigning and previous US Open champions) in succession. [16] He remarked afterwards that "At the big points I played the right shots, the first services were going in. It was like a fairy story." [17] Although able to win on all surfaces he was especially adept at playing on indoor carpet courts, and in 1975 he became the last British player to win back-to-back professional titles (at the Washington Indoor WCT and London WCT events) until Andy Murray repeated the feat in 2008. [7] These two tournament wins allowed him to qualify (as one of the top eight players on the World Championship Tennis circuit) for that year's WCT Finals, where he lost to the eventual champion, Arthur Ashe.
Cox retired from playing in 1981, losing to Yannick Noah in his last ever competitive match at the Paris Indoor Open. [18] To date, he is the last English-born male to win a top level UK tournament on grass (Eastbourne in 1973). After his final title in 1977 it would take another 17 years for a British player to win a top-level tour title (Jeremy Bates at Seoul in 1994). During his latter playing years and after his retirement, he worked as a coach and also as a television commentator for the BBC.
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