Welby Van Horn (born 1920) is a retired American professional tennis player who later went on to have a career as a major tennis coach.
As a 19-year-old player, Van Horn reached the finals of the 1939 U.S. Nationals only to lose to Bobby Riggs in just 56 minutes (6–4, 6–2, 6–4). One of the high points of his career was a crushing defeat (6–0, 6–2, 6–1) of the great Bill Tilden at a match between U.S. and British Empire service teams at Wimbledon in July, 1945, supposedly the worst drubbing of Tilden's career — Tilden, however, was 52 years old at the time while Van Horn was 25. Van Horn also won the United States Pro Championship in 1945. He lived briefly in Atlanta, Ga., where he had been hired as Head Tennis Professional at the Piedmont Driving Club. In 1951, he moved to Puerto Rico as a coach at the Caribe Hilton Swim and Tennis Club, where he worked with many promising juniors, among them Manuel Diaz, later to become a star on the University of Georgia tennis team and UGA coach.
His career as a coach spawned institutions such as the Welby Van Horn Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Florida, and Welby Van Horn Tennis programs in a number of locations.
Famous quotes containing the words van and/or horn:
“For him nor deep nor hill there is,
But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)