[BITList] Sound of summer

Mon Jun 24 07:20:59 BST 2013

Some of us will remember him.

ooroo

To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2013-06-24

Maskell,  Daniel  [Dan]  (1908-1992), tennis player and broadcaster, was born on 11 April 1908 at 15 Everington Street, Fulham, London, the fourth and youngest son and seventh of eight children of Henry George Maskell (b. 1873), engineer, and his wife, Emma Pearce (1875-1922). He had an entirely happy childhood, though his upbringing was firm. His father, Harry, insisted that all the younger members of the family address him as 'sir'. The younger Dan won a place at Upper Latymer School, a grammar school in nearby Hammersmith, but the family could not afford the fees. He went instead to Everington Street School, close to the family home. There his talent for sport soon emerged. He was captain of the school soccer team, and during school holidays he became a part-time ballboy at Queen's Club, near his home. He said it was 'a better way of earning pocket-money than queueing for meat or delivering bread'  (Maskell, 28). As well as tennis and other racket sports, Queen's was also the venue at that time for a range of sports, including the Oxford and Cambridge football, rugby, and athletics matches. Maskell never forgot witnessing performances from the future Olympic champions Harold Abrahams and Lord Burghley, nor acting as a ballboy for the future duke of York (later George VI), who competed at Wimbledon in 1926.

Lawn tennis became Maskell's main interest. He was a natural timer of the ball, and the game came easily to him. He seized the opportunity to impress in matches against the younger Queen's members and professionals. In 1923, aged fifteen, he became a full-time ballboy. When the maharaja of Baroda, a Queen's member, presented a trophy for the annual competition between the ballboys, Maskell won his first tennis prize. Just a year later he was appointed a junior teaching professional, and in 1926 was given a five-year contract by Queen's to teach lawn tennis, real tennis, rackets, and squash. Tournament tennis at the time was mostly for amateur players. Professionals could not compete. But in October 1927 Maskell helped create the first world professional championship, played at Queen's Club, and defeated Charles Read in three straight sets for a first prize of £50. A year later he beat the same player to become British professional champion-a title he won sixteen times between then and 1951.

In 1929 Maskell left Queen's to become the first teaching professional at the All England Club, Wimbledon, where his duties also included coaching juniors with Davis cup and Wightman cup potential. He had already been a spectator at Wimbledon many times, starting in 1924 when he saw Britain's Kitty McKane defeat Helen Wills (Moody) in the ladies' final-the only match the American woman lost at Wimbledon in a career that took her to eight Wimbledon singles titles. Maskell joined the club in pre-practice week prior to the championships fortnight in June, and his first task was to practise with legendary champions such as Helen Wills, Jean Borotra, and Dorothy Round. He also became coach to the British Davis cup team. Led by the inspirational Fred Perry, the British team regained the cup in 1933, defeating France in Paris, and retained it for the next three years on the centre court at Wimbledon, beating the United States and Australia. Perry was Wimbledon champion three years running from 1934 to 1936, and with Dorothy Round winning the ladies' singles in 1934 and 1937, Maskell was part of the golden age of British tennis. On 26 August 1936 he married Constance Eileen (Con) Cox (1916-1979), secretary. They had one daughter, Robin, and one son, Jay.

During the Second World War, Maskell served in the Royal Air Force and, from 1940, was its first rehabilitation officer, based at the Palace Hotel in Torquay, and then Loughborough. Maskell's task was to devise exercises and activity for wounded aircrew. He was devastated when bombing destroyed part of the Palace Hotel and killed over twenty patients and medical staff while he was on a weekend away. He rose to the rank of squadron leader, and was appointed OBE in 1945. After the war he resumed his career at the All England Club, became chairman of the Professional Tennis Coaches Association, and continued to play professional tournaments. He also gave private tennis coaching to members of the royal family.

Maskell's broadcasting career began in 1949 when he joined the BBC radio commentary team for Wimbledon as an expert summarizer. In 1951 he moved to television, and soon became the leading commentator-a role he continued for the next forty years until he retired in 1991, by which time he had not missed a day's play at Wimbledon since 1929. Such was his impact that the 1992 Wimbledon championships began with a presentation to him in the royal box of a silver salver engraved with the landmarks of his career. The All England Club had already honoured him nearly forty years earlier, in 1953, by making him the first professional member of the club. As a television commentator, he believed in meticulous preparation and economy of words. 'The picture tells the greatest part of the story', he said  (Maskell, 218). One of his golden rules was never to talk during a rally. Nevertheless his rich, even plummy, voice became almost the traditional sound of an English summer. His reaction to winning shots, with such phrases as 'Oh, I say!' and 'a dream of a backhand!', became legendary. He was never controversial nor outspoken, but was always looking to emphasize the positive aspects of players and the game. Following his retirement from the All England Club in 1955, he worked for the Lawn Tennis Association until 1973, devoting himself to coaching and development work. In 1982 he was appointed CBE for his services to tennis. In 1988, when tennis was restored to the Olympic games after an absence of sixty-four years, he fulfilled a life's ambition by attending the games in Seoul, Korea, as a member of the BBC team. Colleagues were astonished when the eighty-year-old Maskell, after the long and tiring flight from London, insisted on going straight to the Olympic Stadium to see the opening ceremony.

Maskell's personal life was struck by two tragedies. In 1970 his only son, Jay, a licensed pilot, was killed in an air crash in the Bahamas, and in 1979 his first wife, Connie, was drowned in the West Indies. He married second, on 20 August 1980, Kathleen (Kay) Latto (d. 1993), a voluntary worker. Away from tennis he had an intense passion for skiing, which he took up in the 1930s. Asked on a radio programme what he would do if given only one further day of sport, he opted for skiing. He was also a keen golfer, and for twenty-two years served on the committee of Wimbledon Common Golf Club, where he first swung a club as a seventeen-year-old. In his last years he suffered from cancer of the prostate. He died of heart failure in his sleep, on 10 December 1992, at East Surrey Hospital, Redhill, and was cremated on 17 December at Randalls Park, Leatherhead, Surrey. He was survived by his second wife and by the daughter of his first marriage. A memorial service was held on 15 March 1993 at All Souls, Langham Place.

Jonathan Martin 

Sources  D. Maskell, From where I sit (1988) + The Times (11 Dec 1992) + The Times (16 March 1993) + The Independent (11 Dec 1992) + The Independent (18 Dec 1992) + Daily Telegraph (11 Dec 1992) + personal knowledge (2004) + private information (2004) [Mrs R. Charlton; family] + d. cert.
Archives Loughborough University, papers FILM BBC WAC + BFINA, current affairs footage + BFINA, documentary footage
Likenesses  photograph, 1977, Hult. Arch. [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in The Times (11 Dec 1992) · photograph, repro. in The Independent (11 Dec 1992) · photograph, repro. in Daily Telegraph
Wealth at death  £313,870: probate, 17 March 1993, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

========================================================================
©    Oxford     University    Press,    2004.    See     legal    notice:
http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/legal/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20130624/b7f54a6e/attachment-0001.htm 