Angela Buxton: Tennis player who smashed prejudice and became a grand-slam doubles champion

Angela Buxton was a tennis player, but some clubs considered her Jewish before anything else. When she first moved to a girls’ school in Hampstead aged 15 to concentrate on the sport, she tried to join the prestigious Cumberland Club, one of London’s top tennis venues. Despite having several lessons there with coach Bill Blake, she was told not to bother trying to join – because she was Jewish. “And that was the beginning,” she said. “It was the first time it had hit me in this country.”

(She later said: “I made a point of going back to win their bloody tournament – twice, just to rub their noses in it – and they never gave me a cup of tea. Not even that.”)

Antisemitism was not an unfamiliar evil to the family. Buxton was born on 16 August 1934 to a Jewish couple named Harry and Violet. Her Russian grandparents had escaped from the violent pogroms in the early 20th century. She later explained that her grandparents had anglicised their surname from “something like Bakstansky” to Buxton.

Her father was a successful owner of a chain of cinemas, but when the Second World War broke out, her parents didn’t hesitate; they took Buxton and her brother to South Africa. It was there, far from the bombing, that the young girl first showed some talent in the sport that would later make her famous: tennis. When the family eventually returned to England, a year after the war ended, Buxton was sent to boarding school in Llandudno, north Wales. Although she only played 15 minutes of tennis a week, the coach there told her she could one day be a Wimbledon champion.

At her first championship, the Hightown tournament just outside Liverpool, Buxton won three titles: under-14, under-15 and under-18. The family decided to move to London, and sent her to a prestigious school in Hampstead for talented children.

After her parents’ divorce, Buxton moved with her mother to California in 1952. But although they lived opposite the Los Angeles Tennis Club, her Jewish heritage meant she was not allowed to play there. She found a warmer welcome at the La Cienega public courts about four miles away, with a coach named Bill Tilden. “Big Bill” had won Wimbledon three times in the 1920s and 1930s. He had been shunned by LA society after he served time for sexually abusing teenage boys, but he also coached celebrities such as Doris Day and Charlie Chaplin. Buxton played alongside both.

The following year, she returned to Britain as a young, up-and-coming challenger to household names like Shirley Bloomer and Angela Mortimer. And although she suffered a crisis in confidence after being soundly beaten by American Wimbledon champion Doris Hart, she bounced back by winning two gold medals in the Maccabiah Games in Israel. Buxton partnered up with coach CM “Jimmy” Jones, and by 1954, she was ranked fourth in Britain. She returned to Wimbledon to reach the quarter-finals in 1955, and climbed to No 9 in the world rankings.

Despite her talent, Buxton was never partnered with the other top British players all vying for the No 1 ranking. She said: “They were given each other and I was always the one left out in the cold.”

But there was another up-and-coming player left out in the cold with her: Althea Gibson, one of the first black tennis stars. In 1956, at the French Open, neither player had a doubles partner. Buxton sent her coach, Jones, to ask Gibson to play. The two formed an instant, powerful bond, and went on to win the French Open doubles. A few weeks later, they went to London and, with their doubles win, made history: the first British Jewish player and the first African-American player to ever win a title at Wimbledon. The headline? “Minorities win.”

Buxton also reached the singles finals, making her the first British player to do so in nearly 20 years. But her burgeoning stardom became a dying supernova when she suffered a serious wrist injury in 1956. The following year, she was forced to retire – at only 22.

Buxton did not leave the sport altogether, becoming a tennis journalist and author of several books on coaching, as well as founding the Angela Buxton Tennis Centre – in Hampstead, no less. The bond between Gibson and Buxton would also endure for many decades to come, with Buxton providing support throughout the years of Gibson’s ill health and depression, raising funds to help pay for her medical bills.

Buxton applied to the All England Club, as one of Britain’s top players, but her application was denied – again and again, over the following 60 years. In 2019, she told The Times that it was “an unfortunate example of how the British really treat Jews in this country”. (The All England Club did have other Jewish players.)

Buxton went on to marry Donald Silk, president of the British Zionist Federation, and had a son and a daughter before eventually separating and forming a relationship with her former coach, Jones.

In 1981, Buxton was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2015, the Black Tennis Hall of Fame, in honour of her partnership and friendship with Althea Gibson.

She would spend the rest of her life between the UK and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she died just two days before her 86th birthday.

Angela Buxton, tennis player, born 16 August 1934, died 14 August 2020

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