• Rewind to 1954

When four eyes were better than two

Jaroslav Drobny was a fine left hander © Getty Images

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The summer highlight for many is upon us and with the sun shining on Wimbledon, the shades will be out in force. But way back in 1954, a man wearing glasses of a different kind triumphed at SW19.

Jaroslav Drobny is the only man to win Wimbledon while wearing glasses. He's also the only champion to have an Olympic medal ... for ice hockey. Drobny was part of the Czech team which won silver in St Moritz in 1948, and it was an eye injury picked up from a stray ice-skate that made the spectacles necessary.

Drobny was an unlikely looking champion, as apart from those specs he had the hint of a paunch, and rather bandy legs. But he was a fine tennis player, a left-hander with a booming serve, and after losing two finals - to Ted Schroeder in 1949 and Frank Sedgman in 1952 - Drobny was a popular winner in 1954, by which time he was 32 and resident in England. Ironically, the man he beat that day, Ken Rosewall, later assumed Drobny's mantle as the sentimental Wimbledon favourite - but Rosewall never did win it, and still thinks he blew his best chance in that final, the first of four he would lose in SW19.

Budge Patty, the 1950 champion, was a regular adversary on the European tennis circuit, which was more fun if less cash-rich in those far-off days. "Drobny had so much talent, he really did," he said. "I'm glad he finally won Wimbledon, because he deserved to. He was better on clay, really - he won at Roland Garros twice - but he could be a real handful on grass too. At Wimbledon in 1946, when he was not very well known, he beat Jack Kramer, the favourite and the big cheese, early on. His big shot was his serve, and he had a great forehand too, but his backhand was a bit weak.

"I suppose we must have played each other about 40 times, and we came out about even," Patty recalled. "We were always pretty closely matched. If his serve was on, he'd probably win - but if it wasn't firing properly then it would probably be me who won.

"He was especially good against hard-hitting players. I had trouble with someone like Dick Savitt [who won Wimbledon in 1951] because he hit the ball so damn hard - but Drob fed off the power, and fiddled Savitt around like he was a club player. At Roland Garros one year Savitt finally thought he'd got him - he was two sets to one up and 4-1 in the fourth. But Drobny caught up, and at the beginning of the final set Savitt just sat down and bawled. And Drob won it 6-1.

"We had a couple of memorable matches - a great long one at Wimbledon in 1953, which ended in the dark. Afterwards the committee gave us both silver cigarette cases with the details of the match on, as it was the longest ever at Wimbledon at the time. We also had a match in Lyon, France, that lasted five hours."

Budge Patty was a Wimbledon winner himself © Getty Images

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And Patty was there when Drobny finally tired of the oppressive regime in his native country. "I was with him when he defected. It was during a tournament in Gstaad in 1949, and the Swiss authorities had to protect him from the Czech embassy people. I remember these goons coming round and asking if I knew where he was. I said no.

"His wife, Rita, was a very sweet English girl, and we all expected him to get an English passport. But not long afterwards we were playing a tournament in Egypt, and we met King Farouk - and I think he must have wanted an instant Davis Cup team [another Czech, Vladimir Cernik, had defected at the same time], because the next thing we knew they were waving around Egyptian passports.

"There's a funny ending to that story. The Davis Cup idea didn't work, because of the qualification rules they had, and a few years later the king was booted out by General Nasser anyway. Soon after that Drob got his call-up papers to the Egyptian army! He was in a bit of a state, waving his arms around and saying that he couldn't even speak Egyptian and had never lived there, which was true. So then he finally did get an English passport."

Drobny died at 79 in London in 2001, but Budge Patty is now a sprightly 86, and about to embark on his 65th successive visit to Wimbledon, where he first played in 1946.

Wimbledon champions who wore glasses:

Singles
Jaroslav Drobny (1954)
Billie-Jean King (for all six of her titles)
Martina Navratilova (for four of her nine)

Doubles
Charles Garland (1920)
Frank Parker (1949)
Gardnar Mulloy (1957)
Billie-Jean King (for all 14 of her doubles titles)
Kazuko Sawamatsu (1975)
Martina Navratilova (for five of her 11 doubles titles)

- In 1965 three of the four finalists in the women's doubles wore glasses - King (who won with the unbespectacled Maria Bueno), and the French runners-up Francoise Durr and Jeanine Lieffrig.

- Arthur Ashe had switched to contact lenses by the time he won Wimbledon in 1975.

- The only other man to wear glasses in a Wimbledon final was the American Howard Kinsey in 1926.

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