player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameLorne Garnet
LastnameMain
GenderMale
CountryCanada
Date of birth1930-07-09
Place of birthVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Date of death2019-10-14
Place of deathVancouver, British Columbia, Canada

About

From https://db4tennis.com/players/male/lorne-main (updated):

Lorne Main was a world-class amateur tennis player who competed in eleven Grand Slam tournaments in singles during his long career. He won the singles title of the prestigious Monte Carlo tennis championship in 1954 and was an integral part of the Canadian Davis Cup team during the early 1950s. Still competing competitively into his 80s, Main was a highly ranked ITF Veterans, Seniors (Masters) and Super Seniors player during the 1990s and 2000s.

Main was credited by tennis historian Bud Collins as being the first tennis player to use two hands on both forehand and backhand. In his senior tennis career, he switched to one hand for both forehand and backhand.

Lorne Main started playing tennis at the age of nine. From 1949 to 1951, he attended the University of California at Berkeley on a tennis scholarship from, and played No. 1 in singles and doubles there before committing full-time to tennis. He won the men’s doubles title at the International Canadian Championships in 1951 (with Brendan Macken) and in 1954 (with Luis Ayala).

Main reached the round of 32 in singles five times in a major – at the U.S. Championships in 1951, 1953, and 1954 U.S. National, and at the French Championships and Wimbledon in 1954. At the French Open in 1954, Main defeated his first two opponents, Frenchmen, handily to set up a third round encounter with no. 7 seed Mervyn Rose. Rose won the first and third sets, with Main drawing level twice, taking the second and fourth sets, before Rose prevailed in the fifth, 6-3. Similarly at Wimbledon in 1954, Main breezed through his first-round opposition and handily won his second match before falling in five sets to his third-round opponent, the American Gilbert Shea.

At the U.S. Championships in 1954, Main was seeded no. 18 as a result of his very solid year to that point. Despite this, however, Main faced no. 1 seed Tony Trabert in the third round, and played the world no. 1 tight in the first two sets, falling 9-11 and 6-8, before running out of steam and losing the third, 2-6.

In 1949, Main had been runner-up in the men’s singles event at the International Canadian Championships, losing the final to his compatriot Henri Rochon in four sets. Apart from the International Canadian Championships, Main’s 1954 singles title win at the Monte Carlo tournament is the only title ever won at that level by a Canadian (as of 2021).

Further singles titles won by Lorne Main include Vancouver City (1949), the British Columbia Grass and Clay Court Championships (1950), the Western Canada Lawn Tennis Championships (1950), the Quebec Indoor Championships and Ontario Championship (1951) and the Ontario Championships and Quebec Indoor Championships as well as the Saint Petersburg (Florida) and Belgian Championships tournament (all in 1954).

In men’s doubles, Lorne Main notably won the Orlando tournament with Gilbert Shea, the Jamaica tournament (with Harold Burrows) and the Irish Championships (with Shea); all three title victories came in 1954.

Lorne Main was ranked no. 1 in British Columbia in 1949, no. 1 in Canada in 1951, 1953 and 1954, and no. 2 in 1952. In the Davis Cup, Main compiled a win-lose record of 1414. Canada did not progress beyond the American Zone Final stage during Mains time, losing either to the United States or Australia in that round. Main failed to defeat an American or Australia opponent in eleven Davis Cup rubbers. He was a member of the Canadian team in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954 and 1955, and a non-playing captain in 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1961.

Lorne Main was still a competitive tennis player into his eighties and was ranked high in the veteran, seniors and super-seniors categories. He was ranked no. 1 by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in every seniors’ category from the over 55s to the over 80s. In this respect, he won twelve singles and thirteen doubles senior world championship titles, twelve of the latter with Ken Sinclair and the other one with Gordon Verge (a world record).

In 2010, Lorne Main broke the world singles record for most singles senior world championship titles. He won each of the World Cups in men’s doubles in every seniors’ category, the over 55s to the over 80s, with partner Ken Sinclair. In 2000, Main was ranked world no. 1 in the over-70 category.

Lorne Main was inducted into the British Columbia Sport Hall of Fame in 1975 and the Canadian Tennis Hall of Fame in 1991. He died in October 2019 in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the age of 89.

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