player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameHector Cosmo
LastnameFisher
GenderMale
CountrySwitzerland
Date of birth1901-05-04
Place of birthMyaurgmya, Burma
Date of death1990-01-06
Place of deathGeneva, Switzerland

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From Le Nouvelliste (Switzerland), 29 January 1990:

By Vital Renaggli

Hector Cosmo Fisher (popularly known as “Fifi”) is dead. A faithful friend to the Canton of Valais and a legendary figure in Swiss tennis has left us. Hector Cosmo Fisher has died in Geneva in his 89th year. His disappearance means that a big page in the history of Swiss tennis has been turned. Born in Burma to a Burmese mother [Annie Fisher] and a British father [Henry Cosmo Fisher], Fifi arrived in Vey-Taux-Chillonin 1912. He caught the eye of several good players in the region, notably the Mayer brothers: Otto, who would become an Olympic chancellor, and Albert, Mayor of Montreux and president of the Swiss Bobsleigh Association.

From 1923 to 1925, Fifi studied law at Oxford and became one of the best tennis and football players at the university. In June 1925, at Wimbledon, he reached the quarter-finals in the men’s singles event, and thus found himself among “The Last 8 at Wimbledon” in the company of, amongst others, the three French musketeers: Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste. Fisher was defeated at that stage by the Australian champion James O. Anderson, while René Lacoste became world champion by beating Jean Borotra in the final in 1925.

On returning to Switzerland, Fifi resided with his aunt, who managed the Château d’Arvel boarding school and the Institut Fisher. Fifi became a businessman but continued to shine on the European tennis courts. From 1931 to 1939, he was a member and captain of the Swiss Davis Cup team, initially with his friend Charly Aeschlimann, and then with the other best Swiss players of the time: Max Ellmer, Boris Maneff, Hans Pfaff and Jost Spitzer. With Aeschlimann, Fifi played 40 Davis Cup matches for Switzerland and, in 1932, beat Italy in Territet in a match where Fifi emerged victorious against Giorgio De Stefani after losing the first two sets!

In 1931, with Lolette Payot, then one of the top five female players in the world, as his partner, he won the mixed doubles event at the International German Championships in Hamburg. In 1933, during the Swiss team’s tour of Scandinavia, he took part in a friendly match against a team made up of Roman Najuch and Mister “G” (that was the nickname of King Gustav V of Sweden, great-grandfather of the current sovereign).

Thanks to the determined support of Fifi, in 1940 the Montreux Lawn Tennis Club became, for the only time in its history, Swiss Series A Interclub Champions. Along with Fifi the team’s members included René Buser, Werner Steiner and Paul Blondel. In addition to tennis, Fifi had another passion – football. In 1930, during a stay in Basel in order to learn German, he played on the left wing for Basel Football Club, which at the time were holders of the Swiss Series A Championship.

Fifi’s wife Carmen regularly stayed in Montana in the summer (she considered it her second home). At the beginning of the 1950s, at the instigation of his friends Robert “Totoche” Antonietta and Vital Renggli, managers of the local club, Hector C. Fisher accepted the post of tennis coach in Ycoor. He held that position for nearly twenty years to the satisfaction of a large cosmopolitan clientèle who appreciated his qualities as a perfect gentleman and a wise and multilingual coach.

During his activities on the Haut-Plateau, he took part in the organisation of the international tennis tournament (the fiftieth edition was held in 1980), which he won in 1938 against the Irish giant George Lyttleton Rogers. The following year, he lost in the final against the same opponent after a fierce five-set battle. The Montana Tennis Club awarded him the title of honorary member and, for twenty or so years, has been organising a doubles event whose winners receive the“Fifi” Challenge Cup, donated by the man himself.

In the 1980s, Fifi regularly visited his friends in the Canton of Valais during his numerous stays on the Haut-Plateau. In the autumn of 1989, we had the pleasure of meeting him once again, unfortunately for the last time.

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