player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameRaymond Jean
LastnameRodel (Rôdel)
GenderMale
CountryFrance
Date of birth1895-05-07
Place of birthBordeaux, France
Date of death1967-02-21
Place of deathLausanne, Switzerland

About

The piece below was translated and slightly adapted from the Wikipedia entry in French on Pierre Albarran, which can be viewed here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Rodel

Raymond Rôdel was the son of two merchants, Albert-Jean Rôdel (b. 1863) and Marthe Marie Rôdel (née Houdemon; 1869-1938). On 8 October 1918, in Paris, Raymond Rôdel married Jeanne Marie Louise Galeotti, a composer and daughter of the Italian composer Cesare Galeotti. During World War One, Raymond Rôdel was a pilot/aviator with the French Armed Forces and had the rank of sergeant (“maréchal-des-logis”).

Between 1925 and 1939, Raymond Rôdel took part in the French International Championships fifteen times, reaching the fourth round in 1934. This left him as one of three French players remaining in the men’s singles draw along with Christian Boussus and André Merlin. Two years later he reached the same stage at the same tournament, having notably beaten the Englishman Frank Wilde and the Italian Henri Bolelli. After World War Two, Raymond Rôdel sent in an entry for the French International Championships five times between 1947 and 1953, but defaulted each time.

He also took part in the Wimbledon tournament twice, reaching the third round of the men’s singles event in 1929. In August 1934, Raymond Rôdel was ironically nicknamed “the top French male player” by the Paris-Midi newspaper after defeating his countryman André Martin-Legeay in the final of the men’s singles event at the Dieppe tournament. Martin-Legeay had previously defeated Christian Boussus and André Merlin, two members of the French Davis Cup team. In 1929, Raymond Rôdel took part in a tennis tour of Asia with Henri Cochet, Jacques Brugnon and Pierre-Henri Landry. This tour included stops in Japan and Vietnam.

In 1927, Raymond Rôdel suggested that the French Tennis Federation create a special section in its rankings of top French tennis players to allow former champions or members of French tennis teams to still be ranked should they wish to return to competition.

In 1937, Raymond Rôdel was an attaché with the general commission in charge of the Universal Exhibition held that year in Paris. He was also a member of the council of the International Tennis Federation and captain of the French tennis team during friendly matches. In addition, between 1941 and 1942, Raymond Rôdel was a general delegate with the Commission for Sports and Young People in Paris.

In 1943, Joseph Pascot, Commissioner General for Sport, appointed Raymond Rôdel President of the French Tennis Federation; he thus replaced René Lacoste who had too many professional commitments at the time. Rôdel remained in that position until 1944. He was also President of the Association of Girondins in Paris and then, after the war, of the Festivities Committee. In 1948, he created the National Active Committee for French Courtesy/Comité Actif National de la Courtoisie Française and the Committee for France/Comité de France, whose goals were to recognise personalities who contributed to the prestige of France.

As a journalist, Raymond Rôdel was editor of the newspapers Prestige français et mondanités and L’Écho de Quiberon. He also created a team competition for journalists who took part in sports; the cup awarded to the winners bore Rôdel’s name.

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