London | John Curry CBE

John Curry CBE, a former chairman of the All England Membership who led the Wimbledon Championships via a interval of enlargement within the Nineteen Nineties, died final Saturday (nineteenth October) aged 86,, the Membership has sadly revealed.

“John Curry can be remembered as a boss who, in the perfect traditions of Wimbledon, took the membership ahead while sustaining the whole lot that’s particular concerning the membership and The Championships,” the All England Membership wrote on its web site.

Curry served as membership chairman between 1989-99 and oversaw the enactment of a long-term enlargement plan that included the opening of the brand new No. 1 Courtroom in 1997 and which the membership stated, “consolidated Wimbledon’s place because the world’s premier tennis event.”

He additionally made the choice to ban non-royal youngsters from the Royal Field on Centre Courtroom, which reportedly upset the Duchess of Kent, whose husband was the long-time president of the AELTC.

Debbie Jevans, the present chair, stated Curry “assuredly and astutely stewarded the All England Membership and The Championships via a interval of great progress and success.”

John Arthur Hugh Curry was born in 1938 and spent his childhood in Burma and India earlier than being despatched to board at King’s School College in Wimbledon, visiting the AELTC for the primary time aged 11 the place he participated in a training session for a BBC youngsters’s programme. While Head Boy of the varsity he performed truant just a few years later to go and watch watch the boys’s remaining between Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall.

He cherished tennis and received the Public Faculties Singles Championships and made the semi-finals within the doubles. He additionally reached the quarter finals of Junior Wimbledon.

He captained the Oxford Tennis crew while finding out Philosophy and Economics at St Edmund Corridor, Oxford and was a rugby Blue. He later went to Harvard the place he was awarded an MBA with distinction and, after qualifying as a chartered accountant, spent most of his enterprise life within the electronics trade.

He grew to become a Full Member of the Membership in 1971 having beforehand been given Temprary Membership while captaining Oxford Tennis to cowl his involvement within the Prentice Cup which concerned a match between the College and a mixed crew from Harvard and Yale.

In 1989 he succeeded Buzzer Haddingham as Chairman having joined the Committee in 1979. He himself was succeeded as Chairman by Tim Philips in 1999 having, throughout his Chairmanship, launched the Lengthy Time period Plan (1993), which has, over the previous few many years, remodeled the Membership and established it because the world’s premier tennis venue.

Beneath the plan the brand new No.1 Courtroom was constructed and accomplished in 1997 while the brand new No.2 Courtroom opened in 2009. Actually, a lot of at the moment’s redevelopment plans will be attributed to his imaginative and prescient which incorporates the acquisition of the freehold of Wimbledon Park Golf (1993) after which, a yr later, the acquisition of the freehold of Southlands School which has develop into the house for the Membership’s croquet lawns. Earlier in 1989, Curry had been instrumental within the buy of the location at Raynes Park which is now the Membership’s Group Tennis Centre.

Play on the Center Sunday can be attributed to him in addition to the relief of the All-White rule to ‘Nearly solely White’ rule in 1995!

Curry was made a CBE within the 1997 Queen’s Birthday Honours Listing and is survived by his spouse Anne, three sons and a daughter.