This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

Bill Threlfall
Last Updated: 1:42am GMT 09/03/2007

Bill Threlfall, who died on Wednesday aged 81, became a fixture at the Wimbledon tennis championships, covering no fewer than 41 tournaments as a commentator for television and radio.

Generations of tennis fans came to appreciate the rich timbre of his voice and his wry observations about the game he loved. He was most familiar for his work for the BBC, but in recent years he also commentated for Sky Sports, travelling abroad to cover tournaments such as the US Open and the various Masters events. He said in 2005: "They will have to retire me, not the other way round, because I enjoy it all so much."

Threlfall was a traditionalist at heart. He and John Lloyd, commentating on a Wimbledon match featuring Tim Henman, noted for the viewers that Henman's mother was a member of the Wimbledon Tennis Club, while her husband was "only a temporary member". "Bit embarrassing for the father," Threlfall observed gloomily.

At the same time he was not one of those beset by nostalgia for days gone by; rather he embraced the modern game, admiring the technique and athleticism of today's leading players. He recently remarked: "If you look back at matches from 30 years ago, it looks like they are playing under water, it's so slow."

The players to whom he attributed greatness were Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and John McEnroe - and he rated McEnroe the finest commentator he had ever worked with.

William Winn Threlfall was born on April 24 1925 at Penang, where his father - himself an excellent tennis player - was in the Colonial Service.

Bill was educated at Brighton and Hove Grammar School, and in 1943, just days after his eighteenth birthday, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm.

After his first solo flight, in a Tiger Moth, the instructor got out and told his pupil: "You're far too dangerous, go off on your own."

Threlfall spent most of the war based in Orkney attached to a Canadian aircraft carrier, flying Barracudas in search of enemy submarines. "The scariest thing," he recalled, "was trying to land them back on the ships in bad weather, when a lot could, and did, go wrong."

Towards the end of the war he was sent to the Far East, where he was to be involved in dive-bombing the Japanese defences in Singapore.

"The chances of survival would not have been very good and, as I was born up the road in Penang, I thought at least there was some symmetry in dying near where I was born. Then they dropped the atom bomb and we were sent home."

After the war he remained in the Fleet Air Arm, first as a pilot instructor and then flying helicopters. In 1959 Threlfall was in Ark Royal when she docked at Athens. At the time Aristotle Onassis was a sponsor of the helicopter squadron on the carrier, and the tycoon invited Threlfall and some of his colleagues on to his yacht, then took them on to a nightclub.

The ballerina Margot Fonteyn was in the party, as were Winston Churchill and his wife Clemmie. Threlfall remembered: "[Churchill] gave me a cigar that was about a foot long, like a torpedo. Unfortunately, he was fairly deaf by then, and with all the noise around it was difficult to have a conversation. I'd danced with Fonteyn, and asked him if he would mind if I danced with his wife, but he thought I was inviting him on to the floor. 'I don't dance,' he told me firmly."

Threlfall was a fine tennis player in his own right, and by the time he left the Navy in 1965 (in the rank of lieutenant-commander), he had won the Royal Navy men's singles championships a record eight times. In 1952 he competed in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon; with Jean Petchell, he went out in the first round, beaten 0-6, 3-6 by Ken Rosewall and Beryl Penrose. In later years Threlfall won the National Veterans' Championship on five occasions.

Within a year of returning to civvy street he was commentating for ITV at Wimbledon. He then moved to BBC radio and, in 1974, television.

Threlfall was a gifted coach, and took tennis lessons at the Hurlingham Club in London for more than 30 years. He was elected an honorary member in 1973, and was coaching at the club, on his favourite court nine, only five days before his death.

His innate affability was not allowed to interfere with his critical faculties. When the journalist Stephen Bayley submitted himself to a coaching session at the Hurlingham with Threlfall, he was told: "If you picked up one of the old-fashioned racquets you wouldn't be able to play at all - I mean, not that you can. No, seriously, Stephen, what we have managed to do together is turn crap into mediocrity."

Bill Threlfall married his wife Anne (née Rivaz), a former Wren, in 1953. He had proposed to her while flying her upside down in a Meteor, his passenger replying: "Yes, anything to get this thing the right way up!" She survives him with their daughter.

This is taken from The Guardian:

Bill Threlfall
Respected voice of common sense in tennis commentating
by Stephen Bayley
Monday March 12, 2007

Court No 9 at the Hurlingham Club, a middle-class arcadia in west London, is horribly quiet today. This all-weather court was latterly the turf of Bill Threlfall, Hurlingham's venerable pro and pioneer television tennis commentator, who has died aged 81. Here Threlfall would wait, Satanic smile in place, undeterred by sleet or wind, for his tubby and clueless patients, myself included.

Until a recent angioplasty forced a reluctant reform, he was smoking enthusiastically and surprisingly heavily for a serious sportsman. Not at all debauched by the modern conventions of political correctness, he had (with the exception of maddeningly early morning calls to confirm a match) immaculate manners - and expected them in others. He offered a direct connection to olden days. He absolutely always, whatever the circumstances, saw the funny side of things.

He was born in Penang, Malaya, where his father, a colonial official, had been tennis champion "about 25 times", and was educated at Brighton and Hove grammar school. In 1943, just days after his 18th birthday, he joined the Fleet Air Arm. It was what his family expected. The navy sent him to Canada to learn to fly, first in a Tiger Moth, then Harvards, Barracudas and Seafires (a carrier-borne Spitfire). By all accounts, he was brave, stylish and reckless in the air. He spent most of the war in the Orkneys looking for enemy submarines, and later in the Far East, where he trained to dive-bomb Japanese defences in Singapore. Hiroshima disappointed him because it thwarted the opportunity for an old-fashioned fight.

After the war he became a helicopter instructor. This astonished his friends, because the three-dimensional spatial disciplines required of a helicopter pilot were at odds with the evidence of his badly parked and anarchically damaged cars. He left the service at 39 after 22 years, with the rank of lieutenant-commander.

Threlfall then towed a caravan around Europe and north Africa, becoming a maestro di tennis in a sports club at Ospedaletti, near Ventimiglia, on the Italian continuation of the Côte d'Azur, in 1967. The plaque still hangs in the Hurlingham pros' office. His commentating career had started the previous year, when ITV was covering Wimbledon.

His authority was superlative and his dry wit merciless. He understood tennis completely, and spared no one. Fools he did not suffer, champions included. The stars adored him. He was a person of fixed habits and attitudes: the same hotels in the Algarve and Menton were unnegotiable. John McEnroe he regarded as a brilliant, unruly child.

He was a good player on his own account: Royal Navy men's singles champion a record eight times. In 1952, he played at Wimbledon in the mixed doubles with Jean Petchell, but went out in the first round to the Australians Ken Rosewall and Beryl Penrose in two sets. Much later, he won the National Veterans' championship five times. His broadcasting work continued with the BBC, first radio and, from 1974, television, and finally with Sky Sports. This summer would have been his 42nd as a Wimbledon commentator.

I knew him as a coach. It was an expensive way to hit balls, but cheap as therapy. Occasionally, I offered him a challenging ball, and he responded with a brilliantly unlikely cross-court return which made me shriek "Evil old bastard!". This he loved.

He was good-humoured and mercilessly critical all at the same time. In bad weather, he wore an awful bobble hat; in good, terrible Elvis shades. He explained Bernoulli's theorem in an attempt to teach top spin. He was indefatigably playing tennis until a week before he died.

Despite - or because of - my stubborn refusal to improve my game, Threlfall took an indulgent interest in me as a project. I told him he was merely turning "crap into mediocrity", an expression he loved. I also tried to infiltrate other bons mots to his television commentary. When he died he was still working on memorising Napoleon's advice to "never interrupt an enemy while he is making a mistake".

He is survived by his wife Anne and their daughter.


Richard Evans writes: In the 1980s, when I was part of the BBC television team at Wimbledon, I often found myself shunted out to some distant court with Bill Threlfall as my summariser. He was well qualified for the role and did not spare the players if their technique failed to live up to his demanding standards. But although he could be tough with his observations, touches of humour were always likely to be sprinkled around his comments.

Throwing fellow commentators in at the deep end was one of his party tricks. I was the fall guy on one occasion when a sudden change of schedule sent the two of us scurrying over to the old No 1 court at Wimbledon to cover a women's doubles totally unprepared. To our horror, we looked at the four young ladies happily hitting up and realised that they might have dropped from the moon for all we knew about them. "So Richard, you travel the world watching all these players, why don't you give us a run down of the four ladies we have here for this third-round match." Spluttering, giggling and speechless for the best part of a minute, I eventually got sufficient control of myself to read out the names and nationalities straight off the official programme. So much for inside knowledge.

A meticulous researcher, Threlfall became a respected voice of reason and common sense in tennis. However, his method of proposal when it came to marriage did not quite fit that description. Before popping the question to Wren Anne Rivaz, he took his future bride up in a two-seater Royal Navy Meteor trainer. "Then I did a roll and flew it upside down and asked her to marry me," Bill chuckled. "She said she would as long as I promised to fly the damn thing the right way up."

· William Winn Threlfall, tennis coach and commentator, born April 24 1925; died March 7 2007