Ernie Parker
![]() | |
Full name | Ernest Frederick Parker |
---|---|
Country (sports) | Australia |
Born | Perth, Western Australia | 5 November 1883
Died | 2 May 1918 Caëstre, France | (aged 34)
Turned pro | 1903 (amateur tour) |
Retired | 1918 (due to death) |
Plays | Right-handed (one-handed backhand) |
Singles | |
Career record | 46-21 (68.6%)[1] |
Career titles | 8[1] |
Grand Slam singles results | |
Australian Open | W (1913) |
Doubles | |
Grand Slam doubles results | |
Australian Open | W (1909, 1913) |
Cricket information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Batting | Right-handed | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Domestic team information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Years | Team | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1905/06–1909/10 | Western Australia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Career statistics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source: Cricinfo, 17 December 2019 |
Ernest Frederick Parker (5 November 1883 – 2 May 1918) was an Australian tennis player and cricketer.
Career
[edit]Ernie Parker was educated at Perth High School and St Peter's College, Adelaide, before joining his father's law firm in Perth.[2]
Tennis
[edit]Parker is best remembered for winning the 1913 Australasian Championships men's singles title. The tournament is now known as the Australian Open.[3] In the final against Harry Parker, he made many successful forays to the net and won in four sets.[4] He also reached the final in 1909 and won the 1909 (partnering J. Keane) and 1913 (partnering Alf Hedeman) doubles titles.[5]
He won the Western Australian Championships six times: 1903, 1904, 1907, 1908, 1911 and 1912. In 1905 he won the Maerenbad Cup in Marienbad Brandenberg, Germany, on clay, beating Kurt von Wessely.[6]
Parker's play was described as "quick, wristy, and always looking for a 'winner'". Slightly built, he was noted for his exceptional net play, but his serve was his weakness, described as "merely a means of putting the ball into play".[2][7]
Cricket
[edit]Parker was able to excel at both tennis and cricket because at the time tennis was mostly a winter game in Perth.[8] He played cricket for East Perth (Perth Cricket Club) and Wanderers in the Western Australian Grade Cricket competition. An elegant batsman, he was the first player to score a double-century in senior Perth cricket, and set a long-standing record of 19 centuries in the competition.[8]
He represented Western Australia in first-class cricket between 1905 and 1910 in the years before Western Australia joined the Sheffield Shield competition. He was the first player to score a first-class century for Western Australia, when he made 116 in his second match. He also made 117 in only 82 minutes against Victoria in 1910.[8] He was included in two trial matches to select the Australian team to tour England in 1909, but without success.[2]
War service and death
[edit]Despite failing eyesight, which had affected his later sporting career, Parker enlisted in the Australian army in World War I. A gunner in the 102 Howitzer Battery, 2nd Brigade, he was killed by an enemy shell on 2 May 1918 in Caëstre, France.[2][9][10]
A biography, Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story, by Max Bonnell and Andrew Sproul, was published by The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians in 2024.[11]
Grand Slam finals
[edit]Singles 2 (1 title, 1 runner-up)
[edit]Result | Year | Championship | Surface | Opponent | Score |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Loss | 1909 | Australasian Championships | Grass | ![]() |
1–6, 5–7, 2–6 |
Win | 1913 | Australasian Championships | Grass | ![]() |
2–6, 6–1, 6–2, 6–3 |
Doubles: 2 (2 titles)
[edit]Result | Year | Championship | Surface | Partner | Opponents | Score |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Win | 1909 | Australasian Championships | Grass | ![]() |
![]() ![]() |
1–6, 6–1, 6–1, 9–7 |
Win | 1913 | Australasian Championships | Grass | ![]() |
![]() ![]() |
8–6, 4–6, 6–4, 6–4 |
References
[edit]- ^ a b Garcia, Gabriel (2018). "Ernest Frederick Parker: Career match record". thetennisbase.com. Madrid, Spain: Tennismem SAL. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
- ^ a b c d Greg Growden, Cricketers at War, ABC Books, Sydney, 2019, pp. 107–11.
- ^ "Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story – ACS Shop". Retrieved 5 July 2025.
- ^ "Ernie Parker". Grand Slam Tennis Archive. Archived from the original on 2 December 2022. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
- ^ "Western Australian Institute of Sport". Archived from the original on 10 April 2013. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
- ^ Garcia, Gabriel (2018). "Ernest Frederick Parker: Tournament activity 1903-1913". app.thetennisbase.com. Madrid, Spain: Tennismem SAL. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
- ^ "Ernest Parker". The West Australian: 5. 24 May 1918.
- ^ a b c The Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket, Oxford, Melbourne, 1996, p. 410.
- ^ "Cricketers who died in World War 1 – Part 4 of 5". Cricket Country. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
- ^ "Gunner Ernest Frederick Parker". Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
- ^ "Ernest Parker: Not a Love Story". ACS. Retrieved 18 August 2024.
External links
[edit]- Ernie Parker at the Association of Tennis Professionals
- Bud Collins: Total Tennis – The Ultimate Tennis Encyclopedia (2003 Edition, ISBN 0-9731443-4-3). See pages 782 and 814.
- Ernie Parker at ESPNcricinfo
- 1883 births
- 1918 deaths
- People educated at Perth High School
- People educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide
- Australasian Championships (tennis) champions
- Australian military personnel killed in World War I
- Australian male tennis players
- Australian cricketers
- Sportsmen from Western Australia
- Tennis players from Perth, Western Australia
- Western Australia cricketers
- Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's singles
- Grand Slam (tennis) champions in men's doubles
- Cricketers from Perth, Western Australia
- Australian Army soldiers
- 20th-century Australian sportsmen