Scottish tennis star Harold Mahon of Edinburgh passed away tragically at the age of 38 in 1905 after a bizarre accident.
Since Andy Murray, the famous Scottish tennis player, retired from professional play, this year’s Wimbledon marks the first.
As the first British champion at the men’s event since Fred Perry in 1936, the athletic legend broke an almost 80-year run of poor luck by winning the men’s singles title at SW19 twice, in 2013 and 2016.
The Scottish Daily Express notes that Murray became the first male Scottish-born winner since Harold Mahony of Edinburgh in 1896, although this fact is not as well recognized.
Mahony was raised in an Irish household in County Kerry’s Dromore Castle and was born in Charlotte Square.
He developed into a skilled tennis player when his father, a landowner and barrister, had courts constructed at the Irish castle for his son to use. He had a “spiteful backhand” and a lengthy reach, making him unusually tall for the Victorian age at 6’3″.
In 1891, he advanced to the Wimbledon semifinals before going to America to hone his skills (much like modern-day pros who have training camps in Florida) and then coming back to win five years later.
Mahony’s “casual and irresponsible attitude” and “generous heart” won him a silver medal at the 1900 Olympics, but it was the pinnacle of his career.
Throughout the British Isles, he was frequently hired for one-on-one coaching sessions at rural homes. He was also a popular with “the ladies” and a skilled pianist. A profile in the Independent suggests that he may have had a sporadic relationship with the best female tennis player of her era.
Five times, Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Dod won the Wimbledon women’s singles championship, the first time being in 1887 at the age of 15. Mahony is listed as a guest at Dod and her widowed mother’s house in Cheshire four years later in the 1891 census. She was known to have vacations in Scotland as well.
However, tragedy came on June 27, 1905, when the towering tennis champion died in an accident on a bicycle close to the family’s Irish house. According to a newspaper article at the time, “He lost control of his machine while descending a steep hill near Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, and was thrown heavily to the ground, sustaining fatal injuries.”
The Independent reported: “His body was discovered, along with his damaged bike… What about Lottie Dod? She never got married.
