Vic Seixas smiles at friends and family at his 100th birthday party as his daughter Tori rearranges his balloons on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Vic Seixas smiles at friends and family at his 100th birthday party as his daughter Tori rearranges his balloons on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Vic Seixas poses with daughter Tori at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Fiifi Greenberg shows Vic Seixas a photo on her phone at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. The photo shows Seixas and his first cousin Dottie Rich Greenberg (Fifi’s mother) taken in the ‘40s. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Vic Seixas poses with sisters Suzanne and DeEtte LaRue at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Dressed as a tennis ball, Dianne Featherston arrives at the 100th birthday for Vic Seixas on Wednesday, Aug. 30, in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Vic Seixas gives an interview at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. His caregiver Ja Marr Perkins repeats the question for him. Seixas is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
A passerby touches a display photo at the 100th birthday party for Vic Seixas on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Vic Seixas shakes hands with a well-wisher at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 30, in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Toni Seixas photographs her ex-husband Vic at his 100th birthday party on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. She travelled from her home in New Orleans for the event. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
Fifi Greenberg shows a photo on her phone of her mother Dottie Rich Greenberg and her mother’s first cousin Vic Seixas The photo taken in the 1940’s. Seixas celebrated his 100th birthday party with friends and family on Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023 in Mill Valley Calif. He is the oldest living grand slam champion in tennis and a long-time Marin resident. (Frankie Frost/Special to the Marin Independent Journal)
The U.S. Open was playing on every television screen at the Club at Harbor Point’s Lighthouse Bar & Grill on Wednesday, but nobody was watching. Surprising for a tennis club, but there was a much greater event going on: the centennial celebration of a Grand Slam champion.
“I don’t really watch that much tennis anymore,” said longtime Marin resident Vic Seixas, surrounded by friends and family for a surprise birthday party to mark his 100th birthday Wednesday. “I like the volley, the way we used to play. Not a lot of them volley anymore.”
Seixas, the oldest living Grand Slam singles champion, crafted an inspiring legacy on tennis courts around the world. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 after a career highlighted by Wimbledon, U.S. Open singles and doubles, Australian Open doubles, French Open doubles and Davis championships.
Seixas cut a dashing figure in his tennis whites during his playing days, with long legs that could cover the court in a flash, a strong serve and volley, and movie-star good looks to boot.
The Mill Valley resident was deemed the “fastest man to the net” by one commentator in the 1950s. He was nearly 30 years old when he defeated Kurt Nielsen in the finals at Wimbledon in 1953. He won the U.S. Nationals the year after. Seixas kept going over the years. In 1966, he played Bill Bowrey, a foe roughly half his age, in the fifth-longest match in history at the time.
Seixas didn’t retire from the senior circuit until 1988 at age 65, but he stayed close to the tennis community, which still remembers his contributions to the game.
A birthday video allowed hall of famers Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Maria Conchita, Rosie Casals, Stan Smith as well as Brad Gilbert, WTA President Micky Lawler, former Davis Cup champion James Blake and more to wish Seixas a happy birthday, and to remember his career.
He was born Elias Victor Seixas, Jr., in 1923 in Philadelphia, where his father owned a plumbing-supply company. His father, Elias Victor Seixas, Sr., loved tennis and he would take his 5-year-old son to the courts across the street. Vic Seixas was a natural athlete — a freshman on the University of North Carolina basketball team and had dreams of playing pro baseball like his great-grandfather, a pitcher for the Phillies. But Vic Seixas chose tennis.
“I’ve always enjoyed tennis and I suppose I was good at it,” Seixas said Wednesday. “I had some success.”
His burgeoning tennis career was interrupted when the specter of war started to grip the world in the 1940s. Seixas joined the Army Air Corps at age 18 and spend three years as a test pilot in New Guinea. He flew planes rather than swing tennis rackets for three years, but came back strong when he returned to UNC, became an All-American in 1949, then later turned pro. That’s when the journey of a lifetime really started, with a tennis career that is still being celebrated.
