Commander

Commander

Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...

 George Whiteside Hillyard, Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, (6 February 1864 – 24 March 1943) was a male tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 player from the United Kingdom.

Hillyard was born in Hanwell

Hanwell

Hanwell is a town situated in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, between Ealing and Southall. The motto of Hanwell Urban District Council was Nec Aspera Terrent...

, Middlesex. He was a naval cadet aboard the HMS Bacchante

HMS Bacchante

Six ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Bacchante, from "Bacchante" - the name for a priestess of the Roman god Bacchus. Yet another ship of this name was ordered but later cancelled. *HMS Bacchante - 20 gun French sixth rate, captured by HMS Endymion in 1803...

 in 1881.

He was also one of the foremost men's players on the international tennis circuit between 1886 and 1914. At the 1908 London Olympics

1908 Summer Olympics

The 1908 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the IV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in 1908 in London, England, United Kingdom. These games were originally scheduled to be held in Rome. At the time they were the fifth modern Olympic games...

 he won the gold medal in men's doubles with Reginald Doherty

Reginald Doherty

Reginald "Reggie" or "R.F." Frank Doherty was a British male tennis player, and the older brother of Laurie Doherty...

. From 1907 to 1925, he was secretary of the All England Lawn Tennis Club and instrumental in the construction of Centre Court at Wimbledon.

Hillyard also played first-class cricket

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 for Middlesex

Middlesex County Cricket Club

Middlesex County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Middlesex. It was announced in February 2009 that Middlesex changed their limited overs name from the Middlesex Crusaders, to the...

 and Leicestershire

Leicestershire County Cricket Club

Leicestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the county of Rutland....

 from 1886 to 1896. He also excelled at golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

, swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

, pigeon-shooting and billiards

Billiards

Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...

.

He married Blanche Bingley

Blanche Bingley

Blanche Bingley was an English tennis player.Born in Greenford in the London Borough of Ealing, Blanche Bingley was a member of the "Ealing Lawn Tennis & Archery Club." In 1884, she competed in the first ever Wimbledon championships for women and two years later captured the first of her six...

, a six-time Wimbledon singles champion, on 13 July 1887 in Greenford

Greenford

Greenford is a large suburb in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, UK. It was historically an ancient parish in the former county of Middlesex. The most prominent landmarks in the suburb are the A40, a major dual-carriageway; Horsenden Hill, above sea level; the small Parish Church of...

, Middlesex

Middlesex

Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

. The couple lived in Thorpe Satchville, Leicestershire

Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...

 between 1895 and 1925, and then moved to Bramfold, Pulborough

Pulborough

Pulborough is a large village and civil parish in the Horsham district of West Sussex, England, with some 5,000 inhabitants. It is located almost centrally within West Sussex and is south west of London. It is at the junction of the north-south A29 and the east-west roads.The village is near the...

, Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

, where Hillyard died on Wednesday, 24 March 1943.

The couple had at least two children, Jack and Marjorie.

Further reading