Frank Slazenger - American Lawn Tennis Pioneer

First Published October, 2015

Last Updated May, 2023

To most of us, the name Slazenger is immediately associated with the English sporting goods company of that name.  However, while researching a Slazenger racket, I discovered that there is also a definite American connection to the world renowned English company.

The three brothers who built the worldwide sporting goods empire, Ralph, Albert and Frank were raised on Legh Street in Manchester, England with eight other siblings by Joseph and Elizabeth Slazenger Moss.  Joseph was a tailor who used Moss as his surname, as did his wife.

However, for reasons unknown, the three brothers eventually dropped the Moss surname and began to use Slazenger in its place with Albert and Frank also changing their middle names to Legh, ostensibly after the street they lived on in Manchester. As late as 1886, Ralph was still using the surname of Moss on legal documents, but by 1888 he was signing documents as Ralph Slazenger.

F. L. Slazenger Racket

Ralph and Albert moved their India rubber and rainwear business from Manchester to 56 Cannon Street in London in 1881 and named their new enterprise “Slazenger & Sons”, which again was quizzical, because their father had died nine years earlier and the owners were brothers.  Once settled in London, they soon began making rubber tennis balls and then wooden rackets to supplement their income from their line of India rubber products.

In 1884, they filed a trademark that utilized the six point Star of David to mark their tennis rackets and cricket bats and from that date forward sporting goods rapidly became their primary focus leaving the India rubber business behind.

Their timing was perfect, the brothers entered the English sporting goods market at a time lawn tennis was experiencing widespread growth seven years after the introduction of Walter Wingfield’s version of the game.  Slazenger & Sons grew right along with tennis and several other sports like croquet and archery that urban people pursuing more active lifestyles were rapidly adopting.

From the beginning, Ralph and Albert recognized the potential of the sporting goods market in the United States and in 1884 they sent their younger brother Frank, who was a well known English rugby player, on a sales trip to New York to gauge the market and sell their new sporting goods line.

According to a narrative about his 1884 trip published in a 1914 Harness Magazine, Frank stated that he was astonished to find that many store buyers had never seen some of the sporting goods he was offering and, in general, he found New York to be a very underdeveloped market.   Needless to say, Frank sailed home crestfallen.

While some would see failure in Frank’s initial New York sojourn, Frank eventually saw opportunity and he returned to New York in 1887 setting up shop at 19 East 15th Street with the intent of capturing a share of the market as a manufacturer and retailer of sporting goods.  Initially, to get up and running, he had to import English workmen to teach his new American employees the manufacturing processes that the London Slazenger factory employed.

To help grow sporting games in New York, Frank outfitted all of his employees with sports equipment, along with instruction, in the hope that they would help spread the games among their families and friends.  Frank also provided free trophies for select New York sporting events and recruited golf pros from Great Britain to teach that game to Americans.  He brought over Scot Willie Anderson to be the pro at Misquanicut Golf Club in Rhode Island and Willie repaid the favor by winning the U.S. Open in 1901, 03, 04 and 05 with Slazenger golf clubs, of course.

Frank’s grass roots marketing did indeed help expand the growth of sports in the Northeast and, along with the same socioeconomic trends that fueled Slazenger’s growth in London, it allowed the New York branch to grow into a full line sporting goods manufacturer similar to their English operations.

A business presence on both sides of the Atlantic gave the Slazenger brothers the ability to share products, resources and patents, which gave them a distinct competitive advantage over their early American competitors, such as Wright & Ditson, A.G. Spalding and E.I. Horsman.

As it turned out, Frank and his brothers possessed a propensity for invention and they filed American patents for many of their innovations.  The most widely used of their patents was U.S. No.644877, which was filed on September 30, 1899. This was the patent for “Slazengers Patent Stringing”, which is one of the two unique Slazenger patents visible in the pictured New York made racket.

The tennis collector’s vernacular for this patent is “double-strung outside mains”, which according to a 1915 Slazengers ad “is found to produce greater driving power and more permanent rigidity.”

The second unique U.S. patent is clearly visible above the “Patent Shoulders” marking in the accompanying photo.  This Slazenger patent, which was only used in the United States, consists of a heart shaped translucent parchment shoulder overlay on both sides to strengthen the racket and “to give even greater feel” according to the company. 

In addition to demonstrating the two patents, this circa 1910 model is simply a high quality beautifully decorated racket with original green gut strings and red trebling. It also has Frank’s signature in gold script, which was reserved for use only on its top end models, such as the Special Demon fishtail made in London.   A final rare characteristic of this racket are the decorative wrappings above the midpoint of the head, which I have only seen a few times in over thirty years of tennis collecting.

For over two decades Frank always filed his U.S. patents as “a citizen of Great Britain, residing in New York City” until 1924 when we finally wore him down and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He filed his 1925 patent for screw on golf club heads as “a citizen of the United States, residing in New York City”  where he lived for the remainder of his life until his death in 1938 while vacationing in Belgrade Lakes, Maine.

Without a doubt, Frank Legh Slazenger made his second trip to America an extremely successful one by not only promoting the growth of sports in the U.S., but also by becoming a major player in the American sporting goods industry and towards the end of his life, an actual American as well.

                                                                                         Good Collecting.