William Tatem Tilden II (February 10, 1893 – June 5, 1953), nicknamed "Big Bill", was an American tennis player.

Tilden, who was frequently at odds with the rigid United States Lawn Tennis Association about his amateur status and income derived from newspaper articles, won his last Grand Slam event in 1930 at Wimbledon at the age of 37.

William Tatem Tilden Jr.[a] was born on February 10, 1893, in Germantown, Philadelphia into a wealthy family bereaved by the death of three older siblings.

After several months of deep depression and, with encouragement from his aunt, tennis, which he had taken up at age six or seven at the family summer house in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York,[4][3] became his primary means of recovery.

According to his biographer, Frank Deford, because of his early family losses, Tilden spent all of his adult life attempting to create a father-son relationship with a long succession of ball boys and youthful tennis protégés, of whom Vinnie Richards was the most noted.

[6][7] Tilden went to the prep school Germantown Academy where he wasn't known for his tennis nor was he eventually good enough to play on his college team.

[9] Prior to 1920, he had won a number of Canadian doubles titles,[citation needed] but at the U.S. National Championships in 1918 and 1919 he lost the singles final to Robert Lindley Murray and "Little Bill" Johnston, respectively in straight sets.

In the mid-1920s, Tilden came into conflict with the USLTA regarding alleged violations of the amateur rule, specifically relating to the monetary compensation he received for writing tennis articles.

[12] In the late 1920s, the great French players known as the "Four Musketeers" finally wrested the Davis Cup away from Tilden and the United States, as well as his domination of the singles titles at Wimbledon and Forest Hills.

For the next 15 years, he and a handful of other professionals such as Hans Nüsslein and Karel Koželuh barnstormed across the United States and Europe in a series of one-night stands, with Tilden still the player that people primarily paid to see.

Tilden had won 17 times for the entire year, per an Associated Press report,[18] so a probable win–loss record at tour's end was 36–17 in Vines' favor.

Both players then met at least 6 times during the rest of the year (Ray Bowers has listed 5 tournament matches and 1 one-night program), all lost by Tilden.

In May 1931 he won the inaugural U.S. National Indoor Professional Championships,[19] held at the Penn Athletic Club, Philadelphia against Vincent Richards.

[31] In the early years of the 21st century, Sidney Wood compiled his list of the Greatest Players of All Time (later published posthumously in a memoir "The Wimbledon final that never was and other tennis tales from a bygone era").

[33] Tilden's criminal record has cast a long shadow: in March 2016, a proposal to honor him with a historical marker at the club was voted down by the state of Pennsylvania panel charged with evaluating nominations.

[34] In 1950, in spite of his legal record and public disgrace, an Associated Press poll named Tilden the greatest tennis player of the half-century by a wider margin than that given to any athlete in any other sport (310 out of 391 votes).

In the United States' sports-mad decade of the Roaring Twenties, Tilden was one of the six dominant figures of the "Golden Age of Sport", along with Babe Ruth, Howie Morenz, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, and Jack Dempsey.

[37] He was arrested again in January 1949 after picking up a 16-year-old hitchhiker who remained anonymous until years later when he filed a lawsuit claiming he had suffered severe mental, physical, and emotional damage from the encounter.

In both cases, he apparently sincerely believed that his celebrity and his longtime friendship with Hollywood names such as Charlie Chaplin were enough to keep him from jail.

At one point, he was invited to play at a prestigious professional tournament being held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel; at the last moment, he was told that he could not participate.

[41] Tilden had been born to wealth, and he earned large sums of money during his long career, particularly in his early years on the pro tour; he spent it lavishly, keeping a suite at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City.

He was preparing to leave for the United States Professional Championship tournament in Cleveland, Ohio in 1953 when he died from heart complications at age 60.

Bud Collins states that, as an amateur (1912–1930), Tilden won 138 of 192 tournaments, lost 28 finals and had a 907–62 match record, a 93.6% winning percentage.

[46] He, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are the only players to reach 10 finals at a single Grand Slam event.