John Moyer Heathcote (12 July 1834 – 3 August 1912) was an English barrister and real tennis player.
At that time, there was no formal competition for the amateur championship, but from 1867 the Marylebone Cricket Club annually offered prizes to its members for play in the courts at Lord's Cricket Ground, and the gold prize carried with it the blue riband of amateur tennis.
Heathcote won the gold prize for the next 15 years and in about 1869 he was the equal of any player in the world until the professional George Lambert began to surpass him.
Walter Clopton Wingfield put forward proposals based on his own game for an hour-glass court and a racquets counting method which were adopted but which led to some objections.
By 1877 the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club was proposing the first Wimbledon Tournament, and a review of the rules was required.
Heathcote with his fellow MCC commissioner Julian Marshall, and Henry Jones of the All England club laid down the rules that are almost unchanged to this day in time for the first Wimbledon tournament on 9 July 1877.
He wrote for the Badminton Library authoring Volume 14: Tennis, Lawn Tennis, Rackets & Fives (1890) with contributions by A. Lyttelton, W. C. Marshall, and others[5] and Volume 18: Skating & Figure Skating (1892), co-authored by Charles Goodman Tebbutt and illustrated with photographs and with wood-engravings by Charles Whympe[6] John Moyer Heathcote married Louisa Cecilia MacLeod (d. 1910), the eldest child and only daughter of Norman MacLeod of MacLeod and his wife Louisa Barbara St John, on 18 December 1860 in St James Westminster.
[9] A wall tablet in the south transept of Conington church is inscribed: "Louisa Cecilia only daughter of Norman Macleod of Isle of Skye and beloved wife of John Moyer Heathcote Esq.
[10] Grave in churchyard All Saints Conington, headstone inscription: "John Horace / Heathcote / 28th December 1910 / 30th May 2003."