Atlanta tennis great Crawford Henry dies at age 88
Crawford Henry, an Atlanta tennis player who won two NCAA doubles titles at Tulane and got as high as No. 18 in the world in the 1960s before becoming a coach, died Monday. He was 88.
Henry is the only Georgia men’s tennis player to have achieved a top-20 world ranking from Bitsy Grant in the 1930s until Robby Ginepri this century.
“He had a huge, powerful serve, even with that wooden racket, and he had a big forehand,” said Richard Howell, the selection committee chairman of the Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame, of which Henry is a member. “And Crawford was a heck of a nice guy. Everybody liked him.”
Competing for Atlanta’s Grady High (now called Midtown), Henry won four straight GHSA singles titles in the highest classification and won the USTA Interscholastic Championship, considered the high school national championship, as a senior in 1955. His high school tennis coach was Erk Russell, the football coach.
Ranked in the top 10 nationally among junior players. Henry went to Tulane and won NCAA doubles national titles in 1957 and 1959 with partner Ron Holmberg. Tulane won the national team title in 1959.
In 1961, Henry reached the round of 16 of the U.S. Championships, now called the U.S. Open, at Forest Hills, New York. He made the second rounds of the French Open and Wimbledon and had a victory over Roy Emerson in Puerto Rico that year.
In the Atlanta Invitational the next year, Henry teamed with Grant, age 51, and beat Chuck McKinley and Donald Dell in the doubles final. McKinley won Wimbledon the next year.
With little money in tennis in the 1960s, Henry settled into coaching in 1965. He became the first tennis professional at DeKalb Tennis Center in 1968 and coached junior players through the 1970s. One was Georgia All-American and doubles national champion Allen Miller.
Henry was a college head coach at Oglethorpe, Emory, Tulane and, most notably, N.C. State for 11 years before retiring after the 1995 season.
Henry is a member of the Tulane Athletics Hall of Fame (1983), the Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame (1984), the Southern Tennis Hall of Fame (1993) and the ITA Collegiate Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame (2000).
About the Author
Todd Holcomb covers high school sports across the state. He rejoined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2025 and has worked with the AJC in varying capacities since 1985. He is a co-founder and editor of Georgia High School Football Daily.
