Wimbledon QF (1929) Highest ranking No. French Open QF (1926, 1929) Retired 1933 | Career titles 312 (1931) Role Tennis player Turned pro 1910 (amateur tour) Name Bela Kehrling | |
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Plays Right-handed (1-handed backhand) Died April 26, 1937, Budapest, Hungary | ||
Béla von Kehrling (Hungarian: Kehrling Béla; [ˈkeːrlinɡ ˈbeːla]; 25 January 1891 – 26 April 1937) was a Hungarian tennis, table tennis, and football player but eventually a winter sportsman familiar with ice-hockey and occasionally competing in bobsleigh. He competed at the 1912 Summer Olympics and the 1924 Summer Olympics.
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Just like Fred Perry, he played both tennis and table tennis professionally. In 1926 he played in the first table tennis World Championships final in London with Zoltán Mechlovits in doubles but lost to Roland Jacobi (who won the singles title) and Dániel Pécsi. He was also featured in the Hungarian team that won gold in team competition. Originally he wasn't part of the national team. While the Hungarians unanimously swept all of the medals after Roland Jacobi's singles and doubles success he suddenly been reported of the death of his father thus he decided to travel home. The substitute player was Béla von Kehrling who had to beat Munio Pillinger of Austria to have the team medal as well. He did so and completed the flawless victory for Hungary. In the end he took two medals in the table tennis world championships, one gold and one silver.
In 1924 he won the German Tennis Championships (now called German Open Hamburg). The following year he was back in the finals but then lost against Otto Froitzheim. The same year he won Hungarian Tennis Championships (which he did 13 times altogether counting only the singles). In July 1933 Von Kehrling won the doubles and mixed doubles title at the Dutch Championships.
"Züricher Sport" newspaper ranked Kehrling as No. 10 in the European Top 10 rankings in 1931.
In conjunction with his sports activity he was the vice-president of the Hungarian Tennis Association and the editor-in-chief of its official magazine the bimonthly Tennisz és Golf (Tennis and Golf).
Table tennis career
Personal life
Béla Kehrling married Magda Schlauch. She occasionally played tennis as well and wrote articles to the newspaper published by her husband. They had one son named Béla Kehrling, Jr, born in 1917 in Budapest who served as an Ensign in the cavalry brigade of the Hungarian Army in 1944. They had another son named Tamás who was born in 1924 and died in 1999.