Joseph Raphael Hunt
Born: February 17, 1919
Died: February 02, 1944
Hometown: San Francisco, California, United States
Citizenship: United States
Handed: Right
Inducted: 1966
Grand Slam Record
U.S. Singles 1943
Tournament Record
Intercollegiate Singles 1941
Doubles 1938
Davis Cup Team Member 1939
Nobody knows for certain what went wrong when Lt. Joe Hunt sent his Navy fighter plane into its last dive. Pilot error? Mechanical failure? There were rumors of both, but the Atlantic swallowed forever all evidence of the Grumman Hellcat–along with the 1943 U.S. champion.
Fifteen days short of his 26th birthday, Hunt of the U.S. Navy was a victim of War II, killed February 2, 1944, during a mission off Daytona Beach, FL. The accident, with his training nearly complete, was never explained. Thus Hunt was the shortest-lived Hall of Famers, ranked No. 1 for his U.S. performance, but unable the following year, 1944, to get leave from duty to defend the title.
A sturdy, handsome blond Los Angeleno, 6-feet, 165 pounds, he came from a wealthy tennis family. His father, Reuben, won the Southern championship in 1906, and his older sister Marianne in 1934, and brother Charles in 1945, ranked No. 20 nationally. His wife, Jacque Virgil, had been the No. 1 Southern California junior and played Forest Hills in 1943, too.
“He was a strong guy, big serve and volley, and took to grass, coming from the Southern California concrete,” says fellow Hall of Famer, Pancho Segura. “Everybody though he’d be the big man, along with Jack Kramer, after the war.”
Joe was alone in his progression to the top, the only man to win the U.S. junior 15s and 18s, the Intercollegiate singles (for the Naval Academy) and then the U.S. Championship. In a bizarre finish to his title triumph over Southern California buddy and rival, Kramer (6-3, 6-8, 10-8, 6-0), Hunt, on leave from the Atlantic fleet, won the title, so to speak, lying down. He collapsed to the turf with leg cramps as Kramer’s last shot flew out of court, and might not have been able to play another point. The humid 90-degree afternoon got to him in the unique all-military final. Seaman Kramer was also on leave, from the Coast Guard. It was the last important tennis tournament for Joe, who had to report back to his destroyer. However, a year later, at Pensacola, FL, he did win a local Labor Day event over a fellow flight trainee, 1942 U.S. champ Ted Schroeder.
In 1938 at Southern CA (doubles) and 1941 at the Naval Academy (singles), Hunt was the only player other than Malcolm Chace (Brown and Yale, 1893, 1894, 1895), to win U.S. Intercollegiate titles for two different schools. Husky and athletic, Hunt also played football at Navy. He, 20, and Kramer, 18, were the second youngest Davis Cup doubles pair for the U.S., losing in 1939 at Philadelphia to Australians John Bromwich and Adrian Quist, the first domino in the only final-round 3-2 loss from a 2-0 lead.
One of the youngest to make the U.S. Top Ten at 17 in 1936, he was a Forest Hills quarterfinalist in 1937 and 1938, semifinalist in 1939 and 1940, losing both times to Bobby Riggs. Born February 17, 1919 in San Francisco, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1966.
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