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Henry Wilfred "Bunny" Austin (August 26, 1906
– August 26, 2000) was a British tennis
player. As of 2005 he was the last male British
tennis player to reach the final of Wimbledon
championships|Wimbledon, achieving that in 1932
and 1938.  He was also a finalist at the 1938
French Open.  Along with Fred Perry, he was a
vital part of the British team that won the Davis
Cup three times from 1933-1935|35.  He is also
remembered as the first tennis player to wear
shorts.

Austin was brought up in South Norwood, London.
The nickname Bunny came from a comic strip,
Wilfred. Encouraged by his father, who was
determined that he become a sportsman, he joined
Norhurst Tennis Club aged six.


==Tennis career==
While still an undergraduate at Cambridge
University he reached the semi-finals of the men's
doubles at Wimbledon Championships|Wimbledon in
1926.  By the 1930s he was ranked in the world's
top ten players.  In his first Wimbledon men's
singles final in 1932 he was beaten by Ellsworth
Vines of the United States in three sets.

In 1933 he decided that the traditional tennis
attire, cricket flannels, weighed him down too
much.  Instead he asked his tailor to create some
prototype shorts.  The same year he and Fred Perry
helped win the Davis Cup for Britain.

In his Wimbledon career Austin reached the
quarter-finals or better ten times.  In 1938 he
played Don Budge in the final, but won only four
games.  The next year he was seeded first but lost
in an early round.  It was the last time he played
at Wimbledon.


==Personal==
He married actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931, and
together they were one of the celebrity couples of
the age.  Austin played tennis with Charlie
Chaplin, was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, and
met both Mary of Teck|Queen Mary and President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Austin and his wife worked for the cause of the
Oxford Group throughout the 1930s, promoting it in
the United States during World War II.  According
to Austin's friend Peter Ustinov, Austin was
"disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club
because he was a conscientious objector".  His
membership of the club was "lapsed" until being
restored in 1984.

Austin's autobiography, A Mixed Double, was
published in 1969.

After a serious fall in 1995 Austin moved to a
nursing home at Coulsden, Surrey. He died in 2000
on his 94th birthday.