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Don Butler (tennis)

British tennis player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 26, 2024
Entity authorityQ42307092 ↗
Source-derived summary

Donald William Butler (19 March 1910 — date of death unknown) was a British tennis player.

A player from Worcestershire, Butler was a three-time singles champion in Eastbourne. He had his best period on tour in the late 1930s, twice reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon. In 1938 he won the All England Plate.

Butler is the only person to play Davis Cup for Great Britain both before and after World War II. He featured in two ties in 1938, then at the age of 37 in 1947 received another call up, picked over Derrick Barton who was 12 years his junior.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Don Butler (tennis)” as british tennis player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Butler, tennis and British.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1910, 1938, 1947—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1910-03-17. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Butler, tennis and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Don Butler (tennis)”, the useful work is to connect “british tennis player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 26, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q42307092. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1938 and 1947.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Don Butler (tennis)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Don Butler (tennis) primary sources, Don Butler (tennis) archive and Butler research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Don Butler (tennis)”?
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  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Don Butler (tennis)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.