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Harry Likas

American tennis player (1924–2017)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ5670615
Source-derived summary

Henry "Harry" Edward Likas Jr. of San Francisco, and later Belvedere-Tiburon, California, was an Intercollegiate Tennis Association Hall of Fame inductee most notable for winning the 1948 National Collegiate Athletic Association Tennis Singles Championship.

Early life

Harry Likas was born in San Francisco, California, on February 27, 1924. He started playing Northern California and National Junior tournaments. Likas was rated the number one youth in the nation and won the Boy’s California Championship. At 18, Likas was selected to be on the National Junior Davis Cup team.

After graduating from Lowell High School in San Francisco, Likas went on to play tennis for the University of San Francisco where he eventually won the 1948 NCAA singles championship beating Vic Seix. He beat five future Wimbledon champions: Jaroslav Drobný, Bob Falkenburg, Budge Patty, Dick Savitt. He also defeated world Champion Pancho Gonzales.

Later life

Likas would serve on the board of the United States Tennis Association (USTA Nor Cal division), then known as the Northern California Tennis Association, NCTA).

Editorial summary

“Harry Likas” enters the record as american tennis player (1924–2017). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harry, Likas and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1924—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1924-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Harry, Likas and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Harry Likas” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harry, Likas and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5670615. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948 and 1924.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. 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.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

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 “Harry Likas”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Harry Likas primary sources, Harry Likas archive and Harry 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 “Harry Likas”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Harry Likas” 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.