Anita Kanter
Born1933 (age 89–90)
Santa Monica, California
CollegeUniversity of California-Los Angeles
Anita Kanter
Medal record
Representing  United States
Maccabiah Games
Women's tennis
Silver medal – second place1953 IsraelWomen's Singles
Gold medal – first place1953 IsraelMixed Doubles
Gold medal – first place1953 IsraelWomen's Doubles

Anita Kanter (born 1933) is a former amateur tennis player from the U.S. who played in the 1950s. In singles, Kanter was ranked # 6 in the United States (and # 10 in the world by World Tennis magazine) in 1952, and # 9 in the US in 1953.[1][2][3]

Early life

Kanter was born in Santa Monica, California, and is Jewish.[4][5] She attended Santa Monica High School.[6]

Tennis career

Kanter won the 1949 US Girls National Hard Court Singles Championship.[3] She won the US girls tennis championship in 1951 as an 18-year-old sophomore at the University of California-Los Angeles, as well as the 1951 National Hard Court Doubles and Mixed Doubles championships.[7][3]

In 1952, she won the U.S. Women's Clay Court Championships, and was the runner-up at the Foothills Cup.[7][3] That year at the Cincinnati Masters, she won both the singles and doubles titles.[8]

In 1953 she won the US National hard court tennis championship,[5] successfully defended her doubles title,[3] and reached the singles final. She was seeded no. 1 in singles and doubles in both appearances in Cincinnati. In doubles in those two years, she paired with Joan Merciadis in 1952 and with Thelma Long of Australia in 1953.[9]

Maccabiah Games

Kanter, who is Jewish, competed in Israel in the 1953 Maccabiah Games—the "Jewish Olympics".[10] At the Games, Kanter, ranked #9 in the US at the time, lost the women's singles title to Angela Buxton and ended up with the silver medal,[11][12][13] but won two gold medals, one as she won the mixed doubles title with Grant Golden and one as she won the women's double title with Toby Greenberg - beating Angela Buxton and Carol Levy of Britain in the final.[7][14][3]

Hall of Fame

In 2014, she was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[15][3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bernard Postal, Jesse Silver, Roy Silver (1965). Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports
  2. ↑ Martin Harry Greenberg (1979). The Jewish lists: physicists and generals, actors and writers, and hundreds of other lists of accomplished Jews
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "ANITA KANTER-KAPPEl; Tennis - 2014". Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on June 18, 2016. Retrieved August 4, 2020.
  4. ↑ Ron Kaplan (2015). The Jewish Olympics: The History of the Maccabiah Games
  5. 1 2 Bob Wechsler (2008). Day by Day in Jewish sports history. ISBN 9781602800137. Retrieved March 20, 2011.
  6. ↑ "UCLA Daily Bruin". August 4, 1912 – via Internet Archive.
  7. 1 2 3 Kanter, Anita: Jews In Sports
  8. ↑ "Tennis - WTA Tour - Cincinnati : Medal winners and event presentation". www.the-sports.org.
  9. ↑ Best Sports Stories, 1954.
  10. ↑ "Anita Kantor Wins in Tel Aviv Games". Retrieved March 20, 2011.
  11. ↑ Bruce Schoenfeld (2004). The match: Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton: how two outsiders--one Black, the other Jewish--forged a friendship and made sports history. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780060526528. Retrieved March 20, 2011.
  12. ↑ Robert Slater (2000). Great Jews in Sports. ISBN 9780824604332. Retrieved March 20, 2011.
  13. ↑ Jack Leon (June 28, 1957). "ISRAEL'S LEADING NETTER Arieh Avidan Will Be at Forest Hills". Jewish Post.
  14. ↑ "The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle from Milwaukee, Wisconsin on October 2, 1953 · Page 3". Newspapers.com.
  15. ↑ Eric Sondheimer (September 16, 2013). "15 selected for Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame," Los Angeles Times.
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