Robert Bedard (tennis)
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Robert Bédard (born 13 September 1931 in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec) is a former tennis player who was the Canadian number 1 ranked singles player for most of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Bédard is the last Canadian to win the Canadian Open singles championship, with wins in 1955, 1957, and 1958. He also won the doubles title three times, in 1955, 1957, and 1959 with compatriot Don Fontana.
Robert was the top-ranked Canadian player in singles every year from 1955 to 1966 and was ranked no lower than third between 1952 and 1970. Prior to this, Bedard attended UCLA on a tennis scholarship. Bédard was a Canadian Davis Cup member from 1953 to 1961, again in 1967, and had a career win-lose record of 11 and 22, 8 and 15 in singles and 3 and 7 in doubles.
An amateur tennis player in the days before Open tennis, Bedard has been a long-time educator, first as a French and geography school teacher at Bishop's College School in Sherbrooke, Quebec and as headmaster at St. Andrew's College in Aurora, Ontario where he and his wife Ann lived. He has coached tennis and ice hockey during much of this time.
Robert served as the president of Tennis Quebec from 1967 to 1970 and the vice-president of Tennis Canada from 1973 to 1977. He has remained active playing in senior's tennis over the years, in particular doubles with one of his and his wife's four children.
Bedard also was singles champion of the Nova Scotia Open in 1952, 1955, and 1957.
