Mikhail, Count Sumarokov-Elston

Mikhail Sumarokov-Elston was a Russian tennis prodigy who won the Bad Homburg Championship in 1906, when he was only 12-years-old. Sumarokov-Elston started as a right-handed player but surgery on that hand rendered him unable to play well, and thus he switched to playing left-handed. Sumarokov-Elston was born into Russian nobility before the Bolshevik Revolution and had a privileged life until that time. He studied at Annenschule and then graduated with a law degree from St. Petersburg University.

Sumarokov-Elston served in the ambulance fleet on the Black Sea during World War I but was invalided out of the service in 1916. He immigrated out of Russia in 1919, during the Revolution, settling in Nice in 1920, where he lived until 1937, after which he lived out his life in London.

Because of his fortune, Sumarokov-Elston was able to play many Continental international championships. He was a five-time Russian singles champion (1910-14), also winning one doubles title and two mixed doubles titles. He won city tournaments in Moskva in 1910 (singles and doubles) and St. Petersburg in 1912 and 1914. Sumarokov-Elston won the South of France Championship in 1920-22 and the Nice Championship in 1922. He won the Russian Émigré Tennis Championships three consecutive times in the 1930s and then turned professional in 1936. Sumarokov-Elston became a member of the Russian Tennis Hall of Fame in 2002.