Bill Tilden

[Bill] Tilden [famous tennis player who loved boys] is depicted, but not named, by Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Lolita. He appears as a has-been tennis champion with "a harem of ball boys", whom Humbert Humbert hires to coach Lolita, knowing that he will not try to seduce her due to his homosexuality. In retrospect, Nabokov told Alfred Appel, who was editing an annotated version of Lolita, that his anonymous tennis coach was a real person who had won three Wimbledon championships, was born in 1893, and died in 1953. Tilden is the only Wimbledon champion to fit this description. The name of Nabokov's character is "Ned Litam", which can rendered "Ma Tilden" when spelt backwards.

source: 'Bill Tilden'; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Tilden; Wikipedia; Taken from Wikipedia: 13 June 2009; Bill Tilden died in 1953