Table Of Content

Triumph and Disaster John Anthony Leckey was born in 1932 in Hobart and he graduated in Commerce at the University of Melbourne. After a career in business he returned to his old university to complete a PhD in Australian history. A book that was based on his doctoral thesis and entitled Low Degraded Broots? Industry and Entrepreneurialism in Melbourne’s Little Lon 1860–1950 was published in 2004. His Records Are Made to be Broken. The Real Story of Bill Ponsford, a biography of the great cricketer, followed in 2006. He has also undertaken two commissioned business biographies and is an active member of the Royal South Yarra Lawn Tennis Club. Norman Jeffries Marshall was born in Melbourne in 1933 and completed a BA (Hons) degree at the University of Melbourne, combined with an MA in Classical Greek and History. After a career in teaching he has been Honorary Archivist at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club since 1996. He is author of The Yooralla Story 1918–1977 (1978); A Jubilee History 1928–1978 The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia Victorian Branch (1978); St George’s Hospital, Kew 1912–1980. An Early Anglican Hospital (1981); Accounting for a Century, Touche Ross & Co, Australia (1982); MECWA Community Care, A History (1998). He is also a member of the Royal South Yarra Lawn Tennis Club. Triumph and Disaster The real story of John Bromwich by John Leckey & Norman Marshall ARCADIA © John Leckey & Norman Marshall 2007 First published 2007 Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd 7 Lt Lothian St Nth, North Melbourne, Vic 3051 Tel: 03 9329 6963 Fax: 03 9329 5452 Email: [email protected] Web: www.scholarly.info A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia. ISBN 978 1 74097 183 6 All Rights Reserved Cover design by Adam Bextream Typesetting and layout by Melanie Schmid For Zenda Bromwich Contents Acknowledgments viii Foreword by Neale Fraser ix Introduction 1 1 Two hands are better than one 4 2 Senior tennis 17 3 Representing Australia 24 4 The Davis Cup Team in 1937 30 5 Skulduggery in 1938 39 6 Triumph in 1939 45 7 War and marriage 62 8 A new era: shorts and all 72 9 The Pails imbroglio 79 10 Disaster in 1948 95 11 Captain of Australia, 1949 105 12 The last hurrah, 1950 113 13 Newspapers and South Africa 123 14 Retirement 139 John Bromwich’s results 147 Bromwich genealogy 167 Notes 170 Bibliography 172 Index 175 vii Acknowledgments Many people in the tennis world have told us that a biography of tennis great John Bromwich is long overdue. The book could would not have been written without the enthusiastic support and encouragement of John’s widow, Zenda Bromwich, and her family, who made available to us the meticulously maintained records and scrapbooks that date back to schoolboy days. We also wish to thank Chris Brown and the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club for access to the club’s comprehensive archives and to Geoff Pollard and Anne West for similar access to the archives of Tennis Australia, particularly the invaluable minutes of LTAA council meetings and reports of Davis Cup touring managers. Alan Little and Audrey Snell, guardians of the extensive Wimbledon library, were generous with their time and deserve our thanks. Cedric Mason has been most helpful in introducing us to Bromwich’s contemporaries in the world of international tennis. We thank those contemporaries for their thoughtful contributions, and particularly Neale Fraser AO MBE, long-serving Australian Davis Cup captain, who wrote the foreword. Their names are listed in the bibliography. Photographs are sourced from the Bromwich archives. viii Foreword by Neale Fraser Little did I realise in 1945 when my mother suggested I—with my two brothers and two sisters—should go and play tennis on the Regent courts next to our home in South Yarra that tennis would become my life. Quickly taking to the game on the court, I soon began to learn about it off the court. Australia was then the holder of the Davis Cup, having won the famous trophy for the first time as a “stand alone” country at Philadelphia in 1939. We had previously shared our triumphs with New Zealand under the banner of “Australasia”. I also learned that Australia was the first country to win the coveted cup after losing the first two matches in the five-match Challenge Round. The player who clinched that decisive fifth match at Philadelphia was John Bromwich, universally known to fans and fellow players as “Brom”. Brom became my childhood idol. The more I read about him, the more I wanted to be like him. Yet our styles were completely opposite. Though we both had left-handed forehands, I could never have adopted his ambidextrous technique had I spent a lifetime trying. I did equal a feat of his, however. Twenty years after that famous 1939 Challenge Round, I also won the vital fifth match when a Final in America was poised at two matches all, and so helped bring the Cup back to Australia for the fourth time. There can be few bigger thrills in world sport. ix Triumph & Disaster The Australian captain, Harry Hopman, described Brom’s 6–0, 6–3, 6–1 Cup victory over Frank Parker in 1939 as the finest of his career. Parker was considered by his compatriots to be the ideal player to play such a critical match. He was steady and accurate, with the temperament and fitness to withstand the mental and physical pressures of such an occasion. Years later I heard a story from the warm-up of this historic match. Back and forth the ball crossed the net as the players rallied from the baseline on the grass surface. Each wanted to show the other that he was ready to rally all day without making an error. Finally, after scores of practice strokes, one player caught the ball and threw it to a ballboy, with a request for a new ball. The psychological war continued. It was late 1945 that I first saw my idol play. At the Victorian championships, one of the first events Brom played after returning home from war service, he won the singles, doubles and mixed doubles. He now had become my all-conquering hero. While stationed in New Guinea, he had suffered a bullet wound in his left hand, resulting in some lack of flexibility in that hand. The injury partly explains why his racket handles were reduced by one- third of the normal size. He also had his rackets loosely strung. Watching Brom confirmed my opinion of his extraordinary perfectionism. Not only was his style unique, his rackets unusual, his mannerisms consistent, his court demeanour excellent—he was also tremendously exciting! One of my most vivid memories is of him playing his double- handed shot, with his tongue out, his right knee so close to the ground, and his eyes fixed firmly on the ball. He was always the player tennis lovers rushed to see. x