Triumph and disaster : the real story of John Bromwich

187 Pages·2007·0.631 MB·English

by  John Leckey

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: [phone] Fax: [phone]
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