The Fox: Harry Hopman and the Greatest Dynasty in Tennis History

By Michael Sexton

The Fox: Harry Hopman and the Greatest Dynasty in Tennis History is the story of how one man drove a tiny nation to dominate a global sport. The Grand Slams, Wimbledon crowns and Davis Cups his players won made Australia famous. They called him simply Mr Hopman but the New York Times called him a 'one-man dynasty'.

He was revered for his success but reviled for his methods. He had no formal education as a coach or trainer but relentlessly pursued sporting excellence. Hopman's approach was revolutionary to a genteel sport, introducing the grit of gymnasiums and endurance exercises that bordered on sadistic.

This book examines the many shades of Harry Hopman: the outsider who willed himself to play for his country and battled the sport's establishment; the schemer who saw America dominate the sport and devised a way to beat them; the unquestioned leader; and eventually the ageing coach who embraced the 'me generation'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9781801508353

Michael Sexton

Michael Sexton is a journalist with thirty years’ experience in Australia and abroad. He has worked in news, current affairs and documentary. His interest in Australian Rules football has seen him awarded eight SANFL media awards for excellence.

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PROLOGUE

Largo, Florida December 1985

IN THE end, of all the champions he had mentored, it fell to Fred Stolle to deliver Harry Hopman’s eulogy. In the days after hearing the news of his death, Stolle and Roy Emerson had batted the task back and forth. Who would speak for the players? Stolle always felt there was an unspoken hierarchy among them. He had 19 major titles in his trophy cabinet, but Emerson outranked him with 28. Like Hopman, they had both made their homes in the United States and so the task would fall to one of them.

The news that the 79-year-old Hopman had suffered a fatal heart attack at his tennis centre at Bardmoor in Florida had leaked out in the lazy week between Christmas and New Year 1985. It reached Melbourne, ten thousand miles away, where Frank Sedgman was playing in an Australian Greats Invitation Classic at Kooyong. He was told after coming off the court and stood quietly absorbing the news while wiping away perspiration with a towel.

The lawn court he had just played on was where so much history had been made by Hopman in the post-war years. Alongside Sedgman in the field were Merv Rose, Rex Hartwig and Ken Rosewall, all of whom had shared an era when a country with a small population, but endless sunshine, dominated the sport. It was at Kooyong in 1946 that Sedgman had seen for the first time the American power game he would later challenge and where spectators had hurled their seat cushions onto the court in homage to the teenage Rosewall after he defeated Vic Seixas in the deciding rubber to win the 1953 Davis Cup. Rosewall and Lew Hoad were baby-boomer idols, their fresh faces plastered on newspaper front pages, magazine covers and on newsreels in picture shows. The financial largesse of winning in 1953 allowed the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia (LTAA) to expand its touring squad the following year from four players to seven. The three additions were promising youngsters Neale Fraser, Ashley Cooper and Roy Emerson.

Akin to Sir Robert Menzies’s record stay in the Lodge, Harry Hopman was a constant after decades of turmoil. Every Christmas as the country lounged into its summer break at the beach, in the backyard or around a barbeque, there was a wireless crackling with descriptions of epic Davis Cup contests. Menzies was a fan, calling Hopman a genius and describing his temperament as ‘remarkable’. Like the Liberal-Country Party coalition, Hopman’s reign stretched for more than two decades. Between the end of the war and the beginning of the open era in 1968, Australia captured the Davis Cup 15 times. During that time the men collectively won 51 grand slam singles crowns including ten at Wimbledon. They shared in 61 doubles and 63 mixed doubles titles at the majors. Four grand slams were completed in calendar years: Rod Laver (1962) singles, Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor (1951) doubles, Ken Fletcher and Margaret Smith (later Court) (1963) and Owen Davidson with Lesley Turner Bowrey and Billie Jean King (1967) in mixed doubles.

Yet unlike most sporting empires this one had ever-changing parts. Champions gave way to champions. They were recognisable to egalitarian Australia which saw the best of itself reflected in the sons of farmers, butchers, tradesmen, dentists, teachers, grocers and judges. There were left-handers and right-handers, two-fisted backhands, baseline prowlers and serve-volleyers. All had different strengths: Neale Fraser’s serve, Lew Hoad’s power, John Bromwich’s accuracy, Ken Rosewall’s backhand, Roy Emerson’s fitness, Frank Sedgman’s mid-court volley, Ken McGregor’s reach, John Newcombe’s court smarts and Rod Laver’s topspin. They came from all parts of the enormous island continent, learning the game on outback courts made from crushed ant beds, on slow clay and loam in Sydney and Melbourne and on clipped lawn or bitumen everywhere in between. What they shared was peak physical fitness, an adherence to sportsmanship and a zeal for the contest. They understood the gestalt – they were all brilliant players, but their collective worth was greater than as individuals. They were mates in an Australian understanding that is spoken mostly through action. Hoad said that if an Australian was in a five-set match under a 100-degree sun, he knew he would not be the one getting tired. Emerson told Newcombe as a teenager that ‘when you are out there, and you’re Australian, you don’t come off the court unless you are covered in blood’. South African Gordon Forbes observed the generations of players ‘all potential champions with the fire and determination of Australia embedded in their souls’.

‘We were great mates off the court,’ said Cooper, ‘then on the court we used to try to beat each other’s brains out and once it was over, we were mates again.’ When asked to describe the times, Laver said, ‘If you lost then you shook hands, congratulated them on playing well and told them that you would get them next time but now it was their shout.’

Overseeing it all was Hopman – who galvanised the talent in whatever form it came, and in doing so made Australia famous. He had been a moderately successful player who watched the game through beady eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses and took in everything. His body looked like it was fashioned from fencing wire and his chicken legs hung out of baggy shorts. He slicked his receding hair back with the hair tonic his players would later endorse and wore out their ears with his repeated adage to ‘hit for the lines’ to put the other player under pressure. When in trouble during a match his advice would simply be to take a few deep breaths. The American Davis Cup captain Alrick Man said that having Hopman courtside was worth 15 points per game to Australia. George Vecsey in the New York Times called him a ‘one-man dynasty’.

It all seems so simple in hindsight, a master at the helm steering tennis through a golden age but there were struggles. The relationships were not warm. He drove the players relentlessly on the court, in the gym and on the track and was deaf to protest or excuse. He could be a curmudgeon and incommunicative. Hopman courted the limelight but not for his players who he warned off publicity. He controlled the reporting of tennis by being the reporter – his role as a journalist with the Melbourne Herald gave him a platform for his views and to dismiss unrest. He demanded high levels of personal behaviour, yet Davis Cup juniors, known as ‘orange boys’ for their role squeezing fresh juice for the senior players, had to leave training to place his bets at the racecourse and he was duplicitous in relationships. His bitterness toward those who left his orbit to turn professional was visceral, yet he courted the pro circuit and craved its riches. He would eventually leave Australia in financial disgrace.

The press liked to give Hopman titles and his favourite was ‘the Fox’ but the team labelled him with some less flattering such as ‘Little Hitler’, ‘Captain Bligh’ and ‘Vest-pocket Caesar’. He was referred to as a martinet, a stormy petrel and even Simon Legree. Long-time administrator Jim Russell concluded that 30 years after first meeting Hopman he was less able than ever to summarise him.

Stolle had felt the sting of his indifference and even a public humiliation, yet here he was pulling at his collar in the tropical heat of south Florida before speaking in front of the mourners gathered in the Seminole United Methodist Church. Emerson had told him he couldn’t do it because he feared he would simply break down in tears.

‘We’ve all had our arguments and strong feelings towards Hop, but every one of us respects him and what he has meant to Australian tennis and to us as individuals for many, many years,’ Stolle had written earlier.

‘Hop has always done what he thought was right. He set high standards and important values for us all. When he made a decision, then that was it. We all got to know that first-hand in our careers. Sometimes you were happy with it, sometimes you were not, but you couldn’t put too much over the Old Fox. I give him credit for moulding our personalities to what they are today.

‘That’s maybe why all of us get on so well together, that common experience and contact with Harry Hopman. We all have that little sarcastic streak in us. We like to play hard and party hard. We like the give and take of humour. We like to talk and stay involved with tennis at all levels of the game.

‘Run-ins aside, the bottom line is that Harry Hopman won our respect the old-fashioned way. He earned it.’

THE FOX

PART ONE

1.

A SHADOW SHOW

Monte Carlo 1928

FOR HARRY Hopman it was number five. He loved that number. In tennis, the fifth game is often where the set turns. In the major tournaments, each match is the best of five sets. The Davis Cup has five rubbers. Hopman held that number close to his heart.

The affair began at the most romantic of tennis settings. The Monte Carlo Country Club was a spread of courts, separated by alleys of cypress pines and flowerbeds overlooking the Ligurian Sea. Prince Louis the Second of Monaco had ordered it built as a showpiece of the French Riviera. An Art Deco clubhouse was for members to lounge in while catching the breezes. Ted Tinling called it ‘an ode to tennis’.

The paint was still drying at Easter in 1928 when the Australian Davis Cup team arrived. Their winding six-week boat voyage had taken them from Sydney to Perth through Ceylon, Naples and to Toulon where they boarded a train for Monte Carlo. They were drawn to play Italy at Genoa plus a series of events considered ‘holiday tournaments’ on the way.

In the lead was the imposing Gerald Patterson for whom the quest was a final fling. The Victorian had won the Australian doubles title as a teenager before the war shut down the sport. He served in the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War and was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery at Messines. After the war, he collected the first of his two Wimbledon singles titles.

Patterson was a beast on the court who used his height and strength to hammer the ball. His groundstrokes were satisfactory, but his serve and overheads were devastating. The smash he unleashed during the doubles of the 1925 Davis Cup Inter-Zonal Final at Forest Hills left his French opponent Jean Borotra unconscious.

Patterson’s partner that day was Jack Hawkes who was also in Monte Carlo, having paid his own way after missing out on selection. The administrators were scratching for money and so only sent a team of three: Patterson, the emerging 19-year-old Jack Crawford and his doubles partner Harry Hopman, who admitted to squeezing into the team after ‘a series of trials’.

Crawford was bred in the country and gentrified in the city. He had taught himself by hitting balls against the side of the family farmhouse at Urangeline in the New South Wales Riverina. When the family moved to Sydney’s north shore he emerged as a star. Crawford played tennis like a character from The Great Gatsby. He was six feet tall and wore an easy smile. He seemed to float across the baseline, always finding the right angles with his square-topped racquet. The half-volleys he played at mid-court were testament to his judgement and his forehand was a work of art – smooth and accurate. So effortless was his play that he rarely rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt or bent creases in his flannel trousers. When the ball was hit to him, Crawford seemed to anticipate its arrival, welcome it onto his racquet and despatch it with best wishes. Donald Budge called him one of the prettiest players he had seen.

Crawford was nicknamed ‘Gentleman Jack’ and Hopman admired him deeply, calling his forehand ‘fabulous’. In Crawford, Hopman saw a vision of an Australian sportsman. ‘Jack Crawford,’ he cooed half a century later, ‘was the boy.’

In comparison, Hopman was a battler, but they formed a fine doubles combination, and their youthful success created a wave of interest in tennis. Australia’s Davis Cup selection for 1928 was a nod to the past and a glance to the future. Each day was a chance for the two young men from Sydney to learn on the achingly beautiful courts of Europe. Crawford scribbled in his diary, quoting a favourite author, Richard Curle, who called the world The Shadow-Show: ‘I was standing in the wings and was seeing the mounting of the thousand tableaux, viewing our beautiful, unreal world as one – as a very young one – who had played a game which was and would be a reality.’

Patterson was their guide to the world, of which he had already seen the best and worst. He was from old money in Melbourne. Added to his wealth was the reflected fame of being the nephew of opera star Dame Nellie Melba. In contrast to Patterson’s reputation for being forthright and impatient, Crawford found him kind and generous. He later mused that ‘pictures from half-forgotten schoolbooks became real and living. Harry and I felt that we were growing up. I suspect that Gerald Patterson often had a sly laugh at the exuberance and enthusiasm of his two colts.’

The dream sequence for the young Australians continued by reaching out to shake the hand of the sport’s royalty. When they arrived in Monte Carlo, they were greeted by René Lacoste who was the greatest player in the world. The French were the defending Davis Cup champions, and their success was spread through a quartet of players – Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and Lacoste.

They were called ‘The Musketeers’ in homage to Alexandre Dumas’s novel and it suited the idea that their racquets, like epees, skilfully sliced through their opposition. During the 1920s and 30s they collected 43 major titles, but it was collectively that they were impenetrable – winning the Davis Cup six consecutive years. To cater to the demand to see them, a new stadium was built in Paris in 1928, named Stade Roland Garros in honour of a French war hero, with wooden stands around centre court to fit 10,000 spectators. The men would play for silverware named La Coupe des Mousquetaires – The Musketeer’s Trophy.

Given his status as the most glamorous of the Musketeers, the Australians were surprised to find Lacoste quiet and unassuming. One morning Hopman and Crawford went to a practice court just to watch the Frenchman. Crawford described his hitting as ‘superb’ but as the perfection continued there was a sinking feeling in the Australians that they were not in this class.

‘Hoppy looked at me, and I looked at Hoppy,’ Crawford wrote. ‘The joy of wearing our Australian blazers went in a flash.’

On the court Lacoste was too good for Hopman in the semi-final at Monte Carlo, winning in straight sets. ‘It was no disgrace. The little chap stood up to the bombardment of Lacoste’s service and his returns were excellent. But he was outclassed by the amazing precision and dash of the Frenchman,’ wrote Crawford.

A week later Crawford delivered on his promise by winning the singles title in Rome. He then teamed with Patterson to take the doubles. Although Crawford and Hopman were selected as a doubles combination, Patterson had been experimenting by teaming with Hopman in Monte Carlo and now Crawford in Rome.

When the team arrived in Genoa, the likelihood grew that Hopman would not be selected. He had lost in straight sets in Rome where his form was described as ‘uncertain’ by newspaper reports. Two days before the tie with Italy, Patterson decided he would play both singles and doubles. Hopman was out.

Crowds of several hundred came to watch the Australians practice and posters advertising the Coppa Davis were plastered around the city. Temporary stands were built around the court, which was wedged beneath a Roman viaduct. A ring of nearby buildings was crammed with spectators who peered down at the chocolate-coloured court. They were disappointed on the first day as rain washed out all play. The delay was the least of the worries for the Australians. Behind their stoic faces, there was a crisis. Crawford was asthmatic (and a smoker) and was suffering terribly in the conditions. Two days before the tie, a doctor had been called to the Miramar Hotel room that Crawford was sharing with Hopman. He ordered the windows closed, which created a heavy, humid atmosphere where Crawford wheezed and barked for hours. To try to ease his team-mate’s aching sides, Hopman spread a mix of eucalyptus oil, menthol and camphor on his chest. The only way Crawford could find relief was to sleep in a chair propped up against the wall with his feet resting on the edge of the bed. It was Hopman’s job to stay awake to make sure that the chair didn’t move during the night and interrupt the precious sleep.

On Sunday morning the ground staff at the court removed tarpaulins to discover they were less than waterproof and so poured petrol over the damp patches and set them alight. At the Miramar Hotel, Crawford insisted to Patterson that he play, and the captain reluctantly agreed.

Crawford emerged as a shadow while his opponent bristled with confidence. Baron Uberto de Morpurgo was an aggressive player who introduced himself to the Australians by, according to Hopman, ‘[telling us] all about his most famous successes’. The boasting irritated Crawford but the asthma had drained him, and it took only 75 minutes for the Italian to put him out of his misery. The Australians watched in agony as they saw Crawford lathered in perspiration, unable to run across the baseline and only having the energy to pat the ball back. Crawford later said there were times he all but lost consciousness, ‘The ground seemed to be coming up to meet me, and I could think only of a beautifully soft pillow to lay my aching head on.’ Australia’s vision of tennis perfection was now helped off the court and returned to a chair propped against the wall of his stuffy hotel room.

Patterson evened the tie using power and nous against the unorthodox Giorgio de Stefani. The Italian was ambidextrous and hit a forehand off both wings. He played exclusively from the baseline and was able to run down most shots because he never had to take the time to turn his back to play a backhand.

Patterson played drop shots to bring him to net and then drove the ball directly at his opponent, catching him in the awkward tangle of having to choose which hand to return with. The tactic drew hoots from the crowd but resulted in a 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 victory in just 43 minutes.

Back at the hotel, Patterson looked at Crawford and declared him unfit to play. So, it was on Sunday evening, 6 May 1928, that 21-year-old Harry Hopman was told he would be playing Davis Cup for Australia on a clay court under a Roman viaduct in Genoa.

The match was a near riot as a crowd estimated at 2,000 squeezed in. They were divided by those who knew the game and those there for the novelty. The latter group sat in the full sun and barracked without being hampered by an understanding of the rules or etiquette. It seemed the umpire, Count Bonacossa, was similarly unblemished by experience. Several times in the first set he called the scores wrongly and had to be corrected. Patterson had not won admirers the day before and the crowd roared for anything that went Italy’s way, even if it was incorrect. After a time, a second wave of noise came from the expensive seats in the shade where lovers of the game hushed the noisier sections, who responded with more heckling.

Hopman’s enduring memory was ‘walking along close to the backstop fencing waiting for the noise to die down as the whole medley of linesman’s errors, poor umpiring and various crowd noises sounded like pandemonium to me’.

In later years the Australians reflected that the crowd mood in 1928 was heightened and suspected the rise of nationalism was to blame. It seemed the match was treated by some as less a sporting contest and more a demonstration of political strength.

The Italian pair of De Morpurgo and Placido Gaslini took full advantage and won the first two sets 6-3, 6-4. Patterson saw their momentum was being fuelled by the barracking, which in turn was making the umpiring more partisan. He demanded the chair umpire be replaced and so officials brought in Clemente Serventi, who was an Italian Davis Cup squad member, to take the chair. The Australian captain also slowed the game using lobs and slices. His tactics unsettled the Italians who dropped the next two sets 1-6, 1-6.

The final set swung Italy’s way when De Morpurgo twice hit winners off Patterson’s serve. It was Hopman who faltered under the pressure, playing several poor shots and ineffective lobs. The rubber went to Italy 6-2 in the fifth.

Patterson started the reverse singles in a defiant strut, thrashing through the first set 6-1 in 11 minutes. He couldn’t maintain the pace and De Morpurgo reeled him in 4-6, 3-6 before the Australian took the fourth 6-2. The expense of effort and emotion took its toll and Patterson dropped the final set 1-6 to give Italy the tie. After the contest, the two players were presented with tie pins by the District Chief, featuring a diamond-encrusted fascist symbol. In the aftermath, few spectators stayed to watch the dead rubber which Hopman fought hard before losing to De Stefani 7-5, 9-7, 10-8. It was the first time Australia had lost in the opening round of the Davis Cup and it wouldn’t happen again for another 40 years.

The sting in Hopman’s ears came later with widespread criticism of his selection. An anonymous press report told of a conversation between De Morpurgo and Patterson where the Italian said, ‘If you had played him [Hawkes] in the doubles and the singles, you and not we would have been playing Romania in the second round.’

Hopman immersed himself in every moment – a lifetime of emotions crammed into several weeks. He felt the slight of criticism of his selection, stewed on the injustices of the conditions and the hurt of the loss but there was the fortitude of Patterson, the determination of Crawford to play for his country and the fast loyalty that grew between young men. There was the collective strength of the French players and the rewards reaped from it. They were all the passions of a heightened scale that sport could deliver, and he wanted more of it.

In the final days in Monte Carlo, the Australians spent their evenings in the club casino. Norman Brookes and Patterson played for recreation while Crawford watched ‘strained faces’, and piles of money being lost.

It was Hopman who loved it most. The action sparked his senses. His system was based on number five, and it paid off handsomely with a string of wins. It was now his numerical talisman. In the evening he wound his alarm clock and set it to wake him at 5.55 am. Every morning he awoke to live another day toward a life he had first experienced in 1928.

2.

A DARING AND HEADY PLAYER

1906–1928

THE AUSTRALIA of Harry Hopman’s childhood was less than a decade on from being a series of British colonies. It was, of course, an ancient, weathered continent with the oldest civilisations in the world but the four million settlers called it a young country. Although they took their history from the structures of Britain and Europe, there was a spirit of patriotism that manifest at Federation on 1 January 1901, when a new century offered a flush of national pride and optimism.

The largest city was Sydney where just over half a million people were spread over the site of the original penal colony. On its outskirts in Glebe in 1906, Harry Hopman was the third of John and Jennie Hopman’s eight kids. The family business was teaching and while Jennie left the classroom when the children started to come along, John was a headmaster in the public school system. Five of the Hopman brood followed their parents into school teaching and, in a sense, so did a sixth. Harry Hopman would say he became one of the first people in Australia to teach others how to play tennis. The reason was, in part, an inherited profession but mostly a desire to fill a void left by his own lack of guidance. His template was his matter-of-fact parents who relied on their own strength to make things happen.

Soccer was his first sporting love and it was his father who fuelled it. John Hopman coached the schoolboys at Rosehill and his players never questioned who was in charge. Discussion wasn’t encouraged and dissent dismissed. The schoolmaster’s fierce approach was accentuated by a moustache that bristled out like a shaving brush. The resulting appearance had caused grief during the First World War when he was teaching at Plattsburg in the Hunter Valley. Anti-German taunts were tossed his way including a corruption of Hopman to Hoffman or Hoopman. When the anti-patriotic bullying reached the children’s level, Harry Hopman, aged eight, defended the family honour with his fists.

His protective instincts extended to his younger sisters, who called him ‘Hal’. Although to others he was always known as Harry and only officially Henry, he had been christened Heinrich Christian Hopman in line with his German heritage. His grandfather (originally Hoffman) was from Hanover and his grandmother Elizabeth Dsmidh from Nassau. They married in Australia in 1863 and made their way to the gold-mining town of Hill End in the NSW Central Tablelands.

Under his father’s instructions, Hopman became a fine inside-right and the school team found success but the round-ball game faded from his favour in his teens when tennis grabbed his attention. He was intrigued by the shape and movement of the ball, the expanse and opportunity of the court, and the gentle pugilist nature of the contest. Boxing was unlikely to provide possibilities for a boy with a small frame like Hopman, but he liked it. He was especially drawn to the spartan nature of the training with its gym work and road miles. In the ring, it was punch and counterpunch and so was tennis. John Hopman provided his son with the equivalent of a set of gloves and a ring. The racquet was 25 years old but was the first piece of tennis equipment Hopman ever held and he didn’t forget it. Decades later he recited its details, like it was his first brush of romance.

‘It was a Gold Medal HIC,’ he recalled. ‘I used to tie the gut in the centre with string. There were eight kids in our family and so no re-strings and racquets didn’t come easily, and I used to tie the wearing parts with cotton. I’d ravel it around the gut. It finished up with a patch of cotton in the centre about as big as your hand. But it played well. It played a little looser than a tight gut racquet, but it didn’t seem to do any harm. I was 13 when I started. Dad laid down a court in our backyard. He just levelled the ground. It was a pure dirt court, but it wore wonderfully.’

Hopman never again played soccer. His dedication to tennis was singular and it began like every kid everywhere with an indefatigable opponent. He would hit against a wall for hours, the ball sagging into his loose strings and being sent in a slingshot back. His first competition was at the school where his ever-industrious father levelled out a court and arranged a tournament for the school community. The boy had never played a match before but with his old racquet, shirtless and barefoot, he attacked the contest. He beat his older brother Jack in the semi-final and then the mother of one of his close school friends to claim the title.

‘All I can remember about my tennis then is that I could get about the court and hit the ball back. I could run all day without flagging. I never knew what it