When you see a list like this, it shows that the history of Australian tennis is extraordinary.
For a small population stuck in the southern hemisphere, such a roll call is awe-inspiring.
Well, almost.
The last one made it simply because, well, he's mum's favourite tennis player.
Seriously, the impact of Australian tennis is measured even more clearly when you consider
how many players not on that list of 30 were or are household names.
Wherever or however you look at the history of world tennis, it's inextricably tied to Australian tennis.
And it became even more so when the status of the Australian Open was guaranteed by
the building of this magnificent stadium here at Flinders Park in Melbourne.
Not only is the National Tennis Centre hailed as the best in the world,
it will be the home to our future champions.
It gives me great pleasure to host this history of Australian tennis
exclusively for the Sharp Corporation of Australia.
In the 20 years or so from the early 50s to the early 70s,
Australians dominated tennis like no other international sport has ever been dominated.
Towards the end of that period, half of the 32 world championship tennis players were Australian.
In looking at the evolution and development of Australian tennis,
it's my opinion there was a group who stood out from the rest.
Norman Brooks because he set us on course just after the turn of the century.
Harry Hopman not only because he established such an amazing record in Davis Cup
when it was the premier event in world tennis, but because that was his intention.
Frank Sedgeman. By becoming a world champion, he was a role model
and gave other Australians something to aim at and emulate, thus starting the Golden Era.
In Herd and Roseville, we had two champions of outstanding ability
who could draw 25,000 people a day to Davis Cup matches.
Then our Grand Slam winners Rod Laver and Margaret Court.
Rod won it twice and Margaret missed out by only one title on four other occasions.
Tennis is a generic term.
Lawn tennis, the game as we know it, but now played on a variety of surfaces,
started in Australia only a few years after it was established in England.
In fact, Wimbledon, which began in 1877, is the only title older than the Victorian and New South Wales championships.
By then, lawn tennis had thrown off all links to royal tennis from whence it came,
but which had been played in Hobart in 1875.
There are only four royal courts in Australia, the original in Hobart, a new one in Ballarat,
and two here in Melbourne, built in only 1974 to replace the city's first court, which dated to 1882.
Nobody's really sure who brought the rules of lawn tennis to Australia,
but we do know that the first tournaments played in Australia were held in 1878.
In those early days, it was seen as a portable game.
There are reminders of that here at the Australian Tennis Museum under the Western Stand at Sydney's White City Stadium.
Enterprising players could get kits comprising of a net, lightweight net posts, balls, and rackets similar to this one.
There were no fancy grips in those days, so the fishtail stopped the racket from flying out of slippery hands.
The kit also included a set of rules because no one knew how to play.
All this would have been packed into a buggy box like this one, then put onto the back of your buggy.
Then it was simply a matter of trotting off to find a suitable location.
Tennis in Australia was up and running.
It didn't take long for enthusiasts to realise it would be easier to play at a permanent site.
The first court in Australia was made of asphalt and located at the MCG in Melbourne, also in 1878.
The Western Stand where I'm sitting is built directly above that original site.
Nearly 110 years later, the National Tennis Centre was built only a decent lob away.
Tennis clubs were formed in both Sydney and Melbourne in 1880, and as well as colonial championships,
there was an inter-colonial challenge between Victoria and New South Wales, played on the Sydney Cricket Ground in 1885.
It meant Australia was home to the first international challenge in the game of lawn tennis,
15 years before the advent of Davis Cup, and for the record, Victoria won.
25 years after the first colonial tournament was played, we made our mark overseas,
mainly through the efforts of this man, Norman Brooks.
Brooks had a huge influence on the course of Australian tennis, both as a player and an administrator.
I speak as one who has been associated with the Davis Cup since Australasia first entered in 1905.
Brooks the player was seen as aggressive but unpredictable.
He was nicknamed the Wizard because of his uncanny anticipation.
He even played at Wimbledon in the late 1940s at the age of 47,
and made this coaching film offering his wizardry as a legacy.
There are three different volleys. First, the overhead volley, like that, and like that.
We were 20,000 kilometres and an eight-week long sea trip away from action
when the first Davis Cup was played in 1900 between Britain and the United States.
Yet seven years later, after victory over Britain, the Cup was ours.
Well, in a sense it was ours. That early success was actually a result of what many people talk about today,
an alliance with New Zealand as Australasia.
The main aim was to bring together their brilliant young player, Anthony Wilding,
and the crafty Norman Brooks for the Davis Cup.
The move was planned as part of the formation of the Lawn Tennis Association of Australasia in 1904.
It resulted in six Davis Cup wins as Australasia, even though in 1919
both players were the Australians, J.O. Anderson and Gerald Patterson.
New Zealand withdrew its affiliation in 1922.
Australasia's first defence of the Davis Cup in 1908 was played in front of 7,000 spectators at Albert Park in Melbourne.
Some had never even seen tennis.
Brooks and Wilding won a tight contest 3-2.
About a metre or so from where I'm standing was pretty much where the netposts were for that 1908 contest.
I hope the surface was in a little better condition then.
But that was our first Davis Cup victory on Australian soil.
The most recent was in 1986 when Pat Cash took his reverse singles against Mikhail Pernfors
from two sets to love down in the fourth rubber for a win over Sweden.
The result was almost a repeat of three years earlier, also at Keogh, and gave Australia, stroke Australasia,
its 26th Davis Cup victory, or about 30% of all played.
With two wins in three years, there are echoes of a time when Australia appeared only to have to take the court to win the Davis Cup.
For example, from 1950 to 1967, Australia was victorious 15 times.
Clearly to document Australia's history in Davis Cup would take hours.
However, it can be well charted by looking at several significant matches in this area of tennis I regard so special.
The 1953 challenge round also played here at Keogh was outstanding.
At this level, another tier of temporary stands had been built.
They took the capacity of Keogh to more than that of our new national tennis center.
Towering 70 feet high, they took 40 men four months to construct.
The seating capacity has thus increased from 10,000 to 17,000.
Keogh, now one of the big name courts in world tennis.
The VLTA opens its gates to a crowd that literally pours in, not by the dozens or by the scores, but by the hundreds and thousands.
Program sellers do brisk trade as every tennis fan who can get a seat for the challenge round comes by car, train, tram, bus or on foot to see the greatest spectacle world amateur tennis can afford.
Two 19-year-old first timers by the names of Ken Rosewell and Lou Hode had the hopes of a nation resting on their shoulders.
Hode again, the Australians still making a beeline for that net and getting there.
A lovely forehand cross court drive that gives Hode the first set, 6-4.
So far the challenge round has been all Australia's way.
Hode, a Davis Cup baby, is showing remarkable big game temperament and he really has to wimble and champion on the defensive.
The 17,000 people get a tremendous kick.
This challenge round debut.
Match point coming up.
And there it is.
The young Australians taking the first rubber in the challenge round.
Ken Rosewell, dwarfed by American Tony Travert, walks out for the second singles.
Young Ken really is tense.
Travert's quite at home.
This time it's the United States who have the power player.
Rosewell to Travert's backhand.
Travert's going into the net.
Something must happen here.
The selectors were worried that Ken's performance in this match would affect his confidence.
Despite opposition from Harry Hopman, they were to drop Ken from the doubles.
He's a champion, everyone knows that, but nothing's going right for him.
He's missing a line by inches.
Yes, even missing the ball.
Just remember the terrific strain he's playing under.
Dejected almost.
Don't worry Ken, your day will come and soon I've three.
Rex Hartwig was given just two hours notice of his double selection.
The last game stasis to Hode and the sun's gone out.
And Australia's chances are just as deep.
In the fourth rubber, Hode raced to a two set lead.
Then light rain forced him to put on spikes, as Travert had earlier.
It went to the fifth set decider while Hode got used to the spikes, which he'd worn only once before.
The top forty-three match points to Hode, but this is the final point, stand by.
The fourth rubber's over, Lewis Hodes won in five sets.
Cameraman Rush in one, obviously forgetting he's not wearing spikes.
It's been a terrific duel.
Sixty-two games lasting for two and a half hours.
What an ovation Hode gets.
An ovation for Tony Travert too, but seldom has a Davis Cup match been so closely fought.
A huge crowd cheering both players to the echo.
The most excited person surely must be Mrs. Hode, the hero's mother.
Complete strangers kiss her. What a day it is, a day she'll never forget.
Heavy rain fell and forced postponement of the fifth rubber.
The nation would have to wait twenty-four hours to see if Ken Roswell's nerve could hold long enough for him to beat Vic Satius in the deciding match.
And the morning after in his hotel room, the youngster on whom Australia is depending reads newspapers which tell him, it's up to you, Ken.
The youngster with a tremendous game ahead of him is all praise for his teammate. That's my boy.
And Lewis Hode, not a condemned man, eats a hearty breakfast. He can afford to smile.
Just a couple of kids, aren't they? And yet they're two of the world's best tennis players already.
In time they may prove to be two of the finest ever, but that's in the future.
What Australia and the world is interested in right now is today.
Coming up, one of the best rallies in the match.
Roswell using his backhand volley to good effect.
The spot.
This is game, set, match, and cut point.
Can he make it?
When I look at Prime Minister Menzies, I wonder why I'm worried.
All right, game, set, match, and cut point again.
Congratulations, Mrs. Roswell.
This is a moment without parallel in the history of challenge round play.
Two players to say nothing of their age have won the cup at their first appearance.
The 25,000 seats are all too few to cope with applications for tickets.
Hode and Roswell defended the cup the next year as hometown boys at White City in Sydney.
Officials draw from the thousands of applications the names of those who will have seats for the three days of play.
Into the great arena come the ball boys, smart and trained to the minute.
They and the specially selected team of line-up players and judges are part of an army of amateur officials who staged this Davis Cup Challenge Round
and made it one of the greatest sporting spectacles in Australia's history.
This time with extra seating, the crowd was a world record 25,578, a figure which still stands for an official tennis match.
The extra stands were added as a public service to satisfy the enormous demand in pre-television days.
Now the Australians really are worried. Even the imperturbable Hoffman looks grim and with some reason.
He encourages them with all the skill and experience at his command.
Hoffman tries desperately to lift them into a winning frame of mind.
He knows and they know it's now or never.
The next point 30-40. Start that camera madam.
Power beauty and that's goodbye to the Davis Cup.
The Americans, wild with excitement, have taken the double 6-2.
1954 was a lean year by their standards, perhaps underlining their immaturity.
But revenge was sweet for Herd and Roseville in 1955 and 56 when they won 5-0.
The effort by Australia's 1930-19, seen here before their departure for the US, deserves special mention.
For the previous 6 years Adrian Quest and John Bromwich had been travelling around the world trying to win the Davis Cup.
But without success.
Quiston Bromwich, at the far end, came back from a position of two rubbers to love down.
It was the only time a nation recovered from such a deficit in the challenge round.
It was also the first win in Davis Cup for Australia as opposed to Australasia and for Harry Hoffman as captain.
We were lucky to win that double in many ways. We were down a set and a break in the second.
So we scrambled out of that.
Jack Kramer and Joe Hunt were fellows with damn good serves.
So I must admit we were very nervous about winning the match.
We figured we had a good chance because we hadn't lost a doubles match for a long time.
The fourth rubber was Quist versus Riggs.
The only thing in my favour, you might say, was that I'd have had five sets against Parker, four sets in the double.
And coming on against Riggs, you might say I was pretty match toughened.
Match toughened to the point where he set up a two-all score line for Bromwich to take into the final rubber.
Bromwich won in straight sets, but Norman Brooks said many of the games were amongst the longest he'd seen, with some rallies lasting three minutes.
In 1950, John Bromwich, the veteran, was joined by Frank Sedgman to win the 1950 challenge round, also in the United States.
I believe that and the 1951 tie in Sydney were significant because Sedgman consolidated his serve and volley style in Australian tennis.
Here's the final point.
6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. Australians were depending on him and he hadn't let them down.
In that year's doubles, he and Ken McGregor set the serve and volley game in concrete with their win.
That victory here at White City was the second in a string of US versus Australia battles.
But at the beginning of the 60s, it was no longer only the Americans being beaten by Australia in Davis Cup.
Spain, India, Italy and Mexico joined the list.
In 1961, Melbourne was the venue and Italy the challenger.
But for the first time since the war, no extra seating was required at Cuyong.
It was arguably the height of dominance in Davis Cup for Australia.
Such was the ongoing strength of our teams.
Playing at home on grass, they seemed invincible and perhaps that was beginning to dampen public interest.
Roy Emerson playing in his first challenge round singles joined Rod Laver.
The Golden Run ended in 1967 because of open tennis.
Contracted professional players were not allowed to compete in Davis Cup.
It decimated the ranks so much that in 1968, a young man, for whom Davis Cup was the pinnacle,
was drafted as the youngest player to play Davis Cup in the doubles with Ray Ruffles.
Dropping the racket on break point wasn't exactly an auspicious start, but it certainly was an honour to be the youngest.
It was to be nearly 10 years before the Davis Cup match I remember so well against Adriano Panetta of Italy at White City in 1977.
Australia went into the first reverse singles leading 2-1.
The boisterous Italian section of the crowd made conditions rather unusual for Australia.
We both played attrition tennis, fighting not to lose rather than to win.
The win was seen as significant because it was Australia's first home victory since the introduction of open tennis in 1968 and abolition of the challenge round in 1972.
When officials talked of replacing centre court with rebound ace, I was listening.
You've heard about the guy who liked the company so much he bought it? Well that's how this tennis court was for me.
I brought it home with me. Can you imagine that? The White City centre court in your own backyard.
In fact that last volley of Panettas in 1977, I bet hit just about there.
Can you just imagine all the great tennis that's happened here on this very tennis court?
The women's equivalent of Davis Cup is the Federation Cup introduced in only 1963.
Australia has won it seven times, all in the ten years from 1964 to 1974 inclusive.
Our teams will runner up nine times including one frustrating stint from 1975 to 1980.
In one of those years, 1978, Kerry Melville-Reed got us off to a great start with this win over Tracy Austin of the United States.
But as often was the case, two names stood in the way, Billie Jean King and Chris Evert.
However, Billie Jean was at Koo Yong 13 years earlier when she and Carol Caldwell lost the final of the first Federation Cup played in Australia.
The winning Australian team was Margaret Smith, Leslie Turner and Judy Tegard in what was regarded as a turning point for women's tennis in this country.
Purely for the fact that there had been so many top players that had never come to Australia before and when Nell Hopman organised this,
it enabled them all to come from all countries, from smaller countries as well as the large ones.
And I think it was a terrific thing because people became aware of what Australia was like and what we could offer.
We certainly offered women's tennis more after that Federation Cup and Margaret Court's 1963 Wimbledon win than before.
Thelma Long and Leslie Bowrie and Nii Turner represent pre and post-war eras in Australian women's tennis.
In the early days when they lacked a competition to match the Davis Cup, Australian women like Thelma rarely travelled overseas to compete, unlike Leslie's era.
The first official Australian women's tour was in 1925 and the second in 1928.
It was then that New South Wales girl Daphne Ackhurst reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals and a top ten ranking.
A few years later Joan Hardigan took centre stage with three Australian titles in the early 30s before the emergence of Nancy Bolton and Thelma Long.
But the action for them was in Australia. There was little opportunity for anything else.
I think most of the concentration obviously was on the men's Davis Cup tennis.
So the women's tennis really didn't have very much publicity and it was not considered a draw card.
All told, through my whole tennis career I travelled overseas twice under the auspices of a tennis association.
And that was in 1938 when the Australian women's team went abroad just prior to the war.
And the next time that I was able to travel overseas with the tennis team was to South Africa in 1949.
Thelma won two Australian singles titles and still holds a record for winning 12 Australian doubles titles over a span of 22 years.
Nancy Bolton was her partner for ten of those and also won six Australian singles titles despite the intervention of World War II.
Of post-war players I've always believed Leslie Turner was underrated.
As well as winning the French Championships twice, Leslie, seen here with Gail Sherriff, also won the Italian title twice.
That was because of her great play court game.
Unfortunately she played at a time when three of the four Grand Slam tournaments were played on grass.
Harry Hopman was a Turner fan as he showed in his narration of a 1960s film.
I don't recall seeing a better demonstration of correct footwork and body weight moving into a stroke than these forehands and backhands of Leslie Turner's.
She watches the ball so well and that is so very important in all grades of tennis.
But there were two players who stood head and shoulders over the rest.
Here a young Yvonne Goulagong meets her hero Margaret Court about six years before Yvonne won their 1971 Wimbledon encounter.
Perhaps if Margaret had known that she might not have been quite so helpful in training with Yvonne
and acting as her mentor in the 1970 Federation Cup in Perth.
Helped by Stan Nicholls, Margaret was the first woman to do gym and weight training.
It was only one regard in which she was well ahead of her time.
Margaret was sensational in the gym.
Now over the years at the gym there's been a lot of top class tennis players, many Davis Cup players
and they've all been very keen on their athletic work.
But I would say without any fear of contradiction that Margaret would beat 50% of them in their athletic work.
Margaret started her Grand Slam winning streak with an Australian title in 1960.
But it was ten years later that she conquered the Grand Slam mountain.
Her career total of 64 Grand Slam titles remains a record.
To this day there's a general agreement that Margaret's only real weakness was nerves.
And I think that was partly due to the fact that, I mean I'm sure most people knew that she was a natural left hander
and couldn't do anything with her right hand.
And they taught her to play tennis right handed so I would have hated to have played her a left hander
because she was such a good player as a right hander anyway.
And she had incredible reach and with all the training that she did and she was so fit
it made her an terrific volleyer because it was so hard to pass her because she had this extra length in her arms
and she also had this extra reach and she was so fit as well.
Both Margaret and Yvonne were born in southern New South Wales and both returned to the tennis circuit after having babies.
The similarities ended there.
Yvonne was blissfully unaware of percentage tennis and capable of playing shots she made up as she went along.
Oh yes.
15.
The bouncy bubbling gulagong.
Yvonne's victory here over Martina de Rattle over in 1975 was her second of four Australian titles in a five year long period.
She took King and Court at Wimbledon in straight sets in 1971 then returned in 1980 after the birth of her first child
to become the only mother to win Wimbledon this century.
Margaret Court and Yvonne Gulagong were a special part of the golden era of Australian tennis.
It started with Harry Hopman and to a large extent ended with him leaving Australia in 1970.
Harry at this end of the court did join forces with Jack Crawford to win the Australian doubles
but his playing record was hardly bestuffed to inspire champions.
Yet as a coach he brought a psychology and tactics to tennis that he never had as a player.
Conditions were very favourable to his captaincy but he was no doubt the greatest captain the world's ever seen
and I did go to him with a thought that I had respect for him and that sort of picked his brains.
I remember him telling me, phrase, your captain, do it your way and maybe that was the best advice he gave me.
Neil Fraser, hard-hitting Victorian.
Hopman, the Australian squash champion in 1933, 34 and 36, understood fitness.
It was the gym work and training away from the court that characterised the Hopman method.
Lifting weights, running miles, interval training, lots of sleep, no smoking or drinking
and fines for players who broke the routine.
He was accused of over-training his charges of brainwashing them.
The three things a player should look for from gymnasium work are strength, stamina and speed.
Now don't forget that speed.
Don't just go in and try and build up big muscles, big chest, big legs, but do a lot of speed work as these boys do.
After four years of this kind of training you can perform miracles.
In what was a very conservative tennis world then, other countries even saw his training methods as cheating.
They call Harry Hopman a sly old fox but no-one denies he knows just how to get the best out of the team allotted to him.
Harry worked at tennis until the day he died in Florida, still helping young players.
Although he and his first wife and former mixed doubles partner Nell Hall had no children, he was the father figure of Australian tennis.
There was a certain amount of parental control, yes, because I knew them pretty well.
I'd travel for five or six months of the year with them, then overseas, then come back and travel with them again around Australia.
And got to know them very well and sometimes maybe as well as their parents, maybe a little better.
And as for that strict discipline, I can remember a time in Brussels when Phil Dent, Bob Guilton and myself were training.
Harry was apt to keep a very close eye on you when you were training.
On this particular occasion he was hiding in a tree behind a hedge.
Each time as we came around, Phil, always the clown, was doing things he called de-magoes. They were like this.
As he rounded the lap, time and again he did this.
One of these occasions Phil tripped and fell flat on his face.
Harry must have found this very, very funny because he fell off the tree, through the hedge, hit the ground and was still laughing.
He was just a kid of 62 at the time.
The downturn of tennis in Australia from the late 60s to the late 70s coincided roughly with Hopman's departure for the United States.
The small crowd at the 1967 New South Wales Championships were a reflection of the problem.
We struggled to attract top players, sponsorship and prize money.
If Hopman's exit was a factor, so were the advent of open tennis, the lack of top class facilities and poor administration.
There were absolutely no junior development programs and the pros remained overseas.
And there's another theory I agree with about the effect of increased land prices.
People sold off valuable allotments with tennis courts on them, thus reducing the number of learning venues.
That was certainly the case in Sydney where private courts were often used for club matches.
Ironically, the other quiet period in Australian tennis was when Harry Hopman was making his way through the players' ranks.
That was after Gerald Patterson had kept the flag flying by winning Wimbledon in 1919 and 1922, in the wake of early success by Norman Brooks.
But it was before the impression made by Jack Crawford who didn't win Wimbledon until 1933.
In the 30s, flat top rackets like this model became the rage.
They were the in racket of the day and the trademark of Jack Crawford.
Yet Jack decided to play with the flat top only after seeing one at the home of Norman Brooks.
Gentlemen Jack Crawford, to give him the title bestowed upon him by the British press, was a favourite of Queen Mary's.
On one occasion she even left the Royal Box to watch him play on an outside court.
Crawford played a baseline game, but it was good enough to make him the first New South Wales born Wimbledon champion in 1933.
That year he also won the Australian title and became the first foreigner to win the French Championship.
His loss in the US final after leading two sets to one, robbed him of tennis's first grand slam.
Crawford's career led into that of Adrian Quist and John Bromwich.
John Bromwich served right handed, dropped a ball if necessary, then changed to his left hand for ground strokes, which included one of the first double handed backhands.
Here, as Australia's number one, he's playing American great Jack Cramer.
Adrian Quist playing record aside, he and Harry Hopman will be remembered as the first Australian players to wear shorts on centre court.
Here he's just beaten Jack Crawford, the person many assume was the last top Australian player to wear long pants in a major tournament.
In fact it was Peter McNamara at Cuyong in the mid 80s.
To cover up an ugly knee brace, which was about 10 kilos worth, and it was a very strange object actually.
John Bromwich wears it now, and very difficult to move around in, but it did the job on the knee, but to cover it up was even better.
The Quist Bromwich doubles record was one of the best.
Quist won 10 Australian titles and shared eight with Bromwich, and that was with their careers being cut short by five years.
World War II was declared during their 1939 Davis Cup match against the US in Philadelphia.
It had a big effect because both from my viewpoint and John's viewpoint, I think that we were playing as well as we could play at that time.
When the war came, I mean we both joined up and we couldn't get any tennis. It was just impossible.
It was the second time war had been declared during a Davis Cup match involving Australia.
In 1914, Australasia's Brooks and Wilding were locked in battle with the enemy Germany when war broke out.
The teams from Down Under won on both occasions.
The next war to interrupt Australia's tennis world would be a Cold War.
Starting at the time, Frank Sedgman decided to turn professional.
Not surprisingly, it was Harry Hopman who placed a racket in young Frank Sedgman's hands.
They met again when Frank was 18 and Hopman soon had him working out, building a body for tennis.
Harry Hopman also convinced Sedgman's doubles partner, Ken McGregor, that he could be a part of a great tennis era too if he was willing to give up his beloved Aussie rules football.
This was the Wimbledon leg of their doubles grand slam in 1951.
A few months later, Frank went on to become the first Australian to win the United States title.
By the time the Davis Cup had come around, the big question being asked by the Australian public was whether Frank would turn professional.
He gave this answer in January 1952.
For Sedgman, that statement was somewhat prophetic.
It had been 19 years since an Australian had won Wimbledon.
It was Sedgman's fifth attempt.
What the sequence of events had done was to build Sedgman's value to the professional circuit, which had been formed by American tennis star, come entrepreneur, Jack Kramer.
The American had made it clear that amateur success equaled a professional offer.
To counter that, Harry Hopman used his position with the Melbourne Herald to launch a Keep Sedgman Amateur Fund.
Because of Frank's enormous popularity, the appeal was overwhelmingly successful and led to benefits for Frank, including his own service station.
The timing was excellent because Frank was soon to be married.
The service station was put in the name of his bride-to-be, Jean Spence, and his amateur status was protected.
However, it only delayed Frank's decision to turn professional by about a year.
Under the table payments, which led to the term shamitarism, were to fuel the amateur versus pro debate.
Yet Hopman's motivation for the Sedgman Fund was as a delaying tactic to hold on to him until Hoad and Rosewell matured enough to defend Hopman's beloved Davis Cup.
Both Hoad, seen here aged 11, and Rosewell had shown tennis officials very early that they were budding champions.
But Rosewell had the early edge and was the first to win a major with his defeat of Mervyn Rose for the 1953 Australian Championship.
Not only did their careers parallel, but Hoad and Rosewell were born only 21 days apart.
They were called the Whiz Kids or the Twins, but they were totally unalike in their play and personalities.
Hoad, powerful but laid back, Rosewell more serious with a game of finesse.
Like Margaret Court, Rosewell was a left-hander by nature, but was made to play right-handed.
Although he and Lew were to win this Wimbledon encounter, Ken was destined never to win the singles event.
In fact, Lew beat him in 1956, then won the 1957 title after Ken had left the Amateurs.
Then Lew had a brief professional career before retiring to start a tennis ranch in Spain.
Most people had expected the Twins to join Sedgman in the professional ranks after they returned from winning the 1955 Davis Cup in the US.
Over the next decade, there were few important Australian players who didn't turn professional.
Most of the others succumbed to shamatorism.
It was a period when Australian officialdom had to come to terms with a changing tennis world.
In 1967, the year before Open Tennis, Lew Hoad had entered Wimbledon, claiming that he as a professional was making less money than the leading Amateurs.
Some of those fellows were employed by our company and I think they were paid.
And they were paid and it was with the full support of the Tennis Association.
They knew that these fellows were being paid. There was nothing they could do about it.
They wanted them for Davis Cup matches and so they closed their eyes to that sort of payments.
On the court, our leading Amateur through the 60s, Roy Emerson, benefited from the mass exodus to professionalism.
At Wimbledon in 1965, Emerson and Margaret Smith became the first Australians to win in the same year.
His victim, as was so often the case then, was Fred Stolle, who turned professional the next year.
They also met in the 1965 Australian Final, the midpoint of five consecutive Australian titles for Emerson.
His great record in Grand Slam events was at a time when professional tennis was at its peak,
although in Davis Cup he lost only once to Manuel Santana of Spain.
The topman regarded Emerson as the quickest and most dependable athlete of the Australians who followed Sedgeman, Hoad and Roseville.
Next time you play, try to cover court like Roy Emerson.
You won't do so of course, because Roy is the fastest player in the world as he moves around the court.
But the exercise will be good for you.
Apart from being a great player, Emerson stood out for his tennis politics.
In 1964, he served notice to the establishment by leading a rebellion of Australian players against the LTA policy,
which prohibited them from playing abroad before the end of March.
The association expected them to play exhibition matches in country centres around Australia.
Roy Emerson, Fred Stolle, Ken Fletcher, Bob Hewitt and Martin Mulligan were disqualified from Davis Cup.
However, with Harry Hopman's intervention, the two leading players, Stolle and Emerson, were given official forgiveness.
Not so lucky Mulligan, Hewitt and Fletcher, who were banished overseas.
Neil Fraser emerged from the shadows of other players and found life easier with tennis divided into two camps.
He won Wimbledon and the US title twice.
But he also enjoyed Forest Hills, New York, for his 1959 singles wins, which helped clinch the Davis Cup for Australia.
His reasons for staying amateur were tied to that arena.
I had a desire to captain Australia in the Davis Cup.
And there was a strong feeling if you turned professional, you wouldn't get the opportunity.
And I suppose other reasons, I didn't think I was offered enough money and I had bad legs and I didn't know whether I could stand the grind.
Basically it was because I wanted to captain Australia.
The sham was finally ended in 1968.
It was heralded by the first open event at Wimbledon.
Rod Laver came back from the pros to win his third championship.
Laver's first Wimbledon win was in 1961.
It was 13 years before the player who Harry Hopman nicknamed Rocket, after he first impressed as a skinny kid from Rockhampton in Queensland, became the first player to win a million dollars in career prize money.
In 1969, he won a second Grand Slam, the first having been in 1962.
It set him up as arguably the best player in history.
Rod's final opponent in his fourth Wimbledon win at four attempts was another young Aussie.
Minus his trademark mustache, John had managed to pick his way through the minefield of the 60s.
He made his mark straddling the pre-open and post-open eras, but possibly had the best at both worlds because his developing career was pre-open tennis and his best years after it began.
There's no doubt Australians remember Newk best for his win in the 1975 Australian Open.
Jimmy Connors had blitzed his opposition in the previous 12 months and John had taken time off.
He went into the match at less than peak fitness.
If John had a coming out year though, it was 1967.
He won Wimbledon, his first and the last amateur title, the US Championship and took a hand in Australia's Davis Cup victory over Spain.
As was nearly always the case, he teamed in the winning doubles with Tony Roach.
The combination, regarded as close to the best ever, had almost completed the Grand Slam that year, missing only on Wimbledon.
Ironically, both had won there in the years before and after.
So, how have Australians fared in the world's major events?
Pat Cash's Wimbledon win in 1987 was the last time an Australian had won a Grand Slam singles title.
Before that it was Yvonne Goulagong at Wimbledon in 1980.
Not surprisingly, given the tyranny of distance, the Australian Championships were always regarded as the least impressive of the Big Four because players were reluctant to take the long journey.
Now that it's housed in this fabulous complex, the Australian Open has never been so popular with crowds or with players.
An Australian has yet to win here, but there were Australian Championships before the National Tennis Centre.
On grass surfaces around the country, Aussies have accounted for about 64% of the Australian titles, or 50 men's and 42 women's, the latter events starting 17 years later in 1922.
Of all the Wimbledons played, Australian men have won 20.
Our women have won 5, shared between Margaret Court and Yvonne Goulagong.
At the French Championships, Australian men have won 11 and our women 8.
In the United States Championships, nine Australian men have shared 15 titles, while Margaret Court won 7 on her own.
Perhaps the natural conclusion to the history of Australian tennis is to suggest who were the best Australian players.
I'm not going to cop out, but there will be arguments and I know I'll be making some enemies. Anyway, here goes.
I gave best serves to Neil Fraser and Margaret Court.
The most threatening forehand was John Newcombe's and Kerry Reeds was the best for the women.
All players were troubled by Ken Rosewell's backhand and that of Yvonne Goulagong.
The best voller in women's tennis was Margaret Court, while for the men it was Lou Hoad on the forehand side and Tony Roach's backhand volley.
Best smashes, in my opinion, were also the domain of Lou Hoad and who else but Margaret Court.
In the women's game, the choice of best player is not a choice, because 64 grand slams make Margaret an automatic number one.
The 1970 Australian Dunlop International Final at White City was a match many regard as the best ever played in Australia.
If it was not the best match, it certainly was a match of the best and won in five sets by Rod Laver, an all-time great.
However, consider that Ken Rosewell missed 11 years of grand slam tennis, but still won five titles and a host of professional championships
in a career spanning a quarter of a century at top level and you have my choice of best Australian male player.
If our current number one players, Todd Woodbridge and Rachel McQuillan, can achieve just half of Ken Rosewell's glory,
they will be major links in the history of Australian tennis.
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