The article below was published August 2008. Sadly Colin passed away on November 8th 2009. We have elected to leave the article as written.
At aged 90, Colin Long and great mate Jack Noseda, both well known from Spalding Sporting Goods Management kindly gave me some time to discuss Colin’s interesting tennis career. Being nothing at all like his age,Colin has a great memories of his involvement with the Australian Davis Cup Team.
I thought Colin might be the oldest surviving Davis Cup player, but we learnt that Len Schwartz who played in the 1938 Davis Cup team is alive but not so well in Adelaide. We are not sure of Len’s exact age but it is the mid 90′s and we hope he recovers from a current stay in hospital.
What marvellous memories tennis has delivered to Colin. He really appreciates how lucky he has been to be part of this highly traditional and patriotic event.
As School captain at Melbourne Grammar, Colin was a promising junior and won a schoolboys doubles championship with Alistair Righetti in 1936. He joined Dunlop sporting goods for a couple of years having left school and then moved to Spalding in 1939. Back then, many players not wishing to turn professional were employed by sporting goods companies as a technical way around being professional and this argument between tennis administrators and amateur/professional players continued from the mid 1940′s to the mid 1970′s.
In 1939, he was runner up in the Australian Open Doubles with Don Turnbull and in the same year also enlisted in the army. For 5 1/2 years Colin was involved in action around the world. Despite not playing tennis anywhere near enough, he mentioned that while on leave in Egypt he managed to squeeze in their National tennis tournament.
At the end of the war, aged 28 he attracted the eye of team selectors and was included in the Davis Cup squad of 1946. This was done in fine style partnering, with John Bromwich in the Victorian Championships and playing sensational tennis against the visiting US Davis Cup team Kramer /Schroeder (see right). Colin, not noted for being a singles player also defeated Talbert in the same event.(see below).
Despite this good form and making the squad, Colin didn’t play in the 1946 Cup team which was lost 0-5 to the USA fielding the players Frederick, ‘Ted’ Schroeder, Jack Kramer and Gardnar Malloy. Throughout this period the USA team players were rightly rated the best in the world, hence a great performance in the Vic championships.
Having served throughout his formative, development years away from tennis, Colin sees his selection as an amazing piece of good fortune.
Here we have the 1947 Team- L to R John Bromwich, Geoff Brown, Manager Roy Cowley, Dennis ‘Dinny’ Pails and Colin.
In 1947, Colin played doubles with John Bromwich against Jack Kramer and Ted Schroeder in the challenge round and won in 4 sets again! ( 6-4,2-6,6-2,6-4). He rates this as a highlight of his tennis playing career due to the strength of the Americans and a concern that Bromwich was not 100% convinced he and Colin could win. The US won the 1947 Challenge 4-1.
Colin played in all the 1948 doubles matches which saw the team travel to Cuba (3-0), Mexico (4-1) and again went down to the USA (5-0)in the challenge round. So no wonder winning the one rubber in three years was a highlight.
These Challenge Cup trophies in silver were presented
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Colin also had numerous local successes making the 1948 Australian Championships Doubles Grand Final playing with Frank Sedgman and then losing to Bromwich and Quist after leading 2 sets to 0, with a match point in the 3rd and losing the 5th set 8-6 (Colin says this is the worst memory). He also won the Australian Mixed Doubles Championships with Nancye Bolton in 1940/46/47/48 and was runner up in 1938. Pre 1968 Colin was the most prolific male winner of the mixed title event.
Colin has enjoyed tennis all of his life and enjoyed a long career at Spalding, on radio and at Channel 7 as the Tennis, Golf and squash presenter. His main racquet of choice thoughout his career was Spalding ( no surprises there)
Thanks Colin………..a pleasure to catch up and reminisce……. Rod
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