Dear Tennis Heritage fans,
The last time we corresponded was prior to our second National Meeting conducted at Albury last year where we met with 1950′s tennis great Rex Hartwig so this newsletter is a bit of a catch up.
2018 was a fun year thanks to this meeting and a Hong Tennis Heritage Trip pictured later in the newsletter.
At the Albury event, we had about 20 people attend the meeting to see the fabulous presentation of the (long missing) Jack Crawford trophies which were in fact thought to have been melted down. Thankfully not. One of these was the original Australasian trophy donated by Slazenger UK back in 1905 for the men’s singles championship. Remarkably, it looks exactly like the gold trophy we now see being presented at Wimbledon. As an aside, you will often find early 60′s photos of the winners being presented a silver trophy but the committee thought the gold one looked better on TV.
The Australasian trophy 1905 until being retired by Jack Crawford for winning 193,32 & 33.
It was replaced by the current Norman Brookes Challenge Cup.
The wonderful trophies owned by Jack Crawford were saved by a jeweller family in Sydney and donated to the museum.
They include Australian Championships, Wimbledon and Davis Cup trophies. Tom, above also brought the Jack Crawford junior championship trophy he won outright in the mid 20′s) It was great to see them all together.
Below is Rex Hartwig being interviewed by organiser and Albury Coach Phil Shanahan at our dinner, ( a huge thanks to Phil and the Margaret Court Tennis Academy, Albury).
Rex played around the globe for Australia in the 1950′s including Davis Cup. He was runner up in the 1954 Australian and US singles and won 4 Major Doubles Titles including the Australian, Wimbledon and US tournaments.
They also have a wonderful Margaret Court collection, although much of her major collection is on display around the Melbourne Park, Margaret Court arena.
Margaret and Rex both grew up and learned their tennis in the Albury region.
We also enjoyed presentations about the Alexander Patent Tennis Racket Co. by family relative Peter Dowling, which dominated the local racquet making scene from 1923 through to the 1950′s and a great review of a new tennis book, The PROS by Peter Underwood which follows the careers of some of the early overseas and Australian players who moved from amateurs into the pro scene to develop a well paid career.
A slide show from Peter about the Pros.
This 2019 year also marks the start of an Australian celebration of the Rod Laver 50th anniversary of his 1969 proper Grand Slam win achieved in the OPEN ERA.
It has been great to see Rod received the accolades at the majors he has attended so far which will conclude with the US Open.
Congratulations to Rod on what was his second Grand Slam and of course to Margaret who next year celebrates her 1970′s Grand Slam victories. Hopefully Margaret will receive the same accolades and respect for her sporting achievements without the gay marriage debate being the ongoing argument…..Not sure this will go smoothly despite my hopes for some peace. Tennis Australia needs to take a strong lead on this.
A very nice Japanese made Dunlop Rod Laver Grand Slam tribute model.
A couple of other mid 70′s Championship winning models used by Evonne and Margaret.
Moving along to some other interesting collectibles found over the last 18 months we have a likley French (unbranded multi press).
Not many of these exist in Australia so you need to allow a large freight bill……they do make amazing displays though.
At a local antique centre we found this unopened mid 1930′s can of Ormiston Rubber Tennis Balls. They will remain unopened to protect the value plus there is a picture on the side at any rate.
In October 2018, Keith and I were invited to the Hong Kong WTA Open Tournament to display a small part of our collection. This was a lot of fun and follows from our 2013 experience at the Beijing, China Open for their 10th anniversary.
The display frames were built by the organisers so we really only had to mount our racquets. We were very well looked after and attended the player welcome dinner and had a few players pop in for media shots. Overall we must have seen close to a 1000 people….
As you can see we take the time to dress up and “show and tell” the history to those who come up to say hi……so we manned the stand from 10am to 9pm….. We even made the local papers!!!!!
Ok well happy collecting. If anyone has any questions regarding the history of the game in Australia or elsewhere please sing out.
We do follow up alot on Facebook…….
Cheers for now Rod
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