Harry Hopman
Encyclopedia
Henry Christian Hopman, CBE
(12 August 1906 – 27 December 1985) was a world-acclaimed Australian-American
tennis
player and coach
, born in Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, and soon moving to Parramatta
, a city adjoining Sydney
and now effectively a suburb of the metropolis.
Hopman was a student at Rosehill
Public Primary (elementary) school where his father was headmaster, and later Parramatta High School
where he played tennis and cricket
.
n Davis Cup
teams between 1939 and 1967. With players such as Frank Sedgman
, Ken McGregor
, Lew Hoad
, Ken Rosewall
, Rod Laver
, Neale Fraser
, John Newcombe
, Fred Stolle
, Tony Roche
, Roy Emerson
, Ashley Cooper, Rex Hartwig
, Mervyn Rose
, and Mal Anderson he won the Cup an unmatched 16 times. Short clips of Hopman and some of these players may be viewed at one of the primary Movietone websites.
In late 1951, when it appeared that Davis Cup star Frank Sedgman was about to turn professional, Hopman used his column in the Melbourne Herald to lead a fund-raising campaign designed to keep Sedgman in the amateur ranks. Enough money was raised to purchase a gasoline station in the name of Sedgman's bride-to-be and Sedgman remained an amateur for one more year. As Joe McCauley writes in The History of Professional Tennis, "For some reason, the pious Hopman, a strong opponent of the paid game, did not regard this as an infringement of Sedgman's amateur status."
, providing sporting commentary. After World War II
, this became his focus, until he was once again coaxed into tennis coaching. As an example of Hopman's journalism, Kramer writes that Sedgman, by then a successful touring professional, once "volunteered to help train the Aussie [Davis Cup] team. Hopman accepted the offer, and then he took Sedg aside and told him that what Hoad and Rosewall needed was confidence. So he told Sedg to go easy on them, which he gladly did. After a few days, Hopman wrote an exclusive in his newspaper column revealing how his kids could whip Sedgman and how this proved once again that amateurs were better than the pros."
is named in his honour (see below). Lucy Hopman travelled to Perth, Western Australia
in January each year for the Cup, including 2011.
Hopman was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame
in Newport, Rhode Island
in 1978.
Tennis great Jack Kramer
, who was also a successful promoter of the professional tour, writes in his 1979 autobiography that Hopman "always knew exactly what was going on with all his amateurs. He had no children, no hobbies, and tennis was everything to him. Hopman always said he hated the pros, and he battled open tennis to the bitter end, but as early as the time when Sedgman and McGregor signed, Hopman was trying to get himself included in the deal so he could get a job with pro tennis in America."
Kramer, who admits that Hopman "has never been my favorite guy", goes on to say "The minute one of his stars would turn pro, Hopman would turn on him. No matter how close he'd been to a player, as soon as he was out of Hopman's control, the guy was an outcast. 'It was as if we'd never existed,' Rosewall once said.
finals. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1969 and became a highly successful professional coach at Port Washington Tennis Academy
, for future champions such as Vitas Gerulaitis
and later John McEnroe
. Hopman later opened the Hopman Tennis Academy, at Largo, Florida
, with his second wife, Lucy.
According to at least one tennis historian, Hopman was a heavy gambler who "once had to sell the land he had purchased for his dream home."
He died of a heart attack.
French Championships
Wimbledon
U.S. Championships
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(12 August 1906 – 27 December 1985) was a world-acclaimed Australian-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
player and coach
Coach (sport)
In sports, a coach is an individual involved in the direction, instruction and training of the operations of a sports team or of individual sportspeople.-Staff:...
, born in Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, and soon moving to Parramatta
Parramatta, New South Wales
Parramatta is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located in Greater Western Sydney west of the Sydney central business district on the banks of the Parramatta River. Parramatta is the administrative seat of the Local Government Area of the City of Parramatta...
, a city adjoining Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and now effectively a suburb of the metropolis.
Hopman was a student at Rosehill
Rosehill, New South Wales
Rosehill is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Rosehill is located 23 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Parramatta and is part of the Greater Western Sydney region....
Public Primary (elementary) school where his father was headmaster, and later Parramatta High School
Parramatta High School
Parramatta High School is a public, co-educational high school located in Parramatta, a western suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.Established in 1913, Parramatta High School was the first co-educational school in the Sydney Metropolitan area...
where he played tennis and cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
.
Davis Cup
Hopman was the very successful captain-coach of 22 AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n Davis Cup
Davis Cup
The Davis Cup is the premier international team event in men's tennis. It is run by the International Tennis Federation and is contested between teams of players from competing countries in a knock-out format. The competition began in 1900 as a challenge between Britain and the United States. By...
teams between 1939 and 1967. With players such as Frank Sedgman
Frank Sedgman
Frank Arthur Sedgman, born 29 October 1927, in Mont Albert, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was a tennis player who was arguably the world No.1 in 1952. In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, included Sedgman in his list of the 21...
, Ken McGregor
Ken McGregor
Kenneth Bruce McGregor was a former tennis player from Australia who won the Men's Singles title at the Australian Championships in 1952. He and his longtime doubles partner, Frank Sedgman, are generally considered to be one of the greatest men's doubles teams of all time...
, Lew Hoad
Lew Hoad
Lewis Alan Hoad was a champion tennis player....
, Ken Rosewall
Ken Rosewall
Kenneth Robert Rosewall AM MBE is a former world top-ranking amateur and professional tennis player from Australia. He won 23 Majors including eight Grand Slam singles titles and before the Open Era a record fifteen Pro Slam titles . Rosewall won 9 slams in doubles with a career double grand slam...
, Rod Laver
Rod Laver
Rodney George "Rod" Laver MBE is an Australian former tennis player who holds the record for titles won in career, and was the World No. 1 player for seven consecutive years, from 1964 to 1970...
, Neale Fraser
Neale Fraser
Neale Andrew Fraser AO MBE is a former tennis player from Australia, born in Melbourne, Victoria, the son of a Victorian judge. He began playing tennis at age 11 and attended St Kevin's College, Melbourne where he became Captain of Tennis at the school.Fraser won Wimbledon in 1960 and the US...
, John Newcombe
John Newcombe
John David Newcombe, AO, OBE is a former World No. 1 tennis player.-Biography:He won seven Grand Slam singles titles, A natural athlete, Newcombe played several sports as a boy until devoting himself to tennis. He was the Australian junior champion in 1961, 1962, and 1963 and was a member of...
, Fred Stolle
Fred Stolle
Frederick "Fred" Sydney Stolle is an Australian tennis player. He was born in Hornsby, New South Wales, Australia. He is the father of former Australian Davis Cup player Sandon Stolle....
, Tony Roche
Tony Roche
Anthony "Tony" Dalton Roche is a former professional Australian tennis player, native of Tarcutta. He played junior tennis in the New South Wales regional city of Wagga Wagga. He won one Grand Slam singles title and twelve Grand Slam doubles titles. He is also very well known for coaching...
, Roy Emerson
Roy Emerson
Roy Stanley Emerson is an Australian former tennis player who won 12 Grand Slam singles titles and 16 Grand Slam men's doubles titles. He is the only male player to have won singles and doubles titles at all four Grand Slam tournaments. His 28 Grand Slam titles are an all-time record for a male...
, Ashley Cooper, Rex Hartwig
Rex Hartwig
Rex Noel Hartwig was an Australian tennis player.-Wimbledon:He won the doubles in Wimbledon twice: In 1954 with Mervyn Rose and in 1955 with Lew Hoad.-Australian Championships:...
, Mervyn Rose
Mervyn Rose
Mervyn Rose was an Australian male tennis player. He was born in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales and turned professional in 1959...
, and Mal Anderson he won the Cup an unmatched 16 times. Short clips of Hopman and some of these players may be viewed at one of the primary Movietone websites.
In late 1951, when it appeared that Davis Cup star Frank Sedgman was about to turn professional, Hopman used his column in the Melbourne Herald to lead a fund-raising campaign designed to keep Sedgman in the amateur ranks. Enough money was raised to purchase a gasoline station in the name of Sedgman's bride-to-be and Sedgman remained an amateur for one more year. As Joe McCauley writes in The History of Professional Tennis, "For some reason, the pious Hopman, a strong opponent of the paid game, did not regard this as an infringement of Sedgman's amateur status."
Journalism
Hopman was also a journalistJournalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, providing sporting commentary. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, this became his focus, until he was once again coaxed into tennis coaching. As an example of Hopman's journalism, Kramer writes that Sedgman, by then a successful touring professional, once "volunteered to help train the Aussie [Davis Cup] team. Hopman accepted the offer, and then he took Sedg aside and told him that what Hoad and Rosewall needed was confidence. So he told Sedg to go easy on them, which he gladly did. After a few days, Hopman wrote an exclusive in his newspaper column revealing how his kids could whip Sedgman and how this proved once again that amateurs were better than the pros."
Legacy
The Hopman CupHopman Cup
The Hopman Cup is an annual international team tennis tournament held in Perth, Western Australia in early January each year, which plays mixed teams on a country by country basis...
is named in his honour (see below). Lucy Hopman travelled to Perth, Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
in January each year for the Cup, including 2011.
Hopman was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame
International Tennis Hall of Fame
The International Tennis Hall of Fame is located in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. The hall of fame and honors players and contributors to the sport of tennis and includes a museum, grass tennis courts, an indoor tennis facility, and a court tennis facility.-History:The hall of fame and...
in Newport, Rhode Island
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
in 1978.
Tennis great Jack Kramer
Jack Kramer (tennis player)
John Albert Kramer was an American tennis player of the 1940s. A World Number 1 player for a number of years, he is a possible candidate for the title of the greatest tennis player of all time. He was considered the father and the leading promoter of the professional tennis tours...
, who was also a successful promoter of the professional tour, writes in his 1979 autobiography that Hopman "always knew exactly what was going on with all his amateurs. He had no children, no hobbies, and tennis was everything to him. Hopman always said he hated the pros, and he battled open tennis to the bitter end, but as early as the time when Sedgman and McGregor signed, Hopman was trying to get himself included in the deal so he could get a job with pro tennis in America."
Kramer, who admits that Hopman "has never been my favorite guy", goes on to say "The minute one of his stars would turn pro, Hopman would turn on him. No matter how close he'd been to a player, as soon as he was out of Hopman's control, the guy was an outcast. 'It was as if we'd never existed,' Rosewall once said.
Personal life
Hopman was first married to Nell Hall, with whom he won four mixed doublesMixed Doubles
Mixed Doubles: An Entertainment on Marriage is a programme consisting of a series of eight short plays or revue sketches, each with two characters, composed by various English playwrights. It was first performed on 6 February 1969 in the Hampstead Theatre Club with the title, We Who Are About To......
finals. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1969 and became a highly successful professional coach at Port Washington Tennis Academy
Port Washington Tennis Academy
The Port Washington Tennis Academy, located in Long Island, New York, is the largest indoor tennis facility on the U.S. East Coast, with 17 indoor courts. Founded in 1966 as a non-profit tennis facility, it has an internationally acclaimed junior tennis development program...
, for future champions such as Vitas Gerulaitis
Vitas Gerulaitis
Vytautas Kevin Gerulaitis was a Lithuanian–American professional tennis player. He is known for winning the men's singles title at one of the two Australian Open tournaments held in 1977. Gerulaitis won the tournament held in December, while Roscoe Tanner won the earlier January tournament...
and later John McEnroe
John McEnroe
John Patrick McEnroe, Jr. is a former world no. 1 professional tennis player from the United States. During his career, he won seven Grand Slam singles titles , nine Grand Slam men's doubles titles, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title...
. Hopman later opened the Hopman Tennis Academy, at Largo, Florida
Largo, Florida
Largo is the third largest city in Pinellas County, Florida, USA and is part of the Tampa Bay Area. Centrally located, it is the crossroads of the county. As of the 2000 census, the City had a total population of 69,371. As of 2004, the population estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau was...
, with his second wife, Lucy.
According to at least one tennis historian, Hopman was a heavy gambler who "once had to sell the land he had purchased for his dream home."
He died of a heart attack.
Grand Slam tournaments
Australian ChampionshipsAustralian Open
The Australian Open is the only Grand Slam tennis tournament held in the southern hemisphere. The tournament was held for the first time in 1905 and was last contested on grass in 1987. Since 1972 the Australian Open has been held in Melbourne, Victoria. In 1988, the tournament became a hard court...
- Singles runner-up: 1930, 1931, 1932
- Men's Doubles winner: 1929, 1930
- Men's Doubles runner-up: 1931, 1932
- Mixed Doubles winner: 1930, 1936, 1937, 1939
- Mixed Doubles runner-up: 1940
French Championships
- Men's Doubles runner-up: 1930, 1948
Wimbledon
- Mixed Doubles runner-up: 1945
U.S. Championships
- Men's Doubles runner-up: 1939
- Mixed Doubles winner: 1939
Australia Davis Cup
- team member 1928, 1930, 1932
- Captain 1938-1939, 1950–1969
- winning captain 1939, 1950–1953, 1955–1957, 1959–1962, 1964–1967
- losing captain 1938, 1954, 1958, 1963, 1968
Sources
- The Game, My 40 Years in Tennis (1979), Jack Kramer with Frank Deford (ISBN 0-399-12336-9)
- The History of Professional Tennis (2003), Joe McCauley
- Rich Hillway, tennis historian http://www.coloradotennis.com/cta/website.asp?Dept=News&Sec=Features&Page=Rich%20Hillway