The Aussie tennis legends love the game, but not more than each other

MELBOURNE—The stated focus of the tenth annual Australian Legends Lunch was to honor Mal Anderson. The 82-year-old Anderson, enshrined in the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000, is one of many native sons who served and volleyed his way to glory in the thick of Australia’s golden quarter-century, 1950 to 1975, when the nation took the bulk of trophies, everywhere from Grand Slams to Davis Cup to amateur and pro events in every corner of the globe.

Australia ruled the world, and Harry Hopman ruled the Aussies. Hopman was a one-man cartel—Davis Cup captain, newspaper columnist, politician supreme, judge, jury and executioner.

As Anderson recalled, “When he said ‘jump,’ you said, ‘How high?’” In the summer of 1957, as his charges trekked through North America, Hopman sent Anderson a letter, telling him that based on his mediocre results, it would be a good idea to cancel his upcoming wedding to Daphne Emerson (Roy’s sister) and, faster than a speeding chip-charge, return home to train.

This was one leap for the team an angry Anderson wasn’t about to take. Unseeded that year at the U.S. Championships, Anderson went on the warpath, his volleys crackling more sharply than ever, most notably in the finals when he beat his fellow Aussie, Ashley Cooper, in straight sets. By the end of the year, Anderson was ranked No. 2 in the world.

Anderson had grown up on a cattle farm in Queensland, near a small town of less than 1,000. A tennis court had been rolled out of dirt, the prevalent ant bed surface familiar to so many Aussies. Anderson, his four brothers and others nearby would play all day. Tennis was so popular that in time it became necessary to build another court.

On that remote piece of property, thousands of miles from such spots as Wimbledon, the lads would pay attention to major tennis events on radio, “Well,” said Anderson, “at least when we could get it working.”

From time to time, a boy three years younger than Anderson would creep around. “Get out of there, you little red-haired kid,” Anderson would say in jest, eventually relenting and letting him take a crack. Seventy years later, the boy now a man, sat at the luncheon, laughing along with his dear mate Mal.

“I was just this nine year-old, trying to prove I could play with those bigger guys,” said Rod Laver.

Anderson competed at a high level well into the 1970s. At the age of 36, Anderson beat another mate, John Newcombe, on his way to the finals of the 1972 Australian Open. There he was taken down by a man a year older, that amazing Aussie, Ken Rosewall.

Yet as much as Anderson had accomplished, this Legends Lunch was not about him at all. Anderson was just one star that had flown across the sky, lighting it up for his share of moments. But Anderson’s burst was mere prelude to a beloved Aussie ritual: a group chat, led by ex-pro Wally Masur, mates on the chairs—Emerson, Cooper, Newcombe and Neale Fraser, all Hall of Famers. Each wove memories, not just of Anderson, but of the tennis soil and values they’d embraced and tilled, spread and emulated.

“It was relatively easy,” said Newcombe, who recalled a lengthy apprenticeship in his teens on the Davis Cup team.

“We just watched what our elders did, in everything—fitness, effort, shot selection, sportsmanship. We had so much admiration for what they were doing.”

As hard as the Australians would practice, they are fundamentally a playful nation, this country’s spirit of fun and games personified by their delight in nicknames, be it Anderson’s “Country” to the slight-of-build Rosewall’s “Muscles” to Rod Laver’s “Rocket,” and such more prosaic monikers as “Coop,” “Emmo” and “Newk.”

From generation to generation, squad to squad, person to person, across millions of volleys and returns, two-on-one drills galore and miles of running, the torch was passed. Perhaps Australians reveled in legacy and team play so well because theirs is a collective nation, one where the ambitious solo act takes a back seat to hearty collaboration. In tennis, the Aussie sensibility has long worked as a perfect counterbalance, a yin-yang if you will, to the toxic egos that this sport so often breeds.

For a long time, though, Australians were predominantly road warriors. At the luncheon, Hall of Famer Mats Wilander recalled a series of intensive doubles workouts he and his fellow Swedes had participated in with Emerson in Italy as teenagers. By age 21, paired with compatriot Joakim Nystrom, Wilander, scarcely a frequent serve-volley player, had won the Wimbledon doubles title. More recently another Aussie, Darren Cahill, has been the coach for Simona Halep, making his share of trips to practice with Halep in her Romanian homeland.

Oddly enough, as well as the Aussies exported their act, it wasn’t until 1988 that their homeland Slam at last, to steal Australian slang, measured up. That was the year the Australian Open underwent a complete facelift and the current new facility opened. The ’88 men’s final pitted Wilander and Aussie Pat Cash. Wilander squeaked it out, 8-6 in the fifth. Later that night, the two met over beers, Cash raising a glass to his conqueror. For not the first time nor the last, this nation’s captivating capacity for blending competition and camaraderie had surfaced.

From Queensland to Wimbledon, the outback to New York, Italy to Bucharest, Australians love their tennis stories—but not nearly as much as each other, the game and anyone else who dares share their passion for it with such grace and kindness.