Brookes, Sir Norman

Sir Norman Everard Brookes “The Wizard”
Born: November 14, 1877
Died: September 28, 1968
Hometown: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Citizenship: Australia
Handed: Left
Inducted: 1977

Grand Slam Record
 Australian  Singles 1911
   Doubles 1924

  Wimbledon Singles finalist 1907, 1914
   Singles finalist 1905, 1919
   Doubles 1907, 1914

 U.S. Doubles 1919

Tournament Record
Davis Cup Team Member 1905, 1907-09, 1911-12, 1914, 1919-20

Contributions
LTA Australia President 1926-55

They called him the Wizard. A figure of heroic stature, Sir Norman Everard Brookes was renowned both as a player–for many years Australia’s best–and as an administrator. He stood 5-foot-11, weighed 150, had a sallow complexion and pale blue eyes, austere in bearing, rather taciturn, a man of strength and character to command respect and win honors.

And win honors he did. Born November 14, 1877, in Melbourne, Australia, he became in 1907 the first male from overseas to win the championship at Wimbledon, having lost the 1905 final to Laurie Doherty. He won Wimbledon again in 1914 and was runner-up in 1919 after returning from World War I. Long ranked as the best of left-handed players, the first to win Wimbledon, he was a member of nine Australasian Davis Cup teams between 1905 and 1920 and played in eight challenge rounds.

World rankings were instituted after his best days, but he was in the Top Ten in 1914, 1919 and 1920, the last at 43.

He was an exponent of the serve and volley game, the “big game” that was supposed to have originated after World War II. Brookes played that type of game in 1914, but he had more than a serve and volley. He had ground strokes adequate to hold his own from the back of the court. Because his serve was so big an asset–flat, slice, twist, even reverse twist–and he volleyed so much, his methods were characterized as unorthodox when he was in his prime. He often used the same side of the racket for forehand and backhand.

In 1907 Brookes’ decisive 6-2, 6-0, 6-3 win over Roper Barrett settled Australasia’s 3-2 victory at Wimbledon to break Britain’s four-year hold on the Davis Cup and take the prize Down Under for the first time. It stayed there until a British reprisal in 1912. Brookes going 5-1 in singles and 3-0 in doubles as his side beat the U.S. three times. Even though he, 36, lost the memorable first-day match to 24-year-old Maurice McLoughlin, 17-15, 6-3, 6-3, in 1914, the Aussies spirited the Cup away, 3-2, as he clinched, 6-1, 6-2, 8-10, 6-3, over Dick Williams. Five years later, at age 41, he won the doubles with Gerald Patterson as the Aussies beat Britain, 4-1, the oldest to play with a Cup winner. A year after that, his Cup swan song, he gave Big Bill Tilden a furious battle, 10-8, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, as the Americans retrieved the sterling bowl.

Returning to Wimbledon in 1914, his first appearance since winning seven years before, Brookes again demonstrated his all-around strength in a severe all-comers final test (6-2, 6-1, 5-7, 4-6, 8-6, over German Otton Froitzheim) preparatory to wresting the title from his close friend and teammate, Tony Wilding, 6-4, 6-4, 7-5, with a display of faultless ground strokes. Brookes’ durability was demonstrated again in 1924 at Wimbledon when, at 46, he ousted World No. 5 Frank Hunter, finalist in 1923 and 17 years his junior.

But five war years passed, and in his next go at Wimbledon, as the defending champ he couldn’t hold off Patterson in the challenge round, 6-3, 75, 6-2. However, that summer the two of them went to America to win the U.S. Doubles over Tilden and Vinnie Richards, 8-6, 6-3, 4-6, 4-6, 6-2, the first of many Aussies to cart off American titles. He gave incoming champ Tilden–who called him “the greatest tennis brain”–a fright in the singles quarters, 1-6, 6-4, 7-5, 6-3. Brookes, who had won his first major, Wimbledon, 1907, took his last in 1924, the Aussie doubles with James Anderson. He was in his 47th year, the elder of all major champions.

The honors didn’t stop for the man who seems to command them. In 1926, he was named president of the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia, a post he held until 1955. He was decorated with the French Legion of Honor for his services in World War I as a captain in the British Army and, in 1939, he was knighted.

He died September 28, 1968, in Melbourne and entered the Hall of Fame in 1977.

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