Almanac Tennis: Remembering Neale Fraser

 

 

 

It is only a memory now but for many years in the week before the Australian Open, Neale Fraser would host a barbeque at his plush home in Melbourne – with an open invitation to anyone who had won a Wimbledon singles title. There was only one exception to the rule – Ken Rosewall – four-times runner-up at SW19 – was always a welcome wild card.

The evenings were intimate, hilarious, and fraternal. Variously, Newk or Roy Emerson would be front and centre, Ashley Cooper and Rod Laver smirking along … the regal Frank Sedgman. Jenny Hoad would represent her late husband Lew, who was the idol of them all.

No one carried their Wimbledon achievement closer to their heart than Fraser. In 1960 he beat Laver in four sets in the final. On match point, with Laver serving, Fraser ran around on his forehand and laced a drive that the Queenslander, coming to the net, couldn’t reach.

‘I can still see it now – I have never forgotten that feeling,’ he once reflected.

The victory was both the high point and the beginning of his decline as a player. After a long apprenticeship under Harry Hopman, he became Australia’s number one in 1959, leading the Challenge Round victory over the United States in New York. While Laver stumbled losing his singles, Fraser beat Alex Olmedo in the first rubber, won the doubles in straight sets with Emerson and then the deciding rubber over two rain-affected days against Barry ‘the Bear’ MacKay. Hopman called it ‘Frase’s Cup’. They had worked together for months of grueling training to prepare him for his moment. In the following months came the triple crown when Fraser won the US singles, doubles and mixed doubles. He defended all three the following year.

In the middle came Wimbledon.

That glorious lawn was a long way from the slow clay courts of Melbourne where he developed his serve by watching cricket – seeing how the wrist spinners could affect the ball and translating that into a tennis serve – effectively delivering in and out swingers. That final day of the Davis Cup in 1959 he described the court at Forest Hills as ‘like a fifth-day pitch’ and he exploited it as such. Lew Hoad once told Rod Laver that if he had Neale Fraser’s serve, he would never lose a match.

Fraser had a rare second act in tennis. He stayed an amateur throughout his career – resisting offers to join the professional circuit – and in doing so, was the heir apparent to Hopman when ‘The Fox’ retired from Davis Cup in 1969. Tennis was splintered at the time as it went through difficult growing pains reaching the Open era. Initially, only amateurs could play Davis Cup but then it was open to professionals. Fraser knew that Hopman’s spartan tactics would not work, explaining that ‘I was going out to dinner with players who were now making enough money to be able to buy the restaurant.’

His one rule for the team was that whatever happened during the day they all had dinner together at night. There he saw differences thrashed out and bonds grown. He was Davis Cup captain for a record 24 years – longer than Hopman – winning four times. The first (1973) was with Laver, Newcombe and Rosewall and the final two (1983, 1986) with Pat Cash, John Fitzgerald and Paul McNamee. Perhaps the greatest was in 1977 when he took John Alexander, Mark Edmondson, Phil Dent and an aging Newk and Tony Roche to Perth, Auckland, Buenos Aires and White City to take the title.

Fraser said tennis had been his life and he was always around Melbourne Park during the Open. In recent years a bad hip and back meant he walked almost more east-west than north-south, but his presence was a reminder of the foundation upon which the sport was built … Fraser always said he couldn’t imagine anything better than playing tennis for Australia. He also took up Wimbledon’s annual offer to former champions by flying to London to revisit the scene. Every year he made the trip and would return with goodies for the silent auction at the Davis Cup Foundation’s annual lunch. That affair was staged at the MCG during the AO with Fraser hosting and making sure the room was scattered with greats from Sedgman through to Cash.

It wasn’t as intimate as the show at his place but then when asked about it he quipped, ‘You are more than welcome to come – just let me know when you win Wimbledon.’

 

 

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