Australian tennis has misplaced one in all its giants with the passing of Neale Fraser, 19-time Grand Slam champion and embellished Davis Cup participant and captain, at age 91.
Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 3 December 2024 | Tennis Australia
Australian tennis has misplaced one in all its giants with the passing of Neale Fraser AO, MBE.
Fraser gained 19 Grand Slam titles together with Wimbledon and US singles titles, however his identify will eternally be related to the Davis Cup each as a participant and record-setting run as Australian captain.
“I may by no means consider something higher than representing your nation,” Fraser typically stated.
He discovered to play on the clay courts subsequent door to his childhood house in Melbourne and developed a recreation constructed round a thunderous left-handed serve.
As a cricket fan he watched how leg-spin bowlers turned the ball in numerous instructions by cocking their wrists and he tailored this ‘googly’ strategy to his serve.
Rising in the course of the golden period of Australian males’s tennis, Fraser was initially unable to interrupt into the Davis Cup crew and misplaced thrice in main singles finals, together with twice to shut good friend Ashley Cooper – first on the 1957 Australian Championships and at Wimbledon in 1958.
His persistence paid off in 1959 when he gained all three US titles – singles, doubles and blended – at Forest Hills and led Australia to victory within the Davis Cup.
Captain Harry Hopman referred to as it ‘Neale Fraser’s Cup’.
In 1960 Fraser defeated Rod Laver to assert the Wimbledon singles crown after which once more swept the three titles in New York.
One in every of his doubles companions, Roy Emerson, described Fraser as ‘a Basic’ on the courtroom.
Regardless of profitable affords to show skilled, Fraser remained an newbie within the hope he would succeed Hopman as Australian Davis Cup Captain.
That ambition was fulfilled in 1970 and he remained within the place till 1993, helming 24 Davis Cup campaigns throughout which Australia gained the title 4 occasions.
Generations of gamers had been impressed by his management together with John Newcombe, John Fitzgerald and Pat Money.
“He was like a father to me,” Money mirrored. “He simply knew the right way to make you are feeling essential and play your greatest.”
Fraser was inducted into the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame in 1984, and the Australian Tennis Corridor of Fame in 1994. In 2008 Fraser was awarded the ITF’s Philippe Chatrier Award for excellent achievement in tennis.
Fraser, who was 91, can be missed by his spouse Thea, household and plenty of mates world wide.
NEALE FRASER: Profession achievements
Highest world rating: No.1 in 1959
DAVIS CUP
Participant: 1955-1963: 18 wins, 3 losses (11-1 singles, 7-2 doubles)
Captain: 1970-1993: 49 wins, 19 losses (titles in 1973, 1977, 1983, 1986)
GRAND SLAM TITLES (19)
Singles
Wimbledon: 1960
United States: 1959, 1960
Doubles
Australia: 1957, 1958, 1962
Roland Garros: 1958, 1960, 1962
Wimbledon: 1959, 1961
United States: 1957, 1959, 1960
Blended
Australia: 1956
Wimbledon: 1962
United States: 1958, 1959, 1960
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