Federer has much in common with his trophy’s namesake
“I call it Norman,” Roger Federer told The New York Times. “I’ve had dinner with Norman, spent a lot of time with Norman.”
Who is Federer’s new friend? “Norman,” in reality, is the replica of the Australian Open champion’s trophy that he won earlier this year, and which he has turned into a regular travelling companion. Norman accompanied Federer on a trip to a mountain chalet in Switzerland, and appeared with him in a GQ spread. “I know it’s super cheesy,” Federer said to the Times, “but the fans just love it.”
Federer has obviously revelled in his first Grand Slam title in nearly five years. But the fact that he has done it with this particular piece of hardware may be more appropriate than he realizes. The Australian Open men’s singles trophy is officially known as the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup. Its namesake wasn’t just the first great Aussie tennis champion; he was, in many ways, the Federer of his day.
A native of Melbourne, Brookes had tennis in his blood. He was born in 1877, the same year that Wimbledon began hosting an annual tennis tournament. Known as The Wizard, Brookes could, as his friend and Davis Cup teammate Tony Wilding said, “Make the ball talk.”
“As a left-hander possessed of consummate concentration, a tenacious will to win, uncanny anticipation and a deft touch at net,” tennis historian E. Digby Baltzell wrote of Brookes in 1994, “he was apparently quite like our own John McEnroe.”
If Baltzell were writing today, he might have compared Brookes to “our own Roger Federer” instead. And he might have noted one more similarity between the two men: Their remarkable longevity.
Brookes was born into Melbourne’s wealthy upper crust, and he played tennis long before there was any money in it. A sickly child, he nonetheless excelled at every sport he tried, and he supported his sporting activities by working at his father’s paper mill, where he eventually became chairman. Far from Europe and the United States, he lacked international training and competition.
“In his early days at Melbourne,” Wilding said of Brooes, “virtually his only opponent was his kbrother.”
This may help explain why Brookes didn’t win his first Wimbledon title until he was 30, in 1907. Even with that delay, he was the first player from Australiaor any country other than Great Britainto win the tournament. He also won the doubles, with Wilding, and the mixed doubles. Nine days later, Brookes and Wilding broke Britain’s lock on the Davis Cup and took the trophy Down Under for the first time. Those twin victories were an early sign of tennis’ oncoming globalization, a process that hasn’t ceased to this day.
It looked for a time as if that would be Brookes’ main claim to tennis fame. He helped Australiaor Australasia, as the team was called then (it included New Zealand)defend the Davis Cup in 1908 and 1909, and won the Australian Open, which he had helped establish, in 1911. But it wasn’t until 1914, at age 37, that Brookes recorded his two most legendary victories.
The first stirrings of World War I were in the air in Europe that year, and Brookes could feel them as he trained on the Riviera in the spring. He didn’t know it when he arrived at the All England Club in June, but Wimbledon, like the Davis Cup, wouldn’t be held again until 1919. Brookes made the most of his chance, beating Germany’s Otto Froitzheim 8-6 in the fifth set in a final-round classic that would be compared to the iconic 1980 final between Bjorn Borg and McEnroe. In 1914, though, the tournament winner also had to beat the previous year’s winner in the Challenge Round. Brookes did that by knocking off Wilding in straight sets.
