Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Lewis Alan Hoad, born November 23, 1934 in Glebe,
New South Wales, Australia - died July 3, 1994 in
Fuengirola, Spain, was a champion tennis player. 

With his movie-star good looks, powerful physique,
and outgoing personality, Lew Hoad became a tennis
icon in the 1950s. Strength played an important
part of his game, often driving for winners rather
than rallying and waiting for the right
opportunity. Although he assaulted his opponents,
he had the skill to win the French Championship on
the slower clay court. For five straight years,
beginning in 1952, he was ranked in the World Top
Ten, reaching the World No. 1 spot in 1956.

Lew Hoad was a member of the Australian team that
between 1952 and 1956 won the Davis Cup four
times. In 1956 he won the first three stages of
the Grand Slam tennis tournaments and was heavily
favored to win the fourth and then turn
professional for a lucrative contract.  In a
stunning upset, he lost to fellow Australian Ken
Rosewall in the United States Championship at
Forest Hills. However, that same year, and
partnered with Rosewall, he won the doubles Grand
Slam in tennis.  Fresh from his victory over Hoad,
it was Ken Rosewall who signed the professional
contract and went on to spend the new year as the
regular victim of Pancho Gonzales on the pro tour.
At a time when only amateur players were allowed
to compete in the four national championships,
Hoad finally turned professional after winning his
second successive Wimbledon singles title in 1957.

His first year as a pro was a series of
head-to-head matches with the reigning king of
professional tennis, Pancho Gonzales.  Hoad won 18
of the first 27 matches, but Gonzales surged back
to finally defeat Hoad by 51 matches to 36. 
Gonzales, whom many consider to be the greatest
tennis player of all time, always maintained that
Hoad was the toughest, most skillful adversary
that he had ever faced.

Back problems plagued Hoad throughout his career
and forced his retirement from the tennis tour in
the mid 1960s. He moved to Fuengirola, Spain, near
Málaga, where he and his tennis-playing wife,
Jenny Staley, operated a tennis resort for more
than thirty years entertaining personal friends
such as actors Sean Connery, Kirk Douglas, and
Charlton Heston.

He is often remembered for his match as a
19-year-old amateur in the 1953 Davis Cup against
the great United States champion Tony Trabert. In
a titanic struggle, Hoad defeated Trabert by a
score of 13-11, 6-3, 3-6, 2-6, 7-5 to help his
country retain the Cup.

Lew Hoad was battling leukemia and waiting for a
bone marrow donor when in his weakened condition,
he died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of
59. A book written by him and author Jack Pollard
titled The Lew Hoad Story, was published in 1958.
In 2003, Pollard teamed up his with his widow
Jenny to write My Life With Lew.

He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall
of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1980.

Grand Slam Tournament wins:
*Australian Open: 
**singles champion - 1956, 1957 
**doubles champion - 1953, 1956
*French Open:
**singles champion - 1956
*Wimbledon Championships:
**singles champion - 1956, 1957 
** doubles champion - 1953, 1956, 1957
*US Open (tennis)|US Open:
**doubles champion - 1956

Adapted from the article
http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.phtml?title=Lew_Hoad
Lew Hoad, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.

*List of male tennis players