Word: hopman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...been counted on to upset the flashy Aussies, was not up to scratch. Captain Shields, who had sidelined his two top singles players, Dick Savitt and Vic Seixas, would just as obviously have to start thinking about some new combinations. A fortnight before the big test, Australian Captain Harry Hopman was elaborately unworried: "I saw nothing in the play to frighten members of Australia's Davis Cup squad...
Canny Harry Hopman, nonplaying captain of the Australian Davis Cup team, seemed to be giving U.S. Captain Frank Shields a splendid lesson in Gamesmanship,* Down Under style. As a full-time tennis writer for the Melbourne Herald, Hopman based his opening ploy on the U.S. warmup performances. His particular target: Vic Seixas, who, he said, had "foot-faulted a number of times" without being taken to task. U.S. Captain Shields showed himself no mean Gamesman in return by promptly retorting: "When Harry resorts to such tactics as this, I think it indicates only that we've got him worried...
...young (21) Tony Trabert was looking better than ever. A fortnight ago, the U.S. pair was within a game of beating the invincible Aussie combination of Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor, U.S. and Wimbledon champions. Last week at Melbourne, with the top Aussies separated in a Gamesmanlike experiment by Hopman, Schroeder and Trabert breezed to the title in straight sets...
...form that won him the U.S. title, he took just 58 minutes to give Savitt as sound a thrashing as the Wimbledon champion has taken in years. The score: 8-6, 6-0, 6-4. The result, on the eve of the U.S.-Sweden zone finals, made good gamesman Hopman a likely candidate to go down in Gamesman history with such famed experts as Frith-Morteroy (master of the art of Countering the Crock), Edward Grice (specialist in the Secondary Hamper), and Stephen Potter himself (inventor of the Jack Rivers Opening). It also left the U.S. singles line-up just...
...then romped through two more, 6-3, 6-4, for the match. Since Sedgman had walloped an unsteady Tom Brown in an earlier match, the Australians, needing three-of-five to win, could just about crate up the old cup for shipment home. But the Aussies' Captain Hopman was not yet jubilant. "I want to see us get that third point," said Harry...