Davis Cup
Hopman was the very successful captain-coach of 22 Australian Davis Cup teams between 1939 and 1967. With players such as Frank Sedgman, Ken McGregor, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver, Neale Fraser, John Newcombe, Fred Stolle, Tony Roche, Roy Emerson, Ashley Cooper, Rex Hartwig, Mervyn Rose, and Mal Anderson he won the Cup an unmatched 16 times. Short clips of Hopman and some of these players may be viewed at one of the primary Movietone websites.
In late 1951, when it appeared that Davis Cup star Frank Sedgman was about to turn professional, Hopman used his column in the Melbourne Herald to lead a fund-raising campaign designed to keep Sedgman in the amateur ranks. Enough money was raised to purchase a gasoline station in the name of Sedgman's bride-to-be and Sedgman remained an amateur for one more year. As Joe McCauley writes in The History of Professional Tennis, "For some reason, the pious Hopman, a strong opponent of the paid game, did not regard this as an infringement of Sedgman's amateur status."
Read more about this topic: Harry Hopman
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