Tennis Career
As a youth Brookes played regularly on the court of the family mansion in Queens Road, Melbourne and nearby, at the Lorne St courts, he studied the strokes and tactics of leading players.
Brookes was the first non-Briton to win the men's singles at Wimbledon. He won the men's singles twice, first in 1907 and again in 1914. He also won the doubles in each of those years with New Zealander Anthony Wilding, whom he beat in the 1914 singles Final. He was a major figure in establishing the Australian Open (known as the Australasian Championship until 1927), which he won in 1911. Brookes is considered to have been a World No. 1 player in the 1900s.
Brookes played 39 Davis Cup matches for Australia/New Zealand and the Australian Davis Cup Team between 1905 and 1920.
Brookes was instrumental in the development of Kooyong as a tennis centre. In 1926 he became the first president of the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia, a post he held for the next 28 years.
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