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History of Australian Tennis 2 Previous Page
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 Of course tennis clubs were also a way in which citizens anxious to measure their attainments and affirm the future of leisured civilisation in Victoria could do SO. The proliferation of tennis clubs reflected what might be called hubris - the proclamation of' an instant leisured class, newly and aggressively emerged, and the clubs were another expression - a physical expression in all ways for the very existence of courts was testimony to spacious living - of a boundless confidence and optimism. Tennis expressed the energy and refinement, that exact blend of activity and cultivation which the colonials looked on as their very own: they had invented the blend and tennis was their ideal vehicle.
The idea of colonising enterprise was intertwined into the building and organisation necessary to establish a club or even a private court with regular practice sessions. They believed that by the establishment and maintenace of such things as the English sport of tennis, progress and success would be assured and magnified. In this sense it was not only an imitation but it was also a symbol, a testament to a phase of civilisation achieved. To add to this, the mistakes and problems of British industrialism and capitalism had supposedly been learnt and recognised by the Australian elite; Melbourne, it seemed, had nothing to lose if it extracted the advantages of both the British model of economic progress and the Australian potential for economic success. The result would undoubtedly be that Victoria would be the richest and most progressive centre in the southern hemisphere, Tennis was seen as a microcosm of a brave new colonial world in which this idea of energetic progess would be dominant. That is, tennis was encouraged by, and also expressed, a particular and dynamic social atmosphere.
An analysis of the early membership of the tennis clubs reveals that the social, religious, political and cultural backgrounds of their members show much in common and may to a significant extent be broadly classified within overall social divisions. For example, Protestant, Freemason, substantial landowner and so on. This set of general categories does not, of course, apply rigidly to all clubs, members or areas. If some player had great ability, but was unacceptable in other ways, due for example to lower social background or personal disposition, there was usually little opposition to his or her application for membership which was treated as a gracious dispensing of patronage.
Another area in which the unspoken but understood guidelines for tennis club membership were suspended is particularly evident when a contrast is made between the membership patterns of the country and city clubs. As a general rule, country clubs included a much wider cross section of the public, while city and suburban clubs usually catered for, and were restricted to, the professional and upper-middle business classes. The informal and usually unspoken enforcement of various religious, regional, political and economic criteria and restrictions for the exclusion or acceptance of members is itself indicative of the tight exclusiveness of most of Melbourne's tennis clubs in this earsion of upwardly mobile social impulses, strenuous but also more popular. The hardening, tightening and streamlining of tennis was encouraged by both the players and organisers of the game in the hope that the sport would command greater public interest, which it began to do.
While in theory, this idea of developing a competitive sport may have been the intention of innovations in tennis, a truly competitive approach to the game in the sense pursued in modern sports was hardly welcomed. This point is perhaps best conveyed by the following statement in what was perhaps the best and most accurate review of the then history of lawn tennis in Australasia up until 1912. Although it refers to the capabilities of the 1912 Australasian Davis Cup Team, it indicates clearly the then prevailing 'amateur ethos' of tennis: I own a modest confidence in their ultimate success and an absolute certainty they will do their best, and take success or defeat as sportsmen who realise that the glory is not in the prize but in the effort.
Yet, despite this kind of gentlemanly presumption, the issue of whether tennis should be an amateur game or a professional sport has been heatedly debated ever since the inception of the rules and competition in lawn tennis began. Hardly less important for the future of Australian tennis was the birth in Melbourne, on November 14, 1877, of Norman Brookes. He was to become one of the greatest international players of his time and a long-standing and influential administrator who virtually controlled, not only Victorian tennis, but Australian as well. He became the model Australian tennis player. He also exerted a great deal of influence on the international scene as well as being, and the combination is indicative of the non-specialist place of the tennis of his day, a first-class player.
The son of William Brookes, an 1852 English immigrant from Northamptonshire, Norman Brookes was the descendant of a particular type of colonist, already discussed, who made a considerable fortune after settling in Australia by building railways and bridges, buying ships, paper mills and sheep stations. Neither father nor son were ever able, or wished to forget or ignore, their English background. It was perhaps because of this, and his father's newly found wealth, that Norman was given a tennis racket at the age of five. He was often found hitting balls on a wall of the Brookes' huge home, 'Brookwood', near Albert Park, which was the venue for many important matches and practice sessions of the top tennis players especially after. 1908.
In 1896 Brookes began his rise to fame by playing his first interstate match for Victoria. Horrie Rice, renowned not only for his Australian national and state titles from the 1890s to the mid-1920s but also for his billowing white knicker bockers and long black socks,said of Brookes: 'He makes the game extremely restful by playing so many of' his strokes well beyond my reach', which seems, to a modern view, replete with irony and chagrin, but was in fact perfectly serious, revealing the then nature of the game, as much as Brookes' abilities. Rice's remark now appears quaint, but it draws attention to one of the attractive aspects of tennis as a new game, a feature which is easy to overlook nearly a century later. The game then had enormous and exciting potential for internal development; amazing things could be done to extend the frontiers of technique. The game as played by Brookes had the attractions of startling novelty, and of consummate excellence within that.
The popularity of Australian tennis was accidental in that Brookes emerged at just that time when Australian nationalism was needing promotion and heroes in relation to Federation and the upsurge of national consciousness from the nineties. There were few international figures, persons of international stature to whom Australians could attach a sense of national pride. Brookes, in this tiny little-known exclusive sport, emerged at just the right time and, as a Wimbledon champion, right in the heartland of the British establishment, that is, amongst precisely those whom Australians most wanted to impress and prove that they were equals or better. But for Brookes coinciding with Federation, tennis would have been perhaps not nothing, but much less.
The stage had been set for Australia as a nation to obtain independently the laurels of international tennis. The Australian domination of the sport in the pre-World War One Years resulted in tennis becoming an integral part of the Australian national heritage and character in a peculiar way, not unlike deep sea yachting now, being the exclusive domain of the rich heralded from afar by the bulk of the Australian population. Thus, the new social environment of Australia, lacking the traditions of entrenched old wealth, and any network of aristocracy or ancient elitist structures, was much more open to egalitarian inclusion and wider social span than the English. This resulted in shaping and influencing tennis in this country in a way that was gradually becoming distinctly Australian.
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