Norman Brookes
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Sir Norman Everard Brookes (14 November 1877 in Melbourne, Victoria – 28 September 1968 in Melbourne, Victoria) was an Australian tennis champion and president of the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia.

Brookes' father (William Brookes) had become rich from gold mining in the Bendigo area, and Norman Brookes received a private education at Melbourne Grammar School. On leaving school he went to work as a clerk at the paper mill where his father was managing director, and was on the board himself within eight years.

He married 20-year-old Mabel Balcombe Emmerton on 19 April 1911 at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne, the daughter of Harry Emmerton, a solicitor. They had three daughters.

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 won the Wimbledon Championship men's singles twice, first in 1907 and again in 1914. He also won the doubles in 1907 with New Zealander Anthony Wilding. He was personally a major figure in establishing the Australian Open (known as the Australasian Championship until 1927) which he won in 1911.

Brookes played 39 Davis Cup matches for Australia/New Zealand and the Australian Davis Cup Team between 1905 and 1920. During World War I he served as commissioner of the Australian branch of the British Red Cross in Egypt.

He 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. He was knighted in recognition of his distinguished services to tennis in 1939.¹ He died in South Yarra in 1968.

The trophy for men's singles at the Australian Open, the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, is named in his honour. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977.

Grand Slam record

Australian Championships

• Singles champion: 1911
• Doubles champion: 1924

Wimbledon

• Singles champion: 1907, 1914
• Singles finalist: 1905, 1919
• Doubles champion: 1907, 1914

U.S. Championships

• Doubles champion: 1919

Notes

External links

• ADB biography
• W. H. Frederick, 'Brookes, Sir Norman Everard (1877 - 1968)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, Melbourne University Press, 1979, pp 427-428.
• Dame Mabel Brookes, Memoires (Macmillan, 1974)