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

Brookes was born in Melbourne. 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.

Brookes married 20-year-old Mabel Balcombe Emmerton, the daughter of Harry Emmerton, a solicitor, on 19 April 1911 at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne. 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. Brookes was the first non-Briton to win men's singles at Wimbledon in the history of the tournament. 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.

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. He died in South Yarra in 1968.

Australian rules football career

Brookes was also a leading Australian rules footballer in his youth, playing two matches for Victorian Football League club St Kilda Football Club in 1898, kicking two goals.

Honours

Norman Brookes was knighted "in recognition of service to public service" in 1939.

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.

In 1981 he was honoured on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post depicting a cartoon image by Tony Rafty [115393].

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)