Tennis champion Roche’s passion for rugby league Tennis champion Roche’s passion for rugby league

Although “earning more money than the prime minister” by his mid-20s, left-handed tennis star Tony Roche’s secret ambition was to win fame as a rugby league great.

1966. Tony Roche holds the trophy after beating Istvan Gulyas in the final of the French Open in Paris. Tennis. SUPPLIED PHO...

Although “earning more money than the prime minister” by his mid-20s, left-handed tennis star Tony Roche’s secret ambition was to win fame as a rugby league great.

Roche, who turned 70 last month, won acclaim as the eighth Australian to win the French Open, in 1966. The tournament, which hosts the 2015 finals this weekend, was Roche’s only Grand Slam win. Known as “the young man in a hurry” and hailed as a Wimbledon prospect, Roche first stepped on court as a five-year-old.

The son of country butcher and rugby league coach Andy and his wife Eugean, Roche was born at Wagga Wagga on May 17, 1945. He grew up at nearby Tarcutta, where he had a bloody introduction to tennis in about 1950. A newspaper report described how a larger opponent boasted he was about to deliver an ace to young Roche, but missed the ball and lost hold of his racquet, which went flying across the court. Roche ducked too late: the racquet hit him in the mouth, knocking out two teeth.

Finishing school at Tarcutta in 1960, Roche took a promotions job with Dunlop in Sydney to train with Harry Hopman, whose line-up included champions Frank Sedgman, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver, while Sydney teen John Newcombe also showed promise.

Then regarded as the best player of his age in the world, in 1963 Roche joined a six-month trip with the Australian men’s tennis touring team. The “glamour trip” took the four-man team to Singapore, Penang, the Middle East, Rome, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Japan, Hong Kong, and Manila.

With his lethal left-hand serve and crisp volleys, Roche represented Australia in the Miami Orange Bowl, winning the singles in 1964 and debuted with Newcombe as a doubles team.

Tony Roche. in action at Kooyong in 1973.

Roche used weightlifting and “a lot of running” to stay in shape, but within a month of his selection with Newcombe in Australia’s 1964 Davis Cup team he was plagued by the first of a string of injuries. A strained back muscle requiring cortisone injections forced him out of a match at Queens Club in London and put him in doubt for Wimbledon.

Back in form a year later, he and Newcombe took their first Wimbledon doubles title.

Roche was seeded third at the French Open in May 1966, when he defeated French hope Francois Jauffret to meet Hungarian Istvan Gulyas, then almost 35, in the final. Roche had been forced to retire from the earlier men’s doubles with a severely sprained left ankle, later X-rayed at a hospital. Organisers delayed the final 24 hours to June 5 for Roche to recover. But still troubled by the injury, Roche went in hard on his serve and returned with accuracy to win the final 6-1, 6-4, 7-5. The ankle injury then forced him out of the men’s final at Queens later that month and plagued him at Wimbledon.

Roche lost to Laver in the 1968 Wimbledon singles final, but had two Wimbledon doubles wins behind him by 1969 when he and Newcombe signed with New Orleans promoter Dave Dixon for a new professional tour, World Championship Tennis (WCT). Backed financially by Texas oilman Lamar Hunt, who in 1960 founded the American Football League, the Australians joined Yugoslav Nikki Pili, Americans Earl “Butch” Buchholz and Dennis Ralston, Frenchman Pierre Barthes, South African Cliff Drysdale and Brit Roger Taylor to form “the Handsome Eight”.

Identified as “the most eligible bachelor in world tennis” as he earned $2000 a week travelling between Paris, Rome, Monte Carlo and New York, injury-prone Roche commented in mid-1971 that if he could have one wish, it was “to become a football star”.

Plagued by persistent tennis elbow, in September 1971 he underwent surgery on the ulnar nerve in his left arm.

He had married Sue, also from Sydney, by the time he underwent another elbow operation in America in September 1972.

Told in England of Filipino faith healer Placido Palitayan, he stopped in Manila on a trip to Australia. Reluctant to discuss the treatment, telling journalists “you wouldn’t believe it anyway”, he said the three-minute procedure removed two blood clots using no anaesthetic.

Roche joined Newcombe to take out their fifth Wimbledon doubles in 1974, adding the Australian Open doubles in 1976 and ’77, along with other titles before officially retiring in 1979 to take up professional coaching. His proteges have included Ivan Lendl, Patrick Rafter, Lleyton Hewitt, Roger Federer and recently Bernard Tomic.

Originally published as Tennis champion Roche’s passion for rugby league Tennis champion Roche’s passion for rugby league