It says everything about the incredible depth of talent in Australian men’s tennis in the thirty years after World War II that Fred Stolle, who died earlier this week at the age of 86, was almost certainly not one of the five finest Australian male players of his era, even though he won two Major Singles titles, 10 Major Men’s Doubles titles and was part of an Australian team that won a hat-trick of Davis Cup titles.
Indeed, it is arguable that Australian men’s tennis in that period was so great that it is probably the most glittering golden age that any country has enjoyed, not just in tennis but in any sport.
Stolle’s Major Statistics
Stolle’s greatest achievements came in the 1960s, the last decade (or near-full decade) in which tennis was an amateur sport before it went fully professional in 1968.
He won the French Open in 1965, defeating his compatriot Tony Roche 3-6 6-0 6-2 6-3 in the final. As a classic serve-volleyer who had grown up on almost exclusively grass courts in Australia, it was a genuine surprise that he won his first Major Singles title on the much slower clay of Roland Garros.
Indeed, Stolle is quoted in his entry in the International Tennis Hall of Fame as saying: “The French was not the one I was supposed to win.”
That was especially true when the three other Majors were still contested on grass. However, it was a testament to his sheer tennis intelligence and adaptability (what today would be called “tennis IQ”) that he could make the necessary adjustments to his all-action style of play to triumph on la terre battue, or red stuff, of Paris.
Stolle’s second and last Major Singles title came a year later in New York, when he won what was still the US Championships (it would not become the US Open until 1968) by beating Manuel Santana, Spain’s first great male tennis player, 6-3 6-4 6-8 8-6 in the final.
Santana was the reigning US and Wimbledon champion and probably the best non-Australian male tennis player in the world at the time. Stolle ultimately outlasted him to claim the title.
In the days before tiebreaks (which were only introduced in the early 1970s), Stolle lost the third set 8-6 but then, with perfect symmetry, reversed that score to win the fourth set and the championship.
Emerson Was Stolle’s Nemesis (But Laver Overshadowed Them Both)
Those victories in Paris and New York must have been particularly sweet for Stolle because he had lost the first five Major Singles finals that he reached, four of them to yet another Australian, Roy Emerson.
Emerson won a remarkable dozen Major Singles titles between 1961 and 1967, winning each Grand Slam at least twice and his own home Major in Melbourne six times, including five times between 1963 and 1967.
Yet it is always worth remembering that Rod Laver, the greatest Australian male tennis player of that era and arguably the greatest male tennis player of any era, was not able to play at the Majors for most of the 1960s and indeed for most of his career, or at least the prime of it. That was because Laver had been banned from playing at them after turning professional at the end of 1962 when he completed the first of his two calendar Grand Slams. For good measure, he would repeat the feat in 1969 when he was readmitted to the Majors.
If Laver had not been banned from playing at the Majors for so long, he would almost certainly have won far more than the 11 Grand Slam Singles titles that he amassed. Indeed, it is likely that three decades before The Big Three of Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, he would have become the first male tennis player to win 20 or more Major Singles titles.
Why Was That Generation of Aussie Players So Great?
In the BBC Tennis report on Stolle’s death, Paul McNamee, who himself was a multiple Major Men’s Doubles champion with his compatriot (and fellow “Mac”) Peter McNamara, was quoted as saying of Stolle that he was “one of that great group of Aussie tennis players who made history, and whose legacy is perhaps unrivaled.”
There is no “perhaps” about it, because that post-war wave of great Australian male players continued until the mid-1970s with the likes of Ken Rosewall (the one man whose extraordinarily long career encompassed almost the entire golden age of Australian men’s tennis) and John Newcombe.
In The Guardian obituary of Stolle, the obituarist, Richard Evans, speculated that Stolle’s success and that of his contemporaries and compatriots was at least partly down to general Australian egalitarianism and specifically the fact that “in Australia – unlike many other countries in the world – tennis was a pastime for all classes.”
Stolle’s father was a labourer on the railway lines around Sydney, but that did not stop him from regularly playing doubles. It was entirely natural that his son followed him onto the court.
In the 21st century, when tennis once again risks becoming an “elitist” sport that is so expensive to play that only the children of the wealthy (or at least the very well-off) can contemplate making a career out of it, that is something that the whole sport should remember.
Stolle The Tennis Man – And Vitas Gerulaitis’s Major-Winning Coach
After retiring from playing in 1976, Stolle became a true all-around tennis man, spending the rest of his life in the sport as a commentator, administrator, and fabled after-dinner speaker and organizer of tennis hospitality events. However, perhaps his greatest post-playing achievement was to have coached Vitas Gerulaitis to his only Major Singles title, the Australian Open, in December 1977, when he defeated Britain’s John Lloyd in a truly epic five-set final.
It is important to note “December 1977” because 1977 was the year when there were two Australian Opens, with the first taking place in January (and being won by the USA’s Roscoe Tanner), in the most bizarre scheduling quirk in the long history of bizarre scheduling quirks at the Australian championships.
Nevertheless, although there were two Australian Opens that year, the greatest double act in tennis in 1977 was indeed Fred Stolle and Vitas Gerulaitis, who are among the most legendary bons vivants in tennis history, as John McEnroe, for one, will testify.
They may only ever have won three Major Singles titles between them, but that night in Melbourne more than half a century ago, when Gerulaitis won his only Major Singles title, may just have witnessed the greatest ever celebration of any Major Singles title, with coach and player surely trying to outdo each other in the celebration stakes. As much as anything, that is a fitting memorial to the life and tennis of the great Fred Stolle.
