Credit: NLA
In 2022, I’m counting down the 128 best players of the last century. With luck, we’ll get to #1 in December. Enjoy!
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Adrian Quist [AUS]Born: 23 January 1913
Died: 17 November 1991
Career: 1930-55
Plays: Right-handed (one-handed backhand)
Peak rank: 3 (1939)
Major singles titles: 3
Total singles titles: 46
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On September 1st, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Between September 2nd and 4th, 26-year-old Adrian Quist, newly-enlisted member of the Australian Army’s Sixth Battalion, would play the most important tennis matches of his career.
The Challenge Round of the 1939 International Lawn Tennis Challenge–better known by the name of its trophy, the Davis Cup–would be played by preoccupied American and Australian competitors in front of distracted fans at the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The year before, Davis Cup summaries made the front page of the New York Times. Now, the first section of the paper was given over to daily updates on the fighting in Europe. Australia would officially be part of the conflict as soon as Britain declared war, so the visiting Davis Cup squad could be called home at any moment.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Davis Cup in amateur-era tennis. Quist called it “an obsession.” The international competition was even more central for Australians than for the other contending nations. Travel between the southern hemisphere and the tennis centers of London, New York, and Paris was so time-consuming that Aussies planned their entire year around Davis Cup commitments. In 1938 and 1939, captain Harry Hopman and his squad committed themselves to Davis Cup prep to the extent that they skipped Wimbledon.
The looming war in Europe raised the stakes even higher. Traveling with the Australian team was federation president Sir Norman Brookes, who had been part of the last Australian team (then representing Australasia) to defeat the United States in a Davis Cup final. That was in 1914, and due to the First World War, the competition didn’t resume again until 1919. Brookes’s teammate on the champion Australasian side, New Zealander Anthony Wilding, died in action in France in 1915.
By 1939, Adrian Quist was recognized as one of the best doubles players in the world. He won the 1935 doubles events at Roland Garros and Wimbledon with Jack Crawford, and he owned four straight titles at the Australian Championships. The last two came with 20-year-old John Bromwich, the other singles player for the Davis Cup tie and his likely partner in the doubles. Quist and Bromwich had just taken the title at the US National Championships in an all-Australian final, topping Crawford and Hopman in straight sets.
Quist was increasingly recognized for his singles prowess as well. In 1936, he ended Crawford’s five-year reign atop Australian tennis, beating the veteran 9-7 in the fifth set of the national championships. Later that year, he upset Bunny Austin in the Davis Cup Challenge Round, one week after nearly defeating Gottfried von Cramm in the Inter-Zonal final of the competition. Quist came within one point of defeating the German 13 times, and saved 12 match points himself before finally capitulating, 11-9 in the fifth set.
American fans were well aware of the Australian’s capabilities on the singles court. In the previous year’s Challenge Round, played at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia, Quist had pushed Bobby Riggs to four sets. In his second rubber, he had nearly taken the first set from the best player in the world, Don Budge. The baseline umpire called so many foot faults on Quist at key moments in the first set of the Budge match that the Philadelphia crowd rallied behind the visitor, even after Hopman made it clear that he agreed with the umpire’s judgment. In Los Angeles a month later, after Budge had won at Forest Hills to secure his fourth major of the season and the first-ever Grand Slam, Quist knocked him out in the semi-finals at the Pacific Southwest. Presumably the foot-fault judges in California were more forgiving.
By September of 1939, Budge had gone pro. The American side would have to make do with Riggs and a talented, but untested group of Frank Parker, Jack Kramer, and Joe Hunt. The 23-year-old Parker had played Davis Cup in 1937 but lost his starting spot to Riggs in 1938. Kramer and Hunt would be making their international debuts.
For the first time, Quist and his Australian teammates were heavy favorites to take the Davis Cup back to the Antipodes.
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A capacity crowd of Philadelphians jammed the grandstand in Haverford. War or no, it was the biggest tennis event of the year. The presence of Bobby Riggs was a particular enticement, as he was fresh off of a title-winning run at Wimbledon.
Bookmakers set the Australians as 1-to-3 favorites, but the visitors needed to thread a narrow path to victory. Allison Danzig of the New York Times favored Riggs in both of his singles rubbers. The American had beaten Quist the year before, and his 1938 loss to Bromwich came in a dead rubber. Danzig saw the doubles as a near-certainty for the visitors, and figured Frank Parker would struggle to win either singles match. That forecast added up to an Australian victory, but as long as Riggs met expectations, there was little room to maneuver.
The first day of play opened on script. Riggs looked every bit the national champion, sticking with conservative tactics and avoiding Bromwich’s unorthodox two-handed backhand. The American put the first point on the board, 6-4, 6-0, 7-5, in 79 minutes.
Quist had the opportunity to even the tally, but he never got his bearings in the second rubber against Parker. Bromwich had struggled with the slow, wet grass at Merion, and the conditions confounded Quist as well. Both of the visitors preferred faster-playing turf. The Australian veteran was considered steadier than Parker, with strong groundstrokes on both sides and a far superior volley. But the American raised his level, and Quist canceled out every sizzling forehand winner with a pair of errors.
Quist was noticeably out of sorts and uneven throughout the match.* The American targeted his backhand, and Quist’s typically reliable down-the-line shot abandoned him. Parker took the first and third sets, and the visiting player claimed the second and fourth. In the decider, Parker raced out to a 4-0 lead and earned two break points on Quist’s service before the Australian finally unleashed an all-out assault. Danzig wrote that “the madly fought final set … had the crowd in an uproar that bordered on pandemonium.” Quist evened the score at 5-5, but Parker managed one final push to the finish line. The final score was 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-5. The narrow path to an Australian victory became almost invisible.
* Jack Kramer claimed in his book, The Game, that some tennis-supporting locals tried to tire out Quist by taking him for a long round of golf the day before he was to play Parker. Oh, those dastardly Philadelphians.
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The Australian pair played so badly in their singles matches that team captain Harry Hopman considered swapping himself in for the doubles rubber. And the starting lineup was the least of the visiting team’s worries. By the time the second day’s play began, they had learned that their country was at war. Australia was the first British Dominion to make the declaration.
Ultimately, Hopman decided to stick with his first-stringers. Sir Norman Brookes expressed his confidence that their focus would remain on the court: “Their duty here is to play tennis. They’ll do it.”
They did it, but it wasn’t easy. Jack Kramer and Joe Hunt were not your typical Davis Cup rookies. The Californians were 18 and 20 years old, respectively, and both would go on to win major titles. Hunt, a cadet at the US Naval Academy, became a pilot and died on a training mission in 1945. Kramer would become the face of professional tennis and a well-known commentator into the 1970s.
Hunt had the biggest serve of any player in the tie, while Kramer relied on a tricky twist delivery. The power of the American duo made it hard for Quist and Bromwich to get to the net, but they usually won when they did. The Aussies regrouped after the first set to keep their side alive in the tie, 5-7, 6-2, 7-5, 6-2.
No team had ever come back from an 0-2 deficit in the history of the Davis Cup Challenge Round. Columnist John Kieran wrote, “If Riggs doesn’t beat Quist a lot of spectators who were here today said they would go home and tear up their racquets.”
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Much had changed in the twelve months since Adrian Quist and Bobby Riggs first met in the 1938 Challenge Round. Quist gained the confidence of a singles win against Don Budge in California, and the Australian team so dominated Stateside doubles competition that they probably needed to buy an extra trunk just to cart all the trophies back home.
But it was Riggs who established himself as a great player. He turned 21 in 1939, a year in which he racked up eight titles, including Wimbledon. Having won his Davis Cup debut a year earlier as the underdog, he returned as a heavy favorite.
Two days of sunshine meant that the grass now played faster, and the tough matches against Parker, Hunt, and Kramer put Quist back in fighting form. After Riggs broke serve to start the match, the Australian reeled off ten games in a row, building a 6-1, 4-0 advantage only to let Riggs creep back in before slamming the door on the second set. Quist’s flat forehand kept the American in a defensive position. Kieran wrote, “The local onlookers began to think that Riggs might be drafted for the Phillies. He was playing their style of game, working hard and losing steadily.”*
* The Philadelphia Phillies baseball team were nearing the end of an abysmal campaign in which they lost 106 of their 152 games. They hadn’t enjoyed a winning season since 1932, and they wouldn’t manage one again until 1949. No wonder the Philly crowds were so enthusiastic about tennis.
Quist was an expert volleyer, but outlasting Riggs required a different set of skills. They played what one onlooker called “long tennis,” pinning each other behind the baseline, often with full-fledged moonballs. Forty years later, Jack Kramer credited Riggs with the best lob he’d ever seen. Kieran wondered if the two players were competing to see who could hit the ball highest.
Riggs leveled the match by taking the third and fourth sets, each by the score of 6-3. Fans both on-site and around the world struggled to stay focused on the tennis. Spectators at Merion snuck off whenever possible, crowding into the clubhouse and out to parked cars to listen to the latest news updates from Europe. British newspapers cast tennis aside entirely: One journalist received a message during the final day’s play: “London doesn’t want any more; not even the result.”
Yet Adrian Quist had saved enough energy for one last push. As Riggs continued to challenge his forehand, Quist passed him repeatedly and charged out to a 5-1 lead in the final set. Riggs narrowed the gap to 5-4, saving a match point in a 16-point ninth game. Quist unleashed a final attack, and when the American’s service return floated long at 40-15, the match went to the Australian, 6-1, 6-4, 3-6, 3-6, 6-4.
Quist avenged his loss from 1938. He made good on the expectation that he would win one of his singles rubbers, and he evened the tie. After seven years as a Davis Cupper for Australia and three bites at the Challenge Round, Quist had done everything he could to send the trophy back home.
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The rest was up to John Bromwich. After more than two hours of dramatic–if not spectacular–tennis from Riggs and Quist, Bromwich quickly showed why no one expected Frank Parker to contribute to the home team’s tally. Allison Danzig called Parker’s forehand “utterly inadequate,” and Bromwich capitalized. Points were long, and some rallies exceeded 50 shots. The match, however, was short.
John Kieran reduced the 76-minute contest to a pithy paragraph: “At the end of the first set the crowd started to leave. At the end of the second set the policemen and ushers left. At the end of the third set the Davis Cup left.”
Credit: State Library of New South Wales
During the trophy ceremony, Sir Norman Brookes received a cablegram ordering the Australian team home by the first available boat. But before arrangements could be made, it turned out that their presence at home wasn’t so desperately needed. The boys stayed on through the US National Championships the following week. Quist crashed out in the fourth round to a crafty Oregonian named Wayne Sabin, and Bromwich reached the final four, losing to surprise finalist Welby Van Horn. Bobby Riggs won the title with the loss of only two sets in six matches, including a straight-set win over Harry Hopman in the quarters.
Tennis stumbled on a bit longer in Australia, and Quist rode his momentum to a second major singles title, beating Jack Crawford in straight sets for the national championship in January of 1940. With Bromwich, he won the third of what would be eight straight men’s doubles titles at Australia’s premier event.
But the record-setting doubles streak would have to wait. For the duration of the war, major tournaments were canceled, and tennis in Australia was mostly limited to fund-raising exhibitions.
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World War II took a big bite out of Adrian Quist’s peak. He won the Australian Championships for the third time in 1948 and added a passel of other titles at home. But he was never again a factor on the international scene. He stood aside for Bromwich and Dinny Pails on the Davis Cup squad in 1946 and 1947, and then returned to action in 1948 only to lose badly to Frank Parker and Ted Schroeder in the Challenge Round singles rubbers.
Due to the war, the Australians didn’t have the chance to defend their 1939 Davis Cup victory until 1946. The United States side, led by Schroeder and Jack Kramer, quickly seized it back, and they held on for three years after that. Australia was the runner-up each time, but in those first four post-war meetings, they managed only two match wins–both of them doubles rubbers–against 18 losses.
A new generation, led by Frank Sedgman, would win back the Cup for Australia in 1950, and they would hold on for 13 of 16 years after that. By then, Quist was out of the picture, though he was still a strong enough doubles player to win both the Australian Championships and Wimbledon with Bromwich in 1950.
Quist took on a larger role with Dunlop Sports, his longtime employer. His job put him in a position to mentor some of the best up-and-coming Australian players, including four-time major winner Lew Hoad. Even when the Davis Cup was in foreign hands, Australia swung far above its weight in world tennis thanks to the ongoing contributions of lifers like Quist.
Compared to others of his generation, like the traditionalist Harry Hopman, Quist understood the need for pro tennis. His one complaint was that the pros were insufficiently committed to the Davis Cup. In 1981, he wrote to The Sydney Morning Herald, criticizing the new era’s stars: “I know of players of earlier years who would have sacrificed a couple of their fingers to have played for their country.”
Adrian Quist kept all of his fingers, but I have to believe he was talking about himself.