Tennis: World of difference in the same game

Bob Perry

When Californian Bob Perry won the first Auckland Lawn Tennis Association men's title in 1956, he was a tall, skinny 22-year-old amateur on his first visit to New Zealand.

The Stanley St centre court was grass, his racquet was wooden and his white shoes were flimsy-looking lace-ups. The crowds were small and subdued, careful not to distract.

All the players had short back-and-sides haircuts; only eight were from outside New Zealand.

Perry remembers being given a "medium-sized radio" for winning the title. Oh, he adds, he was getting $20 a day in expenses.

Now, 50 years later, the competition is called the Heineken Open.

The players are almost all foreign, professional and often flamboyant, scrapping for a slice of $580,891 in prize money.

They are fitter and faster on the rubber-layer court, hitting the ball twice as hard with high-tech racquets and playing a wider variety of shots.

The crowds are larger and noisier - but polite where it counts, saving their calls of encouragement to the down-time between points.

The genial and still lanky Perry, on his second visit to New Zealand, is sitting in the president's box above centre court, marvelling how far tennis has come since he was an 11-year-old receiving a tennis racquet and 10 lessons for his birthday.

And, he says, the year he was in New Zealand was the pinnacle of his competitive career.

Military service in the US Army took him off-court the next year, and afterwards, he built a career as a coach and tennis retailer.

There was no money and thus no future for him in competitive tennis, says Perry, although he'd reached No 6 in the United States, and No 18 in the world.

Perry, 71, was invited back to Auckland for the tournament's 50th anniversary celebrations, bringing wife Eileen and meeting up here with his brother and sister-in-law.

He gets out on court four or five times a week and says that these days he plays "hard - but not very well".

Perry also doesn't remember what happened to the radio he won 50 years ago, but recalls clearly, and with something of a glint in his eye, how he took the title.

After playing his first-round match Alan Burns - later to become one of the game's most popular commentators - offered the American stranger a lift to his hotel.

"He was excited because he had upset one of the seeded players," recalls Perry. "He said he had played backhand, which was his best shot.

"I didn't think much about it - until we met in the final. When I started out, I hit every ball to his forehand - and won in straight sets.

"Strange as it may seem, he told me how to beat him."