Chuck Feeney’s Friendship With Australian Pro Benefits Australia

Written by: Staff on 4th December 2012

Chuck Feeney's Friendship With Australian Pro Benefits Australia

epa03060141 Shadow of Andy Murray of Great Britain in action during a practice session ahead of the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 15 January 2012. The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tennis tournament of the year, will begin on 16 January. EPA/HOW HWEE YOUNG |

Ken Fletcher Park will open in time for the 2013 Brisbane International. Earlier this week there was a ceremonial tree planting held opposite Pat Rafter Arena, which was attended by billionaire American philanthropist Chuck Feeney, who has reportedly given hundreds of millions of dollars of donations to philanthropic causes in Australia and Queensland.

Feeney has acknowledged that had it not been for his friendship with the now-deceased Ken Fletcher, that may have never happened. Feeney met Fletcher in 1982 while the lively winner of 27 singles titles was teaching tennis in Hong Kong. The two established a life long friendship that lasted until 2006, when Fletcher passed away.

“Ken would be very pleased to know that good things are happening and that he’s still in the people’s minds even though the time is moving,” the 81-year-old Feeney told the Mail-Courier. “He was a very fine representative of Australia and Australian tennis and he had a larrikin side to him that people appreciated because he was always very funny.”

Feeney made his fortune in duty free retail and in 1996, he sold his share of Duty Free Shoppers for almost $1.7 billion. He then made the remarkable decision to give all of the money away and established The Atlantic Philanthropies, which to date has invested over $6 billion in grants around the world. In 2016, the organization is planning to give away every penny it has raised and then shut down.

“Ken was always fun,” Feeney once said. “When I moved to London [in 1992] I heard he was in town so we got together. He was miserable there. He was always saying he wanted to go back to Australia. He was an Annerley boy, he always wanted to go back to Brisbane, so I said, stop whining about it, let’s go.

Ken always knew someone, he always had an in. Somehow he got us a free room at Stamford hotel, but then the manager found out about it and we got bounced out of there. We went up and down the coast, had a lot of fun and when I left I said to Ken, ‘you stay and look and look for opportunities’. That’s how it started.”

Feeney not only went to the Fletcher Park opening, but he also attended the opening of a new Queensland Institute of Medical Research facility, which his institute partly funded.

Through his friendship with Fletcher, he fell in love with Brisbane and the city can’t be happier that the two became mates.

“I like Australians; they’re no bullshit-type people,” he said. “What you see is what you get. It’s been rare that people turn on their word here and I like the people that I met. Ken had a particularly good group of friends around him and I looked up to Ken in those days.”

Feeney is said to have donated $500 million to research and education in Australia, but the total amount of funding raised through his leverage is estimated at $2 billion.

©Daily Tennis News Wire

Topics: Australian tennis news, Chuck Feeney, Ken Fletcher, Pat Rafter Arena, Sports, Tennis