WILDING & EMERSON – THE FITTEST BY RICHARD EVANS

Written by: Staff on 19th June 2016

WILDING & EMERSON – THE FITTEST BY RICHARD EVANS |

Their huge photographs stare at each other from opposite sides of the Press Room Bar at the venerable Queen’s Club – men linked by an achievement neither of them could have envisaged.

Like their six colleagues also being recognized at this year’s Aegon Championships, Anthony Wilding and Roy Emerson both won the Queen’s Club title – formerly known as the London Grasscourt Championships – four times. A gentleman called Major Ritchie (the ‘Major’ was his name, not a rank) along with five better known players – John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick and Andy Murray – were the others to carve out a prolonged era of domination for themselves on these courts that are frequently described as providing the best grass surface in the world.

But Wilding and Emerson, while different in so many respects, have other things in common. Both come from Australasia – Wilding, a New Zealander, actually played on winning Davis Cup teams designated as such before World War 1 with his Aussie pal Norman Brookes. But, more importantly, both set standards for fitness that were probably unsurpassed until this current age where technology continues to devise never-ending methods of pushing the human body to the extremities of possibility. In the pre-Open era you would not have found two fitter players than Wilding and Emerson.

To say their approach to fitness was different would be an under- statement. Wilding, the Cambridge Blue who squired one of the Edwardian era’s most beautiful actresses, Maxine Elliott, and dined with Winston Churchill, barely sipped a glass of wine in the evenings and, unusually for the period, did not smoke.

Emerson, who strengthened his wrists as a child milking cows every morning on the family farm at Blackbutt in a remote part of Queensland, reckoned that an early morning run was sufficient to rid the body of the alcohol he had poured into it the night before.

Wilding was a quiet charmer; Emmo, as everyone called him, the boisterous heart and soul of any party. But, being intelligent men, both knew that their skills with a racquet, though considerable, were not enough, given the competition they faced.

Although geography kept them apart for long periods after Wilding settled in England, the New Zealander knew the only edge he had over Brookes, a superbly talented left-hander, lay in stamina and physical strength. Emerson lived in the era of Lew Hoad and Rod Laver, both more naturally gifted than he. To challenge them, he had to be supremely fit.

Ridiculous as it may seem today, Wilding had to break an unwritten rule of etiquette before he could set himself a rigorous training schedule. You see, at the start of the last century, when everyone was an amateur, it was considered unfair to actually train for a competitive sport. Not done, old chap. Your opponent, being engaged in other affairs, might not have had the opportunity to do so.

Wilding said to hell with that. Having grown up in an athletically inclined family outside Christchurch where his father, a runner at school in England before he emigrated, played cricket and tennis to a high standard, Tony was naturally strong. But, once he got to Cambridge, he persuaded a fellow member of the Varsity tennis team to join him in a training regime that would make him one of the most powerful athletes the centuries-old university had ever seen.

It paid off in as much as it enabled him to win his first Wimbledon title in 1910 but, ironically, was hardly necessary thereafter because the Challenge Round system was in place which meant the champion only needed to play one match. Plucking at his strings impatiently, Wilding waited for the challenger to play through the draw and remained unbeaten for the next three years.

The fact that he lost his crown in 1914 to Brookes, who had returned to play the European season after a long absence, had much to do with the fact that Wilding had been working hard for a petroleum company and was not as fit as he once was. Tragically Captain Anthony Wilding was killed in the trenches near Ypres in May 1915.

There was no problem with putting yourself through a rigorous training regime by the time Roy Emerson appeared on the scene in the 1950’s. In fact, Australia’s tough little Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman demanded nothing less. Two-on-one drills under a burning Aussie sky was one of his favorite forms of torture and some players just couldn’t take it.

Not so Emerson who quickly established himself as the most impressive athlete, apart from Lew Hoad, in a super fit squad. Apart from winning 12 Grand Slam singles titles and establishing himself as one of the greatest doubles players of all time, Emerson was a member of numerous Davis Cup winning teams.

It was great to find Emmo sitting in the tournament office at Queen’s. With his wife, Joy, he had just flown in from California and we were soon reminiscing about the three out of four Queen’s Club titles I had seen him win.

In particular, he talked about the second Queen’s victory which preceded the first of his two Wimbledon triumphs in 1964. “I won Wimbledon because I decided not to play Beckenham and come here to practice indoors instead,” he said. “With the weather, you never knew how much court time you were going to get but those old courts at the back of the clubhouse had two advantages – they were wood, which was lightening fast, and they had a roof.”

So Emmo went to his friend Ronnie Barnes, a steady clean hitting Brazilian who made a perfect practise partner, and got him to agree to work with him.

“So for ten days we did drills in the morning and played six sets in the afternoon,” Emmo recalled. “With some match play thrown in once Queen’s started, it was the perfect preparation. We were so tired we were in bed by eight!”

That, one might add, was not Emmo’s normal nocturnal routine but he was always ready to make an exception for Wimbledon. “Being as fit as you can be is a huge psychological boost,” he added. “Once you have secured one of the first three sets, you can be confident of taking the last two if you are fitter than the other guy.”

And Emerson almost always was. Practicing with him had numerous advantages — learning some tips on how to volley; being around a great guy and reaching a new level of fitness. “In 1965, I asked Patricio Rodriguez to work with me,” he said. “The week after Wimbledon he went off and won Gstaad. He’d never been so fit in his life!”

Co-incidentally, Gstaad and its famed Palace Hotel because a huge part of Emerson’s life. After this visit to Queen’s, he was off to the Swiss resort for the 46th consecutive year to run his highly popular camp. Sadly he will not have his son, Anthony, with him now to help with the coaching. Anthony died of brain cancer at the end of last year – a terrible loss that Emmo and Joy are still struggling to come to terms with.

But the cheery smile is still in place and that fine Indian player Ramesh Krishnan will be there to lend a hand after deputizing for the great champion last year when Emerson was away tending to his son.

So in this digitally mastered world where you can make anyone do anything, it would be fun to have Tony Wilding and Roy Emerson climb down off the Press Bar wall and introduce themselves.

“Beer, mate?” Emmo would say. “That’s terribly kind of you, old chap, but I think I’ll have a small glass of wine, if you don’t mind,” Wilding would reply.

And then the generation gap would fade away and, no matter how small the glass of wine, the night would be long.

Twelve time Grand Slam tennis champion, 70-year-old Roy Emerson from Australia, during an interview in the Palace Hotel in Gstaad, Switzerland, during the Swiss Tennis Open, Thursday, July 12, 2007. EPA/PETER SCHNEIDER

Topics: AEGON Championships, Queen's Club, Richard Evans, Tennis News

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TheQueensClub says:

June 16, 2016 at 5:22 pm

RT @10sBalls_com: Wilding & Emerson – The Fittest By @Ringham7
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Assembly_London says:

June 16, 2016 at 5:24 pm

RT @10sBalls_com: Wilding & Emerson – The Fittest By @Ringham7
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Ringham7 says:

June 17, 2016 at 3:55 am

Tony Wilding meet Roy Emerson, linking generations from the Queen’s Club – my piece on https://t.co/VHn4OQs6uN
babciapat says:

June 17, 2016 at 4:39 am

RT @Ringham7: Tony Wilding meet Roy Emerson, linking generations from the Queen’s Club – my piece on https://t.co/VHn4OQs6uN
eazeee2004 says:

June 17, 2016 at 1:43 pm

RT @10sBalls_com: Wilding & Emerson – The Fittest By @Ringham7
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#tennis #QueensClub #AegonChampionships https://t.c…