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John Bromwich passes away

Australian tennis great John Bromwich, who won two Australian singles titles but squandered three championship points in the 1948 men's final at Wimbledon, died at the age of 80.

Family members said that Bromwich died at Geelong, near Melbourne, after suffering a stroke and heart attack earlier this week.

Bromwich was a gracefully unorthodox player, ambidextrous with a double-handed forehand, who enjoyed great success at both singles and doubles, winning a total of 15 Grand Slam trophies.

He captured his first Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Championships here in 1939 and regained the title at Adelaide in 1946.

In 1948, he was leading fast-serving American Robert Falkenburg 5-2 in the final set in the Wimbledon men's singles final, only to squander three match-points and lose the set 5-7.

But Bromwich won both the men's doubles and mixed doubles at Wimbledon that year to add to an impressive display of Grand Slam silverware that included three U.S. men's doubles titles and eight straight Australian men's doubles titles either side of World War II.

UNI