My Life with Lew

A biography that charts the story of tennis legend Lew Hoad, as told by his widow, Jennie. This book covers not only his tennis career, but also tells the story of life with a tennis star, nursing him through his subsequent illness, his prolonged death, and the failed investments.

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An intimate biography of one of Australia's tennis heroes. Lew Hoad was an amazing talent who won the men's singles at Wimbledon twice, a French Open title, three Wimbledon doubles trophies and seventeen of his nineteen Davis Cup matches. Jennie Staley was a promising young tennis player who won the Victorian schoolgirl singles when she was thirteen. In 1951, Jennie and Lew were both seventeen years old. they met at a tennis tournament and Jennie remembers being attracted to Lew from the moment she saw him. In My Life with Lew Jennie tells of the amazing life that she and Lew shared. they travelled the world and called Sean Connery and Richard Burton friends. When you flick through the Hoad family photo album you are likely to see their beloved Labrador on one page and Marlene Dietrich on another. Lew and Jennie followed a dream from Australia to Spain to find the perfect place to create a tennis ranch. Here they turned a run-down farmhouse into the Lew Hoad Campo de tennis.But Lew and Jennie's story isn't a fairytale. they didn't live happily ever after.
Forty-two years after they had met - after raising a family and building up their business together - Lew was diagnosed with cancer. He was 59 years old when he died. this story is about one of the world's greatest tennis players. It is a biography and a travelogue. But most of all it is a love story.