My Life with Lew

Description

Jennie Hoad is the widow of Lew Hoad, the tennis player who died tragically from leukemia in 1994. Hoad played some great tennis, but was a misunderstood man, seldom free of back pain, but he won Wimbledon twice, three Wimbledon doubles, a French, Italian and Australian single and 17 of his 19 Davis Cup matches. He attracted a fee of $146,000 to switch from amateur to professional tennis but it drove him from Australia. At his death, Hoad's investments in a long haulage truck, service station, milk run, mining company, racehorses, a gold mine in Kal and a Gold Coast hotel had all but dried up. Jennie Hoad's book charts her life with a tennis legend and also tells the story of her life nursing her husband through his illness to his terrible, prolonged death and subsequent failed investments.

Jack Pollard is Australia's best-known sports journalist. His writing career spans 40 years, during which he has made an invaluable contribution to the country's sporting development. He reported from Wimbledon for 10 seasons and covered four Olympic Games as well as many major rugby and cricket matches. Pollard has edited Australian Sport magazine, Australian Outdoors and several Gregory's directories. He wrote biographies of Bruce Devlin, Rod Laver and Lance Skuthorpe and ran his own publishing company, specialising in sports and leisure titles, before retiring in 1981 to concentrate on writing. Sales of works he has written or edited have exceeded one million copies. Jennie's book will not only chart her life with a tennis legend but tell the heartbreaking story of life nursing Lew through his illness to his terrible, prolonged death. Jennie is currently coaching tennis from Thailand to Tunisia and has recently won two world veterans' championships.