When former Grand Slam tennis champions contested Hong Kong’s first Grand Masters event in 1980
- The three-day Grand Masters tournament in 1980 attracted some all-time tennis greats, including Nicola Pietrangeli, to battle for the HK$175,000 prize
- The tournament was won by 52-year-old Australian Frank Sedgman, winner of five Grand Slam singles titles as an amateur and a Davis Cup winner
“Eight of the greatest tennis players of all time will compete in Hongkong’s first Grand Masters event at Victoria Park next month,” reported the South China Morning Post on February 28, 1980. “The Urban Council are sponsoring the three-day tournament in conjunction with the Hongkong Tennis Association and HK$175,000 prize money is on offer.
“Six players have confirmed their entries – Australians Mal Anderson, Neale Fraser, Rex Hartwig and Frank Sedgman, Torben Ulrich of Denmark and Sweden’s Sven Davidson [ …] The entrants have between them won almost every title in world tennis and now form the backbone of the increasingly popular Grand Masters circuit in the United States.”
On March 4, the Post announced, “Nicola Pietrangeli, one of Italy’s best tennis players since the war, becomes the seventh player to confirm his entry to the Hongkong Grand Masters Tournament”, and on March 7, “Ecuadorean-born Pancho Segura, who took Jimmy Connors to the top of the tennis tree, has been named as the eighth and final player to take part”.
On March 17, the Post reported, “Australia’s Frank Sedgman, at 52 looking as though he had discovered the secret of eternal youth, overcame ‘boy’ favourite Mal Anderson in a thrilling third-set tiebreaker at Victoria Park yesterday to win the Hongkong Grand Masters Tournament.
“And the likeable veteran of one Wimbledon championship, a triumph in the US singles and a famous 4-1 Davis Cup victory over the United States, said afterwards that yesterday’s win gave him perhaps as much satisfaction as those memorable feats.