{"id":2972,"date":"2013-07-03T18:43:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T22:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=2972"},"modified":"2013-07-17T16:13:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T20:13:52","slug":"canadas-one-time-top-ranked-tennis-champ-actively-follows-todays-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/canadas-one-time-top-ranked-tennis-champ-actively-follows-todays-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s one-time top-ranked tennis champ actively follows today\u2019s game"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the late 1940s and into the early 50s, Brendan Macken was Canada\u2019s top ranked male tennis player.<\/p>\n

He won the Canadian Open men\u2019s singles title in 1950, doubles titles in 1946 and 1951 and during his prime was a Davis Cup team member from 1946 \u2013 1952 and again in 1954.<\/p>\n

In the midst of the prestigious Wimbledon tennis tournament, Macken \u2013 now a resident of Aurora in his 91st year \u2013 still keeps a close eye on what\u2019s going on in the tennis world.<\/p>\n

With Wimbledon matches playing on TV in the background, Macken began our chat with an assessment of the bright young Canadian tennis talent that is starting to gain notoriety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw Raonic and he played quite well, but his competition wasn\u2019t as tough as Vasek Pospisil had today, but Raonic\u2019s serve wins matches for him \u2013 he\u2019s powerful there, but on the defense he\u2019s got a lot of work to do yet. He\u2019s got to serve well enough that he won\u2019t lose the serve and he did that in today\u2019s match. But he certainly has a future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Macken quickly went in to how the game has changed since his glory days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s different today, like golf. They\u2019re not playing with a wooden club like we were. In tennis, they\u2019re now able to get a pretty good spin on a ball, so you get some players that spin it quite well \u2013 Nadal is one of them and so is Federer. They\u2019ll hit the ball and you think it is going out and then it curves and stays in the court. It\u2019s very difficult to say today the difference between today\u2019s athletes with the older ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he was of strong opinion that the greatest tennis player that ever lived is Aussie tennis legend Rod Laver.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder what he would have done with the equipment that we have today. He played on every surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laver, a left-handed power player, had a career that spanned 23 years that included 184 singles titles as an amateur and a pro and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1981.<\/p>\n

Macken said he is one of the only players who have won Wimbledon and the Australian, US and French opens and do it all again four years later.
\nBut Macken also recognizes that the game isn\u2019t the only thing that has changed \u2013 the industry as a whole has.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t get the $300,000 that they get today; this is what I got when I won the Canadian Open. This was my victory,\u201d he said holding an unused fishing pole. \u201cAnd no reel on it,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

The fishing pole, although a nice one, has never been used as he has \u201cnever been much of a fisherman.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was playing, there wasn\u2019t any money in it, because it wasn\u2019t professionalized yet, and I played Wimbledon once, but on top of that the war was taking place and it killed Davis Cup matches back then,\u201d he said, noting the first year he played was 1946 after the war ended at the age of 23.<\/p>\n

Born in Montreal, Macken and his younger brother Jim worked on their game together. Macken said during summer vacation the other kids went to camp in the summer, while they mostly stayed home, leaving them with little to do in the summer days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some old racquets in a closet and my brother and I would go down to the public courts at the end of the street, we\u2019d open them at 8 a.m., run back up the street for a sandwich, then back down and get kicked off at 4,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

By the time the Second World War broke out, Macken was taken out of service as he contracted scarlet and rheumatic fever that paralyzed him from the waist down for six months. This also led to complications with a heart murmur.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know people would see me and think, \u2018what\u2019s he doing here walking around when he should be overseas?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His brother Jim \u2013 who did serve in the war \u2013 was no slouch with a tennis racquet himself. Like his older brother, he was a Canadian champion and the two even won a doubles title together in 1946.<\/p>\n

After his health issues cleared up, he went right back to training and playing tournaments. It was during a tournament at the Toronto Tennis Club that two American tennis players would approach him and give him some advice that would change his life in many ways.<\/p>\n

Former US tennis player Scott Davis suggested he head down to William & Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia to pursue both his scholastic and tennis goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played well against them and next thing I know I got a call from the admissions office. So I ended up going there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Training 75 minutes per day on a rigorous schedule, it didn\u2019t take long for the chemistry major to start succeeding at William & Mary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a very good tennis team,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThat team won the NCAA tennis champs twice in 1947 and 1948,\u201d he said, showing his championship ring from the wins. \u201cI got better and better and better. I couldn\u2019t get them to train the same way up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow the rest of Macken\u2019s journey in the tennis world in next week\u2019s edition of The Auroran.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the late 1940s and into the early 50s, Brendan Macken was Canada\u2019s top ranked male tennis player.<\/p>\n

He won the Canadian Open men\u2019s singles title in 1950…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/2013-07-03-36.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-LW","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 18:05:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}