JOHN NEWCOMBE ON LEARNING FROM THE BEST - ‘I was someone who would observe people who had reached the very, very top and just watch what they did and I figured out that that’s how hard they trained, that’s how they do it, so I’ve got to do it at least as hard’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON LEARNING FROM FAILURE - ‘I was told when I was twelve years of age that you learn more from every match you lose, than every match you win, so rather then sulk after I lost a match, I had a practice that within an hour I would sit down by myself and I would do a serious analyzation of why and where I actually lost the match and not being afraid to say that the other player was just better’. 

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON CAMARADERIE IN HIS DAYS - ‘I don’t know what the guys do now, but In those days when we left Australia we we away for eight months so the other boys became your family and you’d practice together and Roachy and I, we wouldn’t play a three set practice match, we’d play a five set practice match and try to kill one and other on the practice court. It was sort of a fellowship we had together and I noticed that players from other countries wouldn’t be cheering for their compatriot whereas we were very much cheering for one an other’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON THE PRESS - ’Now there’s a lot of new journalists involved in the sport and the guys and girls have to be so careful about what they do and say around them. We’d take the journos out to dinner, get them to have quite a few drinks and get the goods on them!’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON VISUALISATION - ‘It was something I learnt when I was in my late teens, I would visualise the court and walking on the court and who my opponent was going to be and tossing for serve and playing the match and it was like a dress rehearsal and when I went out there I felt that this was very comfortable, I’ve been here before’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON MINDSET - ‘I said to myself, you’ve got sixty seconds before you walk onto the court and you’ve allowed negativity to take over your whole body in the next sixty seconds you’ve got to force out all of that negativity, when you go out on the court there’s going to be a player at the other end of the court and a tennis ball and that’s it’.

JOHN NEWCOMBE ON HIS FAMOUS MOUSTACHE - ‘My wife and I were on holidays in Hawaii and I grew a moustache and I asked her what she thought and she said she liked it so I got the seal of approval and it went from there. I signed with a clothing company and they came up with all these logos and one of them was the moustache logo and of course that became my logo and it went on everything’.