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Pitch Publishing Ltd - Lloyd John

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192 pages

English

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John Lloyd was the poster boy of British tennis - a former British number one, Grand Slam finalist, Wimbledon mixed-doubles champion and Davis Cup captain. Remarkably, he and his two brothers, David (of leisure club fame) and Tony, all played in the singles championship at Wimbledon in the same year: a testament to the parents who believed in their sons' dreams as the boys batted tennis balls against a garage wall in Essex. Told with humour and honesty, John's autobiography is filled with intimate insight and captivating tales of Hollywood celebrities, tennis icons, broadcasting greats and loves lost - from his marriage to the legendary Chris Evert and dealings with Donald Trump to his sobering battle with cancer and drug addiction at the heart of his family. As the story unfolds, the John of today sends letters of advice to his former self in a yearnful act of 'if I only knew then what I know now'. What we now know for certain is that John Lloyd has lived an extraordinary life.

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Tennis

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	30 mai 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801502733
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
John Lloyd with Phil Jones, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801501095
eBook ISBN 9781801502733
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Bjorn Borg
Acknowledgements
Mum, Dad and a Tennis-Mad Schoolkid
Special Siblings
The Pressure Privilege
Wimpleton
Fine Romances
Vitas and Our Final Showdown
Chrissie
A Rabbit Called Wendy
Wedding Highs and Woes
Fatherhood
Celebrity
TV Days
Jimmy Connors and the Star Wars Connection
Hurray for Hollywood
My Idols
Brilliant Bjorn
Davis Cup Days
Trump
Big C and Me
Life Lessons
McEnroe the Genius
Remarkable Records
This Marvellous Breed
Pandemic Plus
Photos
My book dedication is to my children Aiden and Hayley.
You were wonderful children, and now you are amazing adults.
I am so proud of you.
Every day I think of you and every day you make me smile.
Love you always,
Dad.
FOREWORD
I AM happy to finally have this book in my hands.
It will bring back so many memories and I hope everyone will enjoy it as much as me.
John and I have been friends for 50 years.
It is time to go back to Memory Lane ...
Bjorn
Legendary Swedish player Bjorn Borg won 11 Grand Slam singles titles, including Wimbledon five times in a row from 1976.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TO THE Lloyd family and all my nieces and nephews, thank you for all your love and support.
To Phil Jones, thank you for your unwavering belief in our project despite the many bumps in the road. Your writing skills are incredible, and I have so enjoyed our time together collaborating on our book.
Thanks to all my colleagues that I have worked with at HBO and BBC. I have been so fortunate to have spent time with so many talented and wonderful people.
Thanks to my fellow competitors from all over the world who I either partnered or played against on the tour.
I have been so fortunate to have so many incredible friends in my life. To all of you, I am extremely thankful and grateful.
Many thanks to everyone from Pitch Publishing who had faith in our book.
MUM, DAD AND A TENNIS-MAD SCHOOLK ID
A letter from the John Lloyd of today to his former self as he embarks on life in the green blazer of Southend High School for Boys.
Dear John,
Get an education. The dream is to become a professional tennis player. It s one you have had since you were five, when batting a ball against a tiny wall in the backyard was the daily ritual.
You believe you have the talent to succeed and you certainly have parents to back you all the way. But the chances of making it to the top are slim. Plus, one serious injury and it can all be taken away from you in a heartbeat.
Without an education, there will be nothing to fall back on. So, don t skip school on a whim. Your sore rear end will thank you for it. Attend and learn. Pass your exams. Then, when the worst befalls you at the start of your tennis career, you will have options and not just the worry of potentially shattered dreams. Just get an education.
John
MY MOTHER and father were amazingly selfless people. Many parents are, of course. The best mums and dads always put their children first. But the sacrifices my parents made weren t so they could proudly wave their children off to university, with the promise of careers as city professionals. No, they gave up so much in their lives to keep their boys sporting dreams alive. Elder brother David, younger brother Tony and myself all wanted to make it as professional tennis players. We all dreamed of playing in the Wimbledon Championships. Thanks to Mum and Dad, those dreams came true for all of us.
My father Dennis was from a wealthy background in the south of England, while my mother Doris grew up in a mining family of 12 in the north-east. She lost one of her brothers in a mining accident: a terrible tragedy amid an early life of hardship.
We used to visit my grandmother in the old terrace Mum had grown up in. How so many people squeezed into that tiny brick house I could never understand. The streets resembled those used in the film Billy Elliot , about the child dancer from mining stock. The only bathroom - and its big old tub - was downstairs, the toilet was outside. There was a coal fire and no heating anywhere else in the house. Tony and me had to share with Gran. Even in winter, she would have the window open and just a single sheet to cover her in bed. It was bloody freezing. But they were made of sterner stuff in that mining community, fuelled no doubt by liberal mounds of suet pudding made in a handkerchief and drizzled with Lyle s Golden Syrup. I loved it. But I would be so full and bloated afterwards. This must be what it feels like to eat a football, whole.
It was rough up there, but the locals were great people, so warm and welcoming. They were tough, though. By virtue of her upbringing and surroundings, so was Mum.
Doris met and fell in love with Dennis during the Second World War. My father was from money in Essex: big mansion of a house in Chingford, complete with its own tennis court, and all. The contrast to their respective lives in their formative years could not have been greater. Mum must have thought she had hit the jackpot when she married into that kind of wealth, with the promise of a life of luxury. Unfortunately for her, that s not how it panned out. Luxury, in Mum s case, was not for life.
When my grandfather on my Dad s side died of lung cancer, he left everything in two equal measures to his two children. My father was suddenly a very wealthy man. He decided to plough all his money into a retail clothes business in London. I was too young to know what was happening in Dad s work life. I just remember we had it good back then. The business was an apparent success.
Unfortunately, my father was too trusting of people. He was probably too nice for his own good. When a partner persuaded him to open up another arm of the business in Birmingham, it was the beginning of the end. He was, to put it bluntly, screwed out of his fortune. He lost everything and was left with massive debts.
What he did next was a wonderful life lesson for me. He didn t go bankrupt and carry the stigma of that through life. He took two jobs and paid all his creditors back in full, penny by penny. It took him 25 years, but he was never declared bankrupt. I always admired Dad for that. He told me: If you make a deal, you honour it. It s that simple. That line about honour has always stayed with me.
Our family of six - Mum, Dad, sister Ann, brothers David and Tony and me - downsized into a three-up, two-down house on Woodfield Road in Leigh-on-Sea, which is a borough of Southend-on-Sea just to the north of the Thames Estuary. It wasn t much bigger than the house my mother grew up in and there was still an outside loo. That was an experience and a half in the middle of winter, I can tell you. Using the toilet for the first time and sitting on what felt like a large doughnut of ice, with the passing rag n bone man shouting any old iron , is a memory never to fade.
Leigh-on-Sea s historical claim to fame was its minor involvement in the Norman Conquest of 1066 and its mention in the Domesday Book . My brothers and I had hopes of creating our own history for Leigh on the tennis courts. And to that aim, our father s misfortune would - strange as it may sound - help us. That s because he took one job as manager of a friend s newly opened store, HW Stone s Sports shop, and a second job as tennis coach at the local club.
David was six years older than me and had hit many a ball against the wall at the back of the house. I wanted to be like my big brother, so copied him. Tony, in turn, copied me. It s where we hit our first volleys. A coal shed took up a quarter of the space in the tiny garden, so there wasn t much room to play tennis. But I was only four when I started practising against the wall, so I didn t need much space either. Every day after school, I would bat the ball against the small shed wall, imagining I was taking on some great tennis champion. It was my favourite part of the day: that and being first to the milkman s horse cart when he delivered one of those bottles with the cream on the top. That was just the best on my cereal, and if I could get to it before the rest of the family it was a little victory.
When my father had his business in London, he was in the city six days a week. We didn t see much of him. Now things were different, especially at weekends. We would all join Dad at the Westcliff Hardcourt Tennis Club, where he coached part-time. It was a family club about half a mile from our house, not too far from the sea front. During the summer, we spent all day there. The kids would play football on the field there, have a game of hide-and-seek or go down to the beach, while the adults played tennis. Mum brought lunch down for us all and then, in the afternoon, we youngsters would get time on the courts. It was such a healthy way to grow up. My best friends were made at the club. Certainly, some of my best days ever were spent there. These