Chris Lewis reached the final at Wimbledon in 1983. Photo / brymerlewistennis.com
From Junior Wimbledon champion to forming a successful coaching academy, Chris Lewis shares his remarkable tennis journey with Phil Gifford.
Chris Lewis was 16 when he flew out of Auckland alone in 1974, heading to Europe on a one way ticket to try to break into the world tennis circuit.
It could have all ended in tears for the rangy kid from Mt Albert. But he had a hunger and a drive that would prove unstoppable. And today Lewis, now the co-director of a highly successful tennis academy in Irvine, California, says: “If I had the chance, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat”.
He provides the sunny flip side of Andre Agassi’s grim story of a brutally domineering tennis parent. In his 2009 autobiography Agassi wrote: “I hate tennis with a dark and secret passion, and always have”.
Lewis’ parents were supportive, but never bullying. It was his own passion to succeed that took him to a Junior Wimbledon title when he was 18, and, memorably, to play John McEnroe in the 1983 Wimbledon final.
Along the way there were moments so surreal that even today you can hear traces of wonderment in Lewis’ voice.
After winning the ‘75 Wimbledon junior singles, on the steps that led to Centre Court, he was stopped by legendary Australian coach, Harry Hopman, who had been watching the final.
Lewis was in awe of Hopman, who had coached the Australian Davis Cup team to a staggering 16 wins through to 1967, and had started a highly successful tennis camp in Florida.
“Keep in mind I’d read books about (Hopman),” Lewis told me this week.
“I knew his whole career, what he had done with the (Ken) Rosewalls and the (Rod) Lavers. And here he is, in person, inviting me to his academy in Florida! I went there for five years, and I was learning from the best.”
The good fortune continued when Ian Wells, the dynamic chairman of New Zealand tennis, recruited Australian Tony Roche, a five-time Wimbledon doubles champion, to coach the Kiwi Davis Cup team.
Roche would become Lewis’s personal coach.
“So I had access,” says Lewis, “to the very, very best”.
Lewis would be one of the few New Zealand tennis players to become a household name here. In 1980 Ian Wells described him as a “godsend” for the game.
The sport was booming. In the early 1980s only a rugby test drew a bigger television audience than our Davis Cup ties.
Lewis himself didn’t change with fame. In 1980 I shadowed him for a week in the process of writing a magazine profile, and he presented as one of the most thoughtful sports stars I’ve ever interviewed. Ask him a question and there was never a facile soundbite.
He cemented himself in the New Zealand sporting landscape in ‘83, when, unseeded at Wimbledon, he made it to the men’s final by beating South African, Kevin Curren, who had eliminated Jimmy Connors, in a magnificent five set semifinal that lasted almost four hours.
Bjorn Borg wrote that Lewis won with “guts, nerve, and incredible reflexes.”
John McEnroe was a step too far in the final, but, as Lewis said then: “He (McEnroe) was just too good for me, but I’d dreamed of making the final since I was a boy. To achieve that goal meant everything to me”.
With his huge affection for the sport, and his insightful personality, coaching was a natural progression for Lewis when his playing days were over.
Moving to Irvine, a thriving city of 320,000 people, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Deigo, was a change based on hope, that has paid off.
“I’d had a wonderful nine or 10 years with my brother Mark, managing the Auckland junior tennis development programme,” says Lewis.
Mutual friends suggested he and an American coach, Chuck Brymer, would work well together.
“We did a virtual handshake over the phone. Let’s just give it a shot. I’ll come and work for a couple of months, see how you like it, how I Iike it, and we’ll make a decision after a couple of months. When I came to Irvine I didn’t have anything set in stone.
“In Christmas week, 2005, I headed off. Here we are, almost 20 years later, same gentleman. We’re partners now. It’s just been a wonderful journey.”
The Brymer Lewis Academy coaches young players, from five to 18. Every week, at two venues, they run sessions for more than 500 players.
“Our main thrust is in the developmental years,” says Lewis. “For many of the parents tennis is a vehicle to get their kids to great colleges.”
Some of the players want to give the professional tour a shot. The academy provides the foundation, but neither Lewis or Brymer heads out on the road.
Alex Michelsen, now, at 20, one of the youngest players in the world top 50, was with Lewis and Brymer from when he was 11 until he 16.
“That’s where our strength lies,” says Lewis, “in being a development programme”.
New Zealand is still a special place for Lewis. In February last year his partner of eight years, Debra, and he were married at Tantalus Vineyard on Waiheke Island.
Geneva Lewis, the youngest of three children from his first marriage, is a gifted violin player, contracted to the BBC as a new generation artist. She had been playing her first concert in New Zealand, at the Auckland Town Hall with the Auckland Philharmonia that February. The timing of a special concert, and a wedding in an idyllic Kiwi setting, says Lewis, felt perfect.