Jenny Staley Hoad (3 March 1934 – 14 February 2024) was an Australian tennis player who was mainly active in the 1950s.

Career

In January 1951 Staley won the junior doubles title at the

Australian Championships The Australian Open (stylized ΛO) is a tennis tournament organised by Tennis Australia annually at Melbourne Park in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is chronologically the first of the four Grand Slam tennis events every year, held be ...

partnering Margaret Wallis. In 1953 she also won the junior Australian singles title. As Jenny Staley she reached the singles final of 1954 Australian Championships, played in Sydney, but lost in straight sets to top-seeded

Thelma Coyne Long Thelma Dorothy Coyne Long (née Coyne; 14 October 1918 – 13 April 2015) was an Australian tennis player and one of the female players who dominated Australian tennis from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. During her career, she won 19 Grand S ...

. Also in 1954, Staley won the women's singles title at the

Australian Hard Court Championships The Australian Hard Court Championships was a former professional tennis tournament established in 1938 and held until 2008. The event was played on clay courts until 1977 when it switched to hard courts. The tournament was a combined event for m ...

, defeating the defending champion

Beryl Penrose Beryl Penrose (22 December 1930 – 23 June 2021) was an Australian international tennis player. She competed in the Australian Open The Australian Open (stylized ΛO) is a tennis tournament organised by Tennis Australia annually at Mel ...

in a close match.In November 1954 she reached the final of the New South Wales Championships which she lost in three sets to Beryl Penrose. In December 1954 she was runner-up to Coyne Long at the Victorian Championships, played in Kooyong. Staley won the women's singles title at the

South Australian Championships The South Australian Championships (1889–1989), also known as the South Australian State Championships and later known as the South Australian Open was an amateur and later a professional men's and women's tennis tournament played originally ...

Memorial Drive Park Memorial Drive Park, more generally referred to as "Memorial Drive", is a tennis venue, located adjacent to the Adelaide Oval, in the Adelaide Parklands, park lands surrounding the centre of Adelaide, South Australia. Memorial Drive took its na ...

in Adelaide in January 1955 defeating

Fay Muller Fay Muller (born 4 November 1933) is a former international tennis player from Australia. She competed in the Australian Championships The Australian Open (stylized ΛO) is a tennis tournament organised by Tennis Australia annually at M ...

in the final in straight sets. At the 1955 Australian Championships she partnered her then boyfriend

Lew Hoad Lewis Alan Hoad (23 November 1934 – 3 July 1994) was an Australian tennis player whose career ran from 1950 to 1973. Hoad won four Major singles tournaments as an amateur (the Australian Championships, French Championships and two Wimbledons ...

in the mixed event and were runners-up to Thelma Coyne Long and George Worthington. Her best singles performance at the

Wimbledon Championships The Wimbledon Championships, commonly called Wimbledon, is a tennis tournament organised by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in collaboration with the Lawn Tennis Association annually in Wimbledon, London. It is chronologically the ...

was reaching the fourth round in 1955, losing to eight-seeded

Angela Buxton Angela Buxton (16 August 193414 August 2020) was a British tennis player. She won the women's doubles title at both the French Championships and Wimbledon in 1956 with her playing partner, Althea Gibson. Early life Buxton was born in Liverpo ...

, and 1956 when she was defeated by fifth-seeded and eventual champion

Shirley Fry Shirley June Fry Irvin (née Fry; June 30, 1927 – July 13, 2021) was an American tennis player. During her career, which lasted from the early 1940s until the mid-1950s, she won the singles title at all four Grand Slam events, as well as 13 dou ...

Personal life

Lew Hoad proposed to Staley on her 21st birthday party in March 1955, and they planned to announce their engagement in June in London while both were on an overseas tour. After arriving in London Staley discovered that she was pregnant, and the couple decided to get married straight away. The marriage took place the following day on 18 June 1955 at

St Mary's Church, Wimbledon St Mary's Church, Wimbledon, is a Church of England church and is part of the Parish of Wimbledon, south-west London, England. It has existed since the 12th century and may be the church recorded in the Domesday Book in the Mortlake Hundred. It ...

in London on the eve of Wimbledon. They had two daughters and a son. After Hoad's retirement they moved to Fuengirola, Spain, near Málaga, where they constructed and operated the tennis resort Lew Hoad's Campo de Tenis for more than 30 years, entertaining personal friends that included actors

Stewart Granger Stewart Granger (born James Lablache Stewart; 6 May 1913 – 16 August 1993) was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame thr ...

Sean Connery Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to Portrayal of James Bond in film, portray the fictional British secret agent James Bond (literary character), James Bond in motion pic ...

Richard Burton Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his mellifluous baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s and gave a memor ...

Peter Ustinov Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov (16 April 192128 March 2004) was a British actor, director and writer. An internationally known raconteur, he was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits for much of his career. Ustinov received #Awa ...

Deborah Kerr Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE (30 September 192116 October 2007), known professionally as Deborah Kerr (), was a Scottish actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first person from Scotland to be no ...

and her husband

Peter Viertel Peter Viertel (16 November 1920 – 4 November 2007) was an author and screenwriter. Biography Viertel was born to Jewish parents in Dresden, Germany, the writer and actress Salka Viertel and the writer Berthold Viertel. In 1928, his parents m ...

Kirk Douglas Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) was an American actor and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his film debut in '' The Strange Love of Martha Ivers'' (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. ...

, singer

Frank Sinatra Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Honorific nicknames in popular music, Nicknamed the "Chairman of the Board" and "Ol' Blue Eyes", he is regarded as one of the Time 100: The Most I ...

and saxophonist

Stan Getz Stan Getz (born Stanley Gayetski; February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, with his prime influence being the wis ...

. Lew Hoad was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of leukemia on 13 January 1994, which caused his death on 3 July 1994, at the age of 59. Jenny Hoad sold the club in April 1999 but continued to live at the accompanying residential complex. In 2002, she published ''My Life with Lew'' with

Jack Pollard Jack Ernest Pollard OAM (31 July 1926 – 25 May 2002) was an Australian sports journalist, writer and cricket historian. Early life Born in Sydney on 31 July 1926, Pollard began his journalism career in 1943 as a copy boy at Sydney's ''Daily ...

. Jenny Staley Hoad died in

Fuengirola Fuengirola () is a city on the Costa del Sol in the province of Málaga in the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain. It is located on the central coast of the province and integrated into the region of the Costa del Sol and the Com ...

, Spain on 14 February 2024, at the age of 89.

Grand Slam tournament finals

Singles: (1 runner-up)

Mixed doubles: (2 runner-ups)

Grand Slam tournament performance timeline

Singles

References

;Sources *

External links

*
Lew Hoad Tennis and Paddle Club
{{DEFAULTSORT:Staley Hoad, Jenny 1934 births 2024 deaths Australian female tennis players Tennis players from Melbourne Grand Slam (tennis) champions in girls' singles Australian Championships (tennis) junior champions Sportswomen from Victoria (state) 20th-century Australian sportswomen