The tennis world is remembering Barry Phillips-Moore, former player, coach and the earliest adopter of the infamous ‘spaghetti-string’ racquet, which imparted extreme spin and was ultimately banned from the sport. Phillips-Moore passed away in Adelaide on 29 June, aged 85.
A two-time semi-finalist at the Australian Championships, Phillips-Moore grew up alongside Rod Laver, but broke the mould of the typical grass-loving Australian serve/volleyers, preferring to battle from the baseline, especially on clay. He won the Auckland title in 1968.
After his playing career, Phillips-Moore coached Paul McNamee, Peter McNamara, Harold Solomon and Eddie Dibbs before turning his attention to leading a group of young talent that fell outside traditional development pathways on European adventures with the help of a trusty minivan.
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One of his most famous prodigies was fellow Australian and Adelaide native Mark Woodforde, who went on to claim four singles titles and 67 doubles titles, including 12 majors.
After finishing high school, Woodforde joined up to eight other players (mostly Australians) on marathon nine-month tours of Europe. The players crammed into a minivan and shared driving responsibilities while Barry and his beloved wife Anne (who passed away in 2021) followed in their own car.
At the time, Phillips-Moore was adamant that the Europeans tours were a better option than the U.S. collegiate system. At the end of the tour the players would park the car in a hotel parking lot or the like and pick it up several months later during the next season.
“I never would have had a career had I not crossed paths with Barry Phillips-Moore,” Woodforde told ATPTour.com at Wimbledon this week. “He was my coach from the first year that I travelled overseas when I had the aspiration to be a professional tennis player.
“My dad laid the groundwork, but Barry gave me that belief that I could become a tennis player. And I never would have moved to that racquet, that special string (which was approved by authorities) if it weren’t for Barry.”
Barry’s Boys: Former travelling companions Mark Woodforde, Richard Fricker, Mike Derer (sitting), Marty Richards and Gavin Pfitzner with Barry Phillips-Moore at a reunion at the Edinburgh Hotel in Adelaide. Photo courtesy Mark Woodforde.
“Barry Phillips-Moore was a professor,” said esteemed tennis journalist Richard Evans, the author of more than 20 books, including the outstanding ‘The History of Tennis’.
“Apart from bringing up lots of juniors, he was always fiddling around with racquets and stringing. He created a tighter way of stringing racquets so there was less space between the strings. He was just a real tennis guru and, as Mark Woodforde said, without Barry he would never have made it.”
Phillips-Moore had a sports store in Adelaide and in later years would also sell tennis products – racquets, strings, clothing – out of the boot of his car during the European tours with his young players. Former World No. 71 Australian Carl Limberger was among Phillips-Moore’s protégées.
“I remember going into Barry’s family store in Adelaide when I was knee high to a grasshopper and looking up at all this stuff Barry had imported from Europe,” Woodforde said. “It was like being at the circus.
“When I grew up and I decided I wanted to try to become a tennis player, dad reached out to Barry. Barry and Anne came around to the house and said ‘If you want him to have a crack, we can take him away’.
“He had a relaxed approach and said it was okay to fail because I would learn from the mistakes. I had been used to having someone yelling at me and I was afraid to make mistakes. When I started working with Barry it was almost like tasting forbidden fruit.”
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