29 Facts About Rod Humphries

Rod Humphries became a sports journalist covering international events for major Australian dailies and wrote his first book, Lionel Rose: Australian at age 25.

Rod Humphries moved permanently to the United States in 1977 when a tennis book he was commissioned to write in New York was followed by an offer from oilman and sports entrepreneur Lamar Hunt to join the staff of Dallas-based World Championship Tennis.

Rod Humphries has had three books published in the United States, the most recent in 2013, Little League to the Major Leagues.

Rod Humphries is a direct descendant of a 26-year-old convict transported from Ireland to the British penal colony at Sydney Cove, New South Wales, Australia, in 1793, and of a 23-year-old Scottish "bounty immigrant" who arrived "free" in the colony in 1837.

Rod Humphries was born to Jack and Mavis Humphries in Paddington, Sydney, Australia, at a time the Australian government officially commemorates as the Battle for Australia of World War II.

Rod Humphries's sister Gae Denise Butler was born in 1947.

Jack Rod Humphries, who trained American soldiers in jungle warfare as part of the Pacific campaign, led the march and took the official salute for the Australian Forces at the last Anzac Day in Wewak, New Guinea, in 1973 prior to New Guinea's independence from Australia.

Rod Humphries was first published at 13 years of age in 1956 in the Randwick Boys' High School yearbook after a poem he wrote about the Olympic Games in Melbourne that year won a school-wide competition.

Rod Humphries quickly became a fully-fledged journalist at AUP, covering national and local politics, law courts, police rounds, the stock exchange, the trade union movement, features and sports for newspapers and radio stations.

At age 25, Rod Humphries teamed with Lionel Rose, an Australian Aborigine then 19 years of age, to write Rose's life story in the book Lionel Rose: Australian, which told how Rose, who came from tough beginnings in the Australian outback, won the world bantamweight boxing title from the seemingly unbeatable hometown champion, Masahiko "Fighting" Harada, in Tokyo, Japan, on 27 February 1968.

Rod Humphries was offered a writing job on the show after he helped the producers to prepare for the first show to air, the life of Lionel Rose, on 14 September 1975.

In March 1976, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation chose Humphries to represent Australia's print sports journalists in a national television documentary on its popular Sportsnight series, titled Action Replay, which chronicled the planning, interviewing, writing and editorial production of a story in his day as a sports journalist.

Rod Humphries was involved in the planning of another Sportsnight documentary, King of the Channel, which won the Best Sporting Documentary at the 1977 Australian Logie Awards.

Rod Humphries was an accomplished representative junior tournament tennis player in Australia and later a part-time professional tennis coach in Australia and the United States.

Rod Humphries covered the beginning of Open tennis in 1968 and all the machinations leading to the Grand Slam tournaments and other strictly amateur events being thrown open to professionals in a historic moment in the sport.

World Championship Tennis was a catalyst to forcing Open tennis and Rod Humphries covered the first ever WCT event, a made-for-television tournament on a hastily erected court in the parking lot of ATN Channel 7 television studios in Epping, Sydney, Australia, in January 1968.

The English tennis enthusiast, fashion designer, and spy Cuthbert Collingwood "Ted" Tinling commissioned Rod Humphries to write his memoir, Love and Faults, during a visit to Sydney in 1976.

Rod Humphries accepted the offer, turning down a new contract with This Is Your Life in Australia, and permanently moved to the United States.

Rod Humphries organised worldwide tournaments, recruited players, wrote and published 250-plus page WCT Media Guides, played a role in the New York-based WCT Television Network and the company's player management arm WCT Pro Management, and was a key player in developing an alternative world ranking system to that of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the Nixdorf Computer Rankings.

Rod Humphries wrote the scripts for commentator Jim Simpson for documentary specials in 1980 and 1981 about the WCT tour titled "The Road to Dallas," the first ever in-house ESPN documentaries.

Rod Humphries left WCT in 1983 when the tour was cut to a mere five events for 1984 following an anti-trust lawsuit filed against the Men's International Professional Tennis Council that administered the establishment Grand Prix and its powerful Grand Slam events.

Rod Humphries became media director for the Lipton International Players Championship in Delray Beach and Key Biscayne, Florida, from 1986 to 1988.

For 20 years after moving to the United States, Rod Humphries wrote articles for publication in America and regular freelance sports articles and columns for Australian and New Zealand newspapers.

Rod Humphries did live weekly radio interviews on American sport with 4BC in Brisbane and occasionally for 2SM in Sydney and 3UZ in Melbourne.

Rod Humphries has had three books published in America: the Tinling story, Love and Faults; The Doberman Pinscher, and Little League to the Major Leagues, an insider guide to baseball's assembly line from youth leagues to the pros.

Rod Humphries began writing regular articles in a column titled "Dogs on Parade" for The Sun-Herald in Australia in the early 1970s, and for 40 years has written articles in American magazines including the Doberman Quarterly, the Doberman World, the Doberman Ring, and the Doberman Pinscher Magazine, on the genesis and history of the Doberman breed; genetics, science and diseases; breeding in general; and humorous observations of the dog show world.

On 24 April 1976, Rod Humphries married Lynne Blumentritt, an American sports and television writer he met on his WCT invitation tour to Dallas in 1975.

Rod Humphries later became an attorney and is a founding partner of the Houston law firm, Allen Boone Humphries Robinson LLP.

Lynne Rod Humphries was recognised as International Little League Volunteer of the Year in 1995, which earned her recognition in the Little League Hall of Fame in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.