Frank Sedgman and Pancho Gonzales celebrity print 1973

Summary

This concrete handprint was formerly located as a part of the iconic McEwans celebrity pavement. Between 1972 and 1994, scores of celebrities had their handprints and footprints immortalised in cement at the entrance to the McEwans hardware store on Bourke Street. The City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection acquired a number of these impressed concrete slabs from the original celebrity pavement in 2005.

"Frank Sedgman (born 1927) and Ricardo ‘Pancho’ Gonzales (1928-1995) American Gonzales won 15 major singles titles and, for ten years running in the 1950s and ’60s, was the world’s number one ranked male tennis player. In 1972, aged nearly 44, he became the oldest US player ever to have won a professional tournament, winning the Des Moines Open over a player twenty years his junior. After retiring from the pro circuit, Gonzales was tennis director at Caesar’s Palace hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Australian Sedgman ranked as world number one player in 1953, the year he turned professional – and the year after winning at Wimbledon in both singles and doubles. Often thereafter, he ranked just behind Pancho Sanchez. Retiring from pro tennis in 1965, Sedgman made a comeback in 1970, reaching the third round at Wimbledon the following year. He continued to play in the Australian Open until 1976. Sedgman was also well-known as a tennis commentator during the 1960s and ’70s." - Robyn Annear, 2023