Australian tennis icon Tony Roche has helped many athletes achieve success. Having won one singles grand slam title and 15 doubles titles during his playing career, he then coached four world No.1s and mentored several others.
Usually, the beneficiaries of Roche’s experience and expertise are other tennis players – but rising rugby star Jack Bowen is a lucky outlier. The young Waratah, who kicks off the Super Rugby season against the Highlanders on Friday, receives a call from Roche before every game he plays. Or rather, as Roche is quick to correct him, “He calls me.”
Though the 79-year-old tennis giant is generous with his tutelage, his support of Bowen is better explained by genealogy than benevolence as Bowen is Roche’s grandson.
“Me and my grandfather are really, really, really close,” Bowen said. “He comes everywhere – he came to South Africa with me, New Zealand, was going to come to Japan … but yeah, he comes everywhere. He loves it.”
Bowen grew up playing tennis with Roche, and though he admits he was never good enough to consider a career in the sport, he says at one point it was something they discussed.
“I was never going to be good enough to make it, but he was like, ‘If we’re going to have a go at playing tennis, we need to leave school, start training morning and arvos.’”
Young Waratah Jack Bowen with grandfather Tony Roche OA OBE.Credit: Steven Siewert
Roche left school at 14 to pursue a tennis career, while Cruz Hewitt, the son of former world No.1 Lleyton who grew up with Bowen, has followed a similar path.
“I used to play against him [Cruz],” Bowen says. “Obviously he’d kill me now, but I think I won the last time we played.”
Having witnessed the at-times lonely career of the young tennis player, Bowen is grateful he was more suited to team sport. Roche agrees.
“Tennis is a long, hard road and to get to the top, it takes a lot, so I was glad that he stuck with rugby,” he says, “Jack’s a good team man, he’s a good team player, whereas tennis is such an individual sport.”
Tony Roche receives the trophy after winning the 1966 French Open at Roland Garros.Credit: YouTube
Roche never dreamt of becoming a tennis player. Instead, he grew up wanting to play rugby league. Bowen says his grandfather was his “exact opposite” in wanting to play rugby but being better at tennis. “I think he was still alright [at rugby], he still talks about it like he’s still good,” he says.
As a boy, Bowen followed his famous grandfather onto red carpets and to training sessions with Hewitt and Roger Federer. “I thought it was normal whereas now I’d do anything to go watch them train,” he says. “My grandfather was huge back in the day and even when you go down to the tennis with him, he’s got to have security.”
While not quite scaling the international heights of Roche, Bowen’s father, Scott, is a former Wallaby.
“I’ve always been known as Scott Bowen’s son or Tony Roche’s grandson so it’s quite nice to now make it to this level,” Bowen said of his own career.
“I remember Jack went and had his hair cut when he was about 10 years of age,” Roche recalls. “And because Jack likes to talk, he was saying to the barber, ‘You know my grandfather played in the grand final in rugby league [Grahame Bowen, who played in the 1973 grand final for Cronulla against Manly] and my dad was a Wallaby, and my other grandfather played in the Davis Cup for Australia’.
“So when his mother went to pay for it, he said to her, ‘Your son’s got the best imagination I’ve heard’.”
Bowen’s goals for the 2025 Super Rugby season are simple. “I think it’s just to play as much as I can,” he says. “I had a good taste of it last year and that’s left me hungry to get more.”
Though he will never replicate his grandfather’s career, he hopes one day to mirror his dad’s.
“Hopefully, I’ll be here for a long time, I love playing at the Waratahs and hopefully playing in Australia the ultimate goal is to play for the Wallabies.”
“The 2027 World Cup, I guess, is the big goal and dream, of being a part of that at home. So I think looking forward to that and working towards that but also not getting too far ahead of myself and literally – as clichéd as it is – just staying day to day.”
Roche thinks he’s capable. “If he can get a decent run with the Waratahs and show what he can do, then I’ve got every faith in him,” he says.
