John O'Brien (born 6 July 1932) is an Australian tennis player active during the 1950s and 1960s. O'Brien was also one of the 18 hostages in the

2014 Sydney hostage crisis The Lindt Café siege was a terrorist attack that occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt#Lindt chocolate cafés and stores, Lindt Chocolate Café hostage in the ...

Tennis career

O'Brien played the first of ten

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 ...

in 1951. As a singles player, he made eight appearances in the Round of 32 and two in the Round of 64. In 1956 O'Brien appeared at the

French Championships The French Open (), also known as Roland-Garros (), is a tennis tournament organized by the French Tennis Federation annually at Stade Roland Garros in Paris, France. It is chronologically the second of the four Grand Slam tennis events eve ...

finishing in the first round, however he followed this up with a Round of 16 performance at

Wimbledon Wimbledon most often refers to: * Wimbledon, London, a district of southwest London * Wimbledon Championships, the oldest tennis tournament in the world and one of the four Grand Slam championships Wimbledon may also refer to: Places London * W ...

where he was defeated by eventual champion

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 ...

. He returned to Roland Garros and Wimbledon in 1960, though he was eliminated in the Round of 128. O'Brien remained active into his eighties, and was ranked tenth in the world for players over 80 years old.

References

1932 births Australian male tennis players Living people Place of birth missing (living people) 20th-century Australian sportsmen {{Australia-tennis-bio-stub