It was five days before the US presidential election in 2000 when George W. Bush admitted to a drink-driving arrest which had remained secret for two decades.
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"I was drinking beer, yes, with John Newcombe," George W told the press pack after the 1976 incident was exposed by a US television station.
The revelation that George W had been booked for driving under the influence after a night out with one of Australia's greatest tennis champions forced Newcombe into hiding until after the election.
Since then, Newcombe has never publicly revealed many of the details of what happened on that night. But that changed on Thursday evening, when Newcombe, with 26 grand-slam titles, was made an official legend of the Sports Australia Hall of Fame.
In a live radio interview after the event, Newcombe revealed how he had been binge drinking with George W before the arrest. George the younger had also brushed off an attempt by Newcombe's wife, Angie, to drive them home, he said.
"George was a bit of a party boy in those days," Newcombe told radio station SEN.
It was the US Labor Day long weekend in 1976 when George W. Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, invited Newcombe over to the Bush family holiday home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Newcombe said he began drinking "reasonable-sized mugs of beer" with George W. Bush at the nearby pub, along with Newcombe's wife, Mr Bush's younger sister, and Peter Roussel, then press secretary to George H. W. Bush, who was CIA director at the time.
"I noticed that George [jnr] was sort of eyeing me off," Newcombe recalled of their night out. "I put on a bit of pace and he'd keep pace with me. A little silent game was going on," he said.
"After about four of these, I picked the glass up in my teeth without my hands and skulled it straight down and I said, 'What are you made of, George?' And so he had to do that."
Newcombe said he then drank another beer from the wrong side of the glass as the pair went drink-for-drink. "I looked at him and go, 'Have you got any guts, George, or what's your story?' So he did that."
When the pair staggered back to the car, Newcombe said his wife told Mr Bush that she would drive but he told her, "No, I'm all right."
The car was pulled over a short distance down the road. Mr Bush was "a bit cheeky" when the officer tested his sobriety by making him walk a line, Newcombe said.
It wasn't until after the officer wrote out the DUI ticket that Mr Roussel told the officer, named Calvin, that he had just given a ticket to the son of the director of the CIA.
"We'd joke for years that Calvin's going to come back to haunt you," Newcombe said.
Sure enough, Calvin did.
Newcombe said it was Mr Roussel who called the tennis legend's Sydney office when the story broke 24 years later. "He says, 'George just rang me, and he said they found out about Calvin.'"
The phone call prompted Newcombe to flee to his farm in the Hunter Valley as reporters swarmed his Sydney office. "I just hid out. I hid. I didn't talk about it, actually, for years while he was president."
Mr Bush, who gave up drinking in the 1980s, later apologised for his alcohol-filled past. "I'm not proud of that," he said. "I oftentimes said that years ago I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much and I did on that night."
But Mr Bush is not the first US president to come to grief while drinking with an Aussie. In 1997, Bill Clinton reportedly hurt his knee after heavy drinking with famed golfer Greg Norman.
