Royal Melbourne Tennis Club

In addition to the AUS Amateur Doubles the RMTC played host to the Hobart Real Tennis Club as the two clubs battled it out over nine matches for the right to be crowned Percy Finch winners. Hobart challenged us by presenting a strong team consisting of Kieren Booth, Al. Ramsay, Hilton Booth, Al. Curley, Graeme Bradfield and Jeremy Rackham. Most of the matches were close but the RMTC’s nine man team defended its turf convincingly by a margin of 8 rubbers to 1. The matches went as follows:

Singles
Julian. Snow (RMTC) lost to K. Booth (HRTC)
Mike. Happell defeated Al. Ramsay
Bret. Richardson defeated H. Booth
Dan Williams defeated Al. Curley
Richard Hince defeated G. Bradfield
Jon Hamer defeated J. Rackham

Doubles
Happell/Hamer defeated K. Booth/Rackham
Chris Sievers/Owen Guest defeated H. Booth/Curley
Andrew Gould/Williams defeated Bradfield/Ramsay

All the matches are played as best of 3 sets and everyone managed to bring their best game with them. With the Hobart lads in town it meant that, Melbourne freak storms notwithstanding, the evenings became party time. With the Saturday BBQ abandoned due to bad weather we were entertained by Lebanese food and Belly Dancers at Kanzaman. During the evening Merel Hince showed the belly dancer a move or two and Dan Williams claimed it was his birthday (it wasn’t, but it worked). As always it was great to see the Hobart contingent in the club and everyone who joined in had a great time. Thankyou for being here Hobart. And finally, thankyou to everyone who dropped in to show their support over the long weekend.

Regards

Owen

Wayne Spring, Julian Snow, David Parker and Henry Turnbull

Bret Richardson, Michael Happell and Henry Turnbull

Fifteen pairs entered this event, in two grades, at the week-end, with all three Australian clubs well represented.

Mike Happell & Bret Richardson retained their title with a dominant performance at the RMTC on Labour Day; they beat their familiar rivals and 2007-2008 champions Julian Snow & Chris Sievers. The score was 5/6, 6/4, 6/4, 6/2. Bret seems to have made a full recovery from the back injury that hampered him for the second half of 2009, and was as deadly as ever at close range on the volley. Meanwhile, his evergreen partner displayed immaculate control of the ball onto and around the tambour. As hard as they worked, the losers were increasingly unable to make any inroads into the winners’ armoury. Bret & Mike will surely be very difficult to beat in the Bathurst Cup in New York next month.

In the A Division event, the final was a match up between two pairs from opposite ends of the experience spectrum, neither of whom had been seeded. On the one hand were Wayne Spring & David Parker, representing Ballarat, and integral members of our 50s team in the Ted Cockram Trophy in London next month. On the other side, the 22yo Welch twins, previously from Hobart now at Uni in Melbourne. The youngsters had had a fine tournament already, winning three matches against the head, and indeed recovered well to win the first set of the final from 5-1 down. Thereafter, experience told, and Wayne & David combined increasingly well to gradually gain the ascendancy and come home easy winners in the last two sets 6/1, 6/2.

The first Quarterly Medal for 2010 was held at the Club on Saturday, 27th February. A full field of 20 players competed in the morning and afternoon competitions, with some excellent tennis and close matches played.

The winners on the day – and all undefeated in their four matches – were:

Brigitte Claney
Greg Moran
Ed Welch
Charles Foster

Brigitte, Greg, Ed and Charles are now eligible to compete in the Medal of Medallists competition on Finals Day on 5 December.

The next Quarterly Medal competition will be played on Saturday, 29th May.

James Gould, winner of the club’s U21 handicap singles in 2009, added an even more impressive tournament win to his record when he won the Roo Trophy singles today. James began the day by successfully giving rec 30 owe 15 to Paul Andrews, whose own form has recently improved enormously. James then faced Fiona Hewson, the winner of the repechage event, off rec 30 owe 40. Remarkably, after so many close fought matches through the week, this final resulted in an 8-0 win for the youngster. James’ play was immaculate (borderline flawless, even) as he demonstrated not only his much improved court craft but also impressive focus and concentration.

One of the RMTC’s newest members, John Bailey, won the doubles event with Euahna Varigos. Aged 21, and clearly a talented player of other racket sports, John was an obvious target for a pot-hunting doubles specialist. Well drilled by Euahna, John was value for well below his mark of 45 handicap, which he will never see again. A highly motivated Euahna marshalled her young partner and employed a winning strategy that entirely overwhelmed their young opponents Mark Mathias and Daniel Williams, who had won the strongest pool in the round-robin stage of the tournament.

For the nth time in (n+1) years, the Solicitors (Xanthe Ranger, Dan Blue (sub Paul Andrews), Tony Melville, Brendan O’Brien, and Richard Fawcett) defeated the Bar & Bench (Howard Mason, Mark Derham, James Guest, Stewart McNab, and Gavan Griffith). This year the margin was 7 matches to 3.  As per the accompanying evidence of my ongoing humiliation, it was my reluctant duty as non-playing ‘captain’ of the losing team to present the trophy to my counterpart Andrew Schnaider.

The Gold Racket protagonists, with ball-boy Nick Tan

Julian Snow won the RMTC Gold Racket for the fourth time yesterday, beating Mike Happell in five sets, in what was one of the closest matches between these two long-time amateur rivals who first played against each other in Ballarat in 1988. It was a match of two halves. Julian lost the first two games, then won 12 of the next 13 to take a two set lead, dominating the cross-court backhand exchanges. Mike then switched from predominantly serving drag serves to a railroad, and also began to latch on to Julian’s ‘underarm twist’ version, to level the match. At 4-4 in the 5th it was anyone’s game as both players began to show their age: Julian was relieved to be able to find a couple of strong winners to clinch the title by a score of 6/3,6/0,4/6,2/6,6/4.

Amy Hayball won the ladies club championship with an impressively strong victory over the holder, Laura Fowler, by 6/2,6/2. Amy played a very solid and mature game in the classic mould: serving predominantly a side wall then relentlessly probing Laura’s backhand corner when at the hazard end. Amy never let up for a moment and in the end was clearly dominant.

Simon Carr was equally impressive in winning the U21 championship, 6/2, 6/0 over Paul Rosedale. Simon played fast and well, banging down an old-fashioned railroad and also concentrating on extracting errors out of his opponent’s backhand corner from the hazard end.

(It was a pleasure for me to watch these young men and women not only playing so correctly, but also in a fine spirit).

Charlie Mackinnon and Peter Stanley survived from 86 original entries to contest the club’s handicap singles final. Peter has had many epic victories on his way to the final this year, but his wife Anne & I both agreed that he didn’t quite show his best form yesterday; indeed Anne commented that Peter played ‘as if in a dwaal’ (a state of befuddlement, for non-Afrikaans speakers). Charlie, on the other hand, looking very fit, played several points ahead of his mark of nearly 47 handicap, and coasted to a 9/3 victory.

The most exciting match of the day was the Medallists’ final between Sophie Jonhnson and Nick Shelton, off a massive handicap difference. Nick very nearly overcame huge odds, saving countless match points before being only two points away from victory himself. Sophie, on good terms with herself these days, kept the ball in play as much as she could and finally extracted an error from Nick to claim a well deserved win.

I thank all those who helped make the tennis aspect of the day run well: the players, spectators, markers, referees, and ball-boy. This (nearly) concludes another successful year of tennis at the RMTC.