Like any sports mad child of the seventies and eighties, my favourite sport was tennis, at least for two weeks of the year during Wimbledon. I was lucky enough that our house had loads of outdoor space and a huge gable end wall where I could hammer a tennis ball for hours on end. My determination was reinforced by the fact that British male tennis players at that time were absolutely rubbish. The names just trip off the tongue, Mark Cox, Buster Mottram anybody? The Lloyd Brothers who apparently were good at doubles, which I assumed meant that they got knocked out in the second round of a tournament as opposed to the first. Indeed it seemed that I could not fail to be no 1 in the country if I could hit the ball three times in a row
Being from Torbay we have had some fairly good tennis players, the most famous of which was Sue Barker, who was actually very good and went on to win the French Open. She was also quite nice and very polite to me when I met her. “Ith Melitha in” she asked. It soon became apparent that she meant Melissa the owner of the Café I was working in during my school holidays, but at that time Sue still had a gap in her front teeth that you could have driven a bus through. A situation remedied when she began her career as a television present.
Anyway my quest for male no1 status hit the buffers on my first appearance on a real tennis court, when I realised that just belting the ball as hard as you can was fine against a wall, but a little more finesse was required when actually playing. Another drawback was the seemingly upper middle class domination of the sport, it seemed one would need at least a million pounds in the bank to join a local club. So consequently my tennis career became confined to hitting the ball against that wall for two weeks every year.
Until the Gold challenge that is! The thought of earning 20 points for entering a tournament inspired me to enter Amy (My partner) and I in the Port of Dartmouth Royal Regatta tennis tournament mixed doubles open, despite neither of us being able to play the game. A colleague of Amy’s, Kirsten, was drafted in to coach and after many weeks of hard work we had mastered the art of spinning the racquet to decide who served first, how to get the net the right height and sometimes how to catch a ball with one already in your hand!
The big day came and such was Amy’s confidence that she had held a sweepstake to see how many points(Not games note) we would get. The consensus seemed to be not many.
We were playing a young brother and sister partnership who both seemed to be in their late teens. They looked extremely nervous, a situation soon resolved in the pre match knock up, where it became obvious that not only could we not play the game, but at times totally unaware where we should stand.
After a titanic struggle I managed to tie up my trainers properly and the match commenced. A short time later the match finished with Amy and I ecstatic. Against all the odds we had won one game and twenty points in a thrillingly close 6-0 6-1 defeat.
Our opponents were fairly perplexed with our lap of honour but we explained the situation to them, and they wished us well for our remaining challenges.
My love for tennis has now been restored and other than Andy I can’t see anybody to stop me becoming British no1.
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