Monday-Wednesday 13th-15th Half-term coaching for under 18s

Monday 20th Spring Term coaching programme begins (through 31st March) – Adults and Juniors

March

Tuesday ... Continue Reading]]> February

Monday-Wednesday 13th-15th Half-term coaching for under 18s

Monday 20th Spring Term coaching programme begins (through 31st March) – Adults and Juniors

March

Tuesday 6th Beat the Coach – all welcome at Mixed Club Night 7-9.30pm

Sunday 25th Open Day – friendly play and refreshments for members and non-members 2-6pm

Tuesday 27th Annual General Meeting – Club House at 8pm

Saturday 31st 2011 Membership expires! Have you renewed and claimed your 10% discount?

April

Sunday 1st New Mixed Club Session begins – every Sunday from 9.30am to midday

May

Tuesday 8th Beat the Coach – all welcome at Mixed Club Night 7-9.30pm

June

Saturday/Sunday 23rd/24th Open Days – friendly play and refreshments for members and non-members 2-6pm

July

Tuesday 3rd Beat the Coach – all welcome at Mixed Club Night 7-9.30pm

Sunday 15th Finals Day – Club Tournament Finals for Adults and Juniors

August

Monday 27th Jim Bailey Cup – Men’s Tournament on August Bank Holiday Monday

September

Tuesday 4th Beat the Coach – all welcome at Mixed Club Night 7-9.30pm

October

Sunday 7th Mixed Doubles Tournament

The exhibition opens in ... Continue Reading]]> Tennis is one of the sports to feature at Oundle Museum’s 2012 exhibition themed on the Olympics.

The exhibition opens in March.

Tennis was one of the eight sports played at the first modern Olympics in 1896. The other sports were Athletics, Cycling, Wrestling, Swimming, Fencing, Gymnastics, and Shooting. There were no women athletes.

The competition was held at the courts of the Athens Lawn Tennis Club, and the infield of the velodrome used for the cycling events. Although tennis was already a major sport by the end of the 19th century, none of the top players turned up for the tournament in Athens. John Pius Boland representing Great Britain won the event. He was born in Dublin on the 16th of September 1870 and having become interested in tennis at an early age was encouraged by his teachers at the Catholic University School, Leeson St, Dublin, he continued playing from time to time in Oxford, where he had begun studying.

He had been entered in the competition by a fellow-student of his at Oxford; the Greek, Konstantinos Manos. As a member of the Athens Lawn Tennis sub-committee, Manos had been trying, with the assistance of Boland, to recruit competitors for the Athens Games from among the sporting circles of Oxford University. In the first round, Boland defeated Friedrich Traun, a promising tennis player from Hamburg, who had been eliminated in the 100 meter sprint competition.

He would go on to become a member of the British parliament for South Kerry from 1900 to 1918, representing the Irish Nationalist party.

The men’s singles was one of two tennis events at the games. The sixteen entrants were seeded into a single-elimination tournament, with only thirteen of the players actually competing. They represented six nations.

1896 Singles Results

Early Olympic Games allowed for individuals in a team to be from different nations. Boland (GBR) and Traun (GER) decided to team up for the doubles event and defeated their Greek and Greek/Egyptian opponents in the final after losing the first set.

1896 Doubles Medalists

 Tennis was played at the Olympics until 1924, and then reinstituted in 1988.

Britain’s last Olympic medal in tennis came at Atlanta in 1996 when Tim Henman and Neil Broad won the silver medals in the doubles.

The last gold medals were won at Antwerp in 1920 when Oswald Turnbull and Max Woosnam claimed the men’s doubles and Kathleen McKane and Winifred McNair the women’s doubles. The last British player to claim a singles title was Edith Hannam, who won the indoor event at Stockholm in 1912.

Information from wikipedia