THE CLUB WITH NO BALLS

An Address on the occasion of the Inaugural Visit of the

ROMSEY ROYAL TENNIS CLUB

To the

HOBART TENNIS CLUB

27th MAY 2000

On Wednesday 11th July 1979 at 1900 hrs, four disgruntled men sauntered forlornly from the court of the Hobart Tennis Club. They were Jerry Walters, Tony Holmes, Andrew Kemp and Jim Cartledge. The occasion for their disgruntlement was that for the previous hour they had struggled to play their game with twelve balls all of which were threadbare and loose, three of which had lost their covers during play of which one became completely undone, disintegrating into a mush of fluff, thus contributing to the layer of dust and fluff already blanketing the court floor and penthouse roofs galleries and shelves.

For reasons best known to only himself, the recently arrived professional, one Nick Gawthrope was in the club room at the time, so I enquired politely, where were the new balls because the ones we had just played with were unserviceable. He, dear useless lad replied “There are none”. “When will you be making some more” I asked. The reply was to alter the course of Tennis history. “I don’t know how to make them” Thus was born the saga which came to be known as

THE CLUB WITH NO BALLS

And Nick Gawthrope entered the colourful annals of The Hobart Tennis Club.

Nick had been sent to us by that alcoholic professional at Cambridge, Brian Church whose protégé Barry Toates had breathed life into our club in 1968 and onwards. It seemed reasonable to assume that Nick would from the same stable be. However the very word “assume” when parsed makes an ass out of you and me. And indeed that was the case.

I recorded in my personal journal an entry on Thursday 14th June of that year, a month before the cataclysmic event—“Played tennis with Nick Gawthrope-not as good as I might have imagined”. And a later entry on 21st August—“Tennis “lesson” with Nick. He is a very nice bloke but a poor teacher, and worse, he has tickets on himself”.

But returning to that fateful day. Clearly the club was already in deep shit. My trade as a surgeon and as a pedagogue in that discipline has taught me firstly how to avoid the shit, but even more importantly when, as will inevitably happen from time to time ,you find yourself up to your neck in it, how to get out of it. You don’t sing out or yell for help, you slowly and methodically figure a way out and plod along until you are free.

I had no idea of how to cover a ball, not even what a naked ball looked like little less what it was made of.

Sensing a degree of heat in my soul, Nick scuttled about searching for some ball cloth, some needles and thread, and half a dozen cores. With bits of paper and scissors, I figured out what size the strips should be and how to shape the ends to fit each other, threaded up my needle and began. I thought of my stepmother who taught me sew and darn when I was a schoolboy, and silently gave thanks to her memory.

Two hours later, I had four balls but they were so bad that I undid them, re-shaped the cloth and did them again. Four hours, four balls. Saturday 14th July. By the next Saturday, I had sewn a set of 41 balls. No reference to tying the cores you will note. I did try to follow the geometrical pattern of the string but to no avail.

Likewise, no reference to the cores themselves. Oh no! That was not possible. Not possible I hear you cry? Why so? I shall tell you.

There had been up until that time, a great myth that Henry Johns at the Queens Club in London was the only person in the world who could make ball cores. Clearly that was bullshit because for one, our own beatified Percy Finch made them out of old shirts, knickers or anything else he could lay his hands on, and frequently did. However that was the orthodox thinking at that time, and here in Australia, when our cores disintegrated we sent to Henry who had quite a good thing going for himself at a pound a ball.

Our professionals did of course tie the balls but dear thick Nick had no bloody idea and I couldn’t follow the pattern, try as I might. Thus, the balls I made got smaller and looser, but at least we had some.

Barry Toates paid a visit to Hobart at about this time, and on Wednesday 5th September, he taught me to build up the balls and to re-tie them. Onwards and upwards! I scoured the town for half inch cotton binding, procuring several rolls from a manufacturer of blinds, and began the process of building up the cores to proper size and tying them up very tightly. You can predict the result. Bricks! The balls were solid and heavy, flying around like rockets, breaking strings and penetrating the dedans netting.

Later that September we had an International tournament in Hobart and Melbourne and I made our balls. If you have ever seen Rackets played you will know how little solid balls power about, well that was it.

The opening of this tournament was made memorable for another reason. Andrew Kemp was our president at the time and had volunteered to host the opening cocktail party but had forgotten to do so. I had purchased enough grog for the entire week, but Andrew had not made any arrangements of any kind whatsoever-no grog, no glasses, no food, no flowers, no nothing. Suffice it to say because it is Andrew’s story really ,that it was a monumental cock-up. However, being the resourceful folk we are, we commissioned trophies, vases, tea cups, sugar bowls, anything which would hold grog and proceeded to drink the entire week’s supply, and in doing so, got hugely pissed .Andrew stood upon the table to make his speech of welcome and apology for the SNAFU. His dear wife Elizabeth who is not in the habit of listening to Andrew at the best of times, carried on nattering in blissful ignorance of the whole thing. It turned out to be one of the most successful opening parties of all time. Andrew is a member at Romsey and is here tonight.

Chris Ronaldson was at this tournament and had been experimenting at Hampton Court, with ball-making. He had devised a method of measuring the length of tape of correct weight, and he and I set about making the first balls to be built from scratch at the Hobart court since the time of Percy Finch, September 25th 1979.

The problems of weight, size and sponginess kept bothering us for years. Lachie Deuchar, Wayne Davies and I experimented with all sorts of techniques but could not be perfectly consistent.

It was not until 1989 when Robert Fahey and Tim Heughan either separately or together figured out that if we had a light-weight central core to the taped sphere, these problems might be solved. At first, wine corks were used, but the shape made a sphere difficult to create. Then the idea came of fragmenting the corks and wrapping them in bits of gladwrap, and this is where we are now. Mind you, the professionals still produce some right duds. Only this week we played with balls better suited to the soft-ball diamond, but I am assured that they will compress in time. Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose!

At the end of that famous 1979 tournament, we had a big party at the Royal Yacht Club, and on that occasion, on September 29th ,the song composed by our own Bevan Rees was launched, the song which has become the Leit Motif of the Hobart Tennis Club

"THE CLUB WITH NO BALLS"

Some of you who were here for the last Bathurst Cup will have heard it sung on the Court, but for those who were not so privileged, I would now like to lead a small group of Hobart choristers in a rendition of its theme song .I use the word “rendition”advisedly---each singer is free to choose his or her own key and is at liberty to modulate as often and as far as desired.

I humbly thank you for your kind indulgence,

Jim Cartledge.