A Century Not Out and Playing On

In late May the Herne Bay Ponsonby Rackets Club had a gathering of around 150 past and present members to launch the book detailing the Club’s history that commenced in 1910.  Past members attended from as far away as Wellington and the Coromandel, with ages ranging up to the nineties.  The Club evolved on the same Bayfield Park site, commencing as the YMCA & YWCA Lawn Tennis Club, morphing into the Herne Bay Lawn Tennis Club and eventually becoming the combined tennis and squash club.

The book also contains 200 bios of past and present members ranging through tennis and squash national champions, administrators and regular players.  These cover Davis Cup players Brian Fairlie and David Mustard, plus squash professionals Shelley Kitchen, Lara (nee Petera) Heta and Campbell Grayson.  Additionally, there are the records of some of the romances, war stories and quirky off-court happenings of many members.

Herne Bay is only the third Auckland tennis club to have recorded its history, the others being Eden Epsom and Remuera.

The popularity of tennis around the beginning of the last Century is unsurprising, when one recalls Anthony Wilding winning four Wimbledon Singles titles and combining with Norman Brookes to win the Davis Cup for Australasia three times.  New Zealand had thousands of tennis players and many tennis clubs.

For clubs with a sense of history, hopefully more record books will follow, before the source documents possibly disappear, and older members pass on with their memories untold.

For any club scribes interested in pursuing such a task, the book, “A Century Not Out and Playing On…” would act as an excellent ‘template’.  Copies remain available from the author, Chris Ronayne, priced at $60, via chris.ronayne@xtra.co.nz