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Eccentrics
of Real Tennis
by Sally Jones
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Perhaps
because everything about Real Tennis, from the shape of the racket
to its technical terms is quirky and off-beat, it has always attracted
a high proportion of addicts and eccentrics. Even the court markings
and scoring system reflect the game's rakish roots in gambling and
its compulsive quality; Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn was
arrested while betting on a real tennis match and reputedly begged
her captors to wait and see whether she had won her wager before
dragging her to the Tower.
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Since
Tudor times the cannier professionals have combined well-judged eccentricity
with an eye to the main chance, using bizarre bets in an attempt to
separate rich and gullible punters from their guineas. In 1775, the
famously agile French professional M. Masson served and received serve
while sitting in a barrel then leapt out to take the return, jumping
back into the barrel between each stroke. Another Frenchman Louis
L'Abbe, "a fat little man with a protuberant belly" played a wager
match carrying Duret his marker on his back. History does not record
who won either encounter. At Newport, Rhode Island, the American professional
Tom Pettitt won a "substantial sum" for himself and his backers after
narrowly defeating the amateur Foxhall Keene despite playing the entire
match on roller skates.
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Hampton Court professional Tom White enjoyed beating newcomers using
a light cane chair with its seat strung with gut instead of a racket,
while at Manchester, George Lambert took on the enthusiastic though
unskilled Archdeacon Clark using a soda-water bottle. In the 1830s,
the bibulous Oxford court manager Duck-Legged Jem became famous for
shortening the odds by discarding his racket in favour of a boot jack
or ginger-beer bottle on a stick. Not to be outdone, Thomas Sabin
who kept the rival Merton Street court even played a match on horseback.
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More
recently, the convivial and much-loved Cambridge professional Brian
Church, who introduced Prince Edward to the game, specialised in big-money
wagers, imposing his own brand of handicap on his hapless friends.
In the late '80s when I had been playing the game for only a few months,
he recklessly pitted me against his drinking companion, the hard-hitting
and experienced Peter Hennell. Terrified of losing Brian a fortune,
I dropped the first set but finally scraped home 6-4 in the decider
thanks to my opponent's increasingly erratic performance after the
huge, boozy lunch which Brian had thoughtfully provided (though only
for Hennell) just beforehand.
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from Anne Boleyn's unfortunate example, few women were involved in
the game until the 1960s, a notable exception being the imposing Baroness
Wentworth who built a court on her estate, Crabbet Park, Sussex, in
1907, published two sonnets on the game and employed the future world
champion G.F. Covey as her professional. Under his tuition, she was
said to have become a brilliant player and a match for many male amateurs,
although cynics remarked more on the difficulty of beating her on
her home court when Covey was marking! Luckily the redoubtable spirit
of Lady Wentworth lives on. During a recent match at Hampton Court,
one well-upholstered lady, a stickler for etiquette, played a new
member who momentarily forgot the cardinal rule that the receiver
always walks round the net post at change of ends before the server.
As the newcomer gaily trotted round first, from the service end, her
opponent grasped her firmly by the shoulders and frogmarched her back
round the net with a reproving glare. Not surprisingly, the mistake
has never been repeated and the game's reputation for eccentricity
remains undiminished. |
The
formidable
Baroness
Wentworth
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Sally
Jones has been a member of Moreton Morrell since 1987 and became World
Ladies Champion in 1993 when she defeated Charlotte Cornwallis at Bordeaux.
She also won the World Doubles Championships in 1989 and 1991 with Alex
Garside. She was Britain's first female TV Sports Presenter.
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