Club News

Summer American Tournament

Our next American tournament is the summer event, scheduled for Sunday 28th June, so look out for the invitation if you would like to try your luck. These are very sociable events, with a mixed standard of play, and entrants are paired in a random draw to keep matches as even as possible.

Quiz Night

The Club Quiz Night took place on Saturday 16th May at St John’s Church, Knoll Rise in Orpington, with 8 teams competing for prizes and bragging rights! The quiz was challenging - given the cryptic nature of many of the clues set by Jane Wells - and the event was superbly run by Dave and Sue Leonard. Our thanks to them for producing a very entertaining evening.

Special mentions to Jan Whitehead for organising the raffle, plus tea and cake; and also to Peter Sargent, who played the two music rounds for us on electric piano. Congratulations to the winning team - The Howlers - and thanks to all our competitors for helping to raise over £600 for the club.

Coaching

As you may recall from previous updates, we now have access to a professional coach, and he has offered to run both group coaching sessions and 1to1 coaching for club members. His name is Josh Brown and he is a fully qualified Level 4 LTA coach. If you are interested in improving your game, you can contact Josh direct to arrange a session - contact details available from Jan or David.

Meanwhile, the first programme of group sessions has just finished and the feedback was very positive indeed. Everyone who took part thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and we were all impressed by Josh’s knowledge, his clear directions in the sessions, and his down to earth way of sharing hints and tips on doubles strategy and court position.

We are planning to run a second programme of group coaching in late June and early July, this time on a Friday night. If you are interested in joining in the sessions, particularly those who couldn’t make the Thursday nights, let Jan know and she will add you to the coaching WhatsApp group.

Club Tournaments

The draw for this years' Club Tournaments took place on Saturday 25th April and the match ties and schedule are now up in the Clubhouse. Sue has also setup a WhatsApp group (FTC Tournament 2026) for all the participants and circulated the draws. So there's no excuse not to get those matches organised!

The Ladies Singles, Ladies Doubles, Men's Doubles and Mixed Doubles are all underway now, so if you haven't played yet, get in touch with your partner and opponents and get those dates in the diary. The first two rounds of matches should all be played by the end of June.

A summary of the Tournament rules have been shared on the WhatsApp group and the full Tournament rules for match play can be found on the Matches page on the website.

Please email your results to the Tournament Organiser, Sue Leonard at susanleonard@sky.com

Club Matches

We have arranged 8 friendly matches so far, with the possibility of a few more to follow. We need four players per team for each of the matches so, if you are interested in getting involved, please contact Kuniko Sato for the Ladies Doubles and Brian Keegan for the Men’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles.

Our next fixtures are in June, so there is plenty of time to get involved.

Further contact details are available on the Matches page of the website, together with an up to date fixture list, with dates and venues.

Court Re-surfacing

In case you missed the previous updates, our court re-surfacing suppliers, ETC Sports, returned to the courts on 27th April and completed the cosmetic repairs we agreed. They used a process of heat treatments to make a series of successful repairs to the cosmetic cracks using hot-lay tarmac. They also undertook a cosmetic repair to the net post on court 3, although we realise we may have to replace this at some time in the future.

Note that our suppliers advised we should be lowering the nets even further than we have been doing after play. If the nets are not lowered sufficiently, they apply too much tension to the net posts, which can contribute to the damage we sometimes see in the court surfaces around the posts. Please lower the nets to half the normal height when you leave the courts.

American Tournaments

Dates for the American Tournaments are as follows and details for each will be sent out prior to the event.

Summer American - 28th June
Autumn American - 20th September
Mince Pie American - to be decided