HUW WAUCHOPE 

When I wrote the tribute to Huw there was no trace of him on the web. But since then I have had a number of emails from old friends of Huw’s with their own reminiscences. They are reprinted here after my words about Huw. Thanks Mike and Anthony. Also Dave, Sam and Russell. Thanks also to Chris who sent me a photo of a very young Huw looking like a fifth member of the Beatles. Finally there’s a super reminiscence from Mandy who wrote to me recently on the anniversary of Huw’s death. Thank you everyone.

I recently googled the name “Huw Wauchope” and nothing appeared. And this is madness, because Huw Wauchope was a legendary figure. He told me once how his father would shake hands with him as a child, having said “Let me shake the hand of a great man!” And Huw’s dad was right. Huw was indeed a great man.I first met Huw twenty-eight years ago at a VW tournament in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington. Huw was running the tournament, an unlikely referee, and also a competitor. He had a zero rating (under a different LTA system in use at the time) and was desperate to move into the minuses. On the next run he went up a rating, but the LTA changed the system, dropping everyone back by 2, making him a +2/6 who never again reached zero. Which summed up Huw’s tennis career in some ways.Huw was a Shropshire county player who loved tennis. He also loved life, and to party, and was, at various times, heavily into drugs. He was previously a student at Middlesex Poly where they had a college tennis programme under John Watson at the indoor courts in Tottenham. I later bought a flat nearby in Durban Road. It turned out that Huw had squatted at 3 different houses in that one street.As long as I knew him, Huw never paid rent. He always lived in squats. He was unique in the way he transcended two universes - a squat-living drug-taking underclass and the slightly snooty (at that time) world of tennis. Huw was a funny guy. He would bounce into a room. People loved him, and his exhuberent personality. He was a character.We would play a lot of tennis together, hitting a minimum of twice a week. In those days it wasn’t so easy to find other players of a similar standard to hit with, and we became regular practice partners, and good friends.Huw was reasonably straight with drugs by then, although he clearly still experimented. Once he told me the secret of a successful life - Class A drugs only at weekends. But along with his desire to improve at tennis he began to train much more seriously. Although even then, on one occasion, having lost the 1st set, he suddenly launched his racquet into the fence and began swearing loudly. He explained that he had fallen off the wagon recently and wasn’t able to concentrate, and was incredibly disappointed in himself.Huw was a man of great enthusiasms. Tennis was his positive addiction and saved him for a while. But other demons lurked around the corner.The Nationals were played in Telford in those days. Huw’s mum lived nearby although she was on holiday that week. This was where Huw had grown up, but a professional to the end, Huw didn’t get in touch with anyone, just went to play the tournament. Unfortunately, having lost his first match, he spent the whole night partying in his mum’s lounge with friends, doing whole piles of drugs, music blaring, whilst I tried to sleep for my match the next day. Huw said to me once, “Tennis has caused me more pain than anything in my life.” But it wasn’t true - for a while tennis saved him. But when he didn’t achieve his ambitions in tennis, the demons reclaimed him. Huw had a very long-term girlfriend. Clearly they had a good relationship but Huw seemed to have a casual attitude to life that was epitomised by his regular trips away, culminating in a six month trip to the hills of India in order to find himself. When he returned his girlfriend was with someone else, and Huw was inconsolable.From here Huw went downhill fast. He had been coaching before India at a good club called Grafton, but now he didn’t do so much. The last time I saw him was at Clissold Park. I drove over and gave him some old tennis balls to use for his coaching. I remember he was extremely hyper and couldn’t stay still. Clearly he was in a bit of trouble, but he was moving back into a different world from the one I inhabited and it seemed like I’d lost a tennis practice partner.Someone phoned me a few weeks later - a mutual friend. Huw had been arrested in Amsterdam carrying drugs and sentenced to a month in a Dutch jail. The day before release he had been acting strangely and was transferred to the prison hospital. It was there that he hung himself.At the time there was a rather pointless personal crisis that kept me from the funeral, but I was told that it was a truly moving event, with huge numbers from both sides of Huw’s world - the middle-class tennis world and the hippy, dope-smoking squatter - all there to celebrate a unique character.People shouldn’t be forgotten, so I thought I’d add this here on my website. So that if anyone googles Huw’s name in future at least it won’t come up empty.Anyway, I haven’t captured Huw’s unique personality. But he was a really good bloke, a larger than life character , someone that would make a whole room lighter just by walking into it. And if he was a troubled guy too, the Iggy Pop of tennis, then this was all just part of what he was. A great man!So, RIP Huw Wauchope. It must be nearly twenty years now. You’re still missed.

Other reminiscences of Huwbert!From Mike:Greetings,I'm writing because I'm planning to visit England soon and I ran across the name Huw Wauchope in my address book from 25 years ago. I decided to look him up online but found only your eulogy to him. I don't know for sure if it's the same guy, but it seems 99% likely. The Huw I knew shared a house with me when he lived, briefly, in California, as a student. That was around 1982-3. He was pretty jaded about most things, but not tennis. It was one thing he was really into. In 1984 I visited him in London with my girlfriend, and experienced the squatter lifestyle for a day or two. We then took the train up to Shrewsbury, where his parents lived (perhaps still do), and hung out with him, drinking heroically at night and stumbling back home in the dark. I remember he fouled his mothers' living room carpet after one such outing... quite shocking to me, and he seemed to feel miserable about it the next day, but not so much that he'd change his behaviour. His mother, Joan, was very patient with him.While in California he had a haircut that could be described as a wide mohawk, he had a passionate hatred of shirt with collars (for some reason), and he seemed to idolize Marc Bolan of T-Rex. He was very funny, with a sense of humor so dry it could desiccate a watermelon... Once, I asked him what he thought of the group Queen and he said, "They have wide appeal", which must have been about the harshest remark he could think of for a band. He enjoyed getting stoned, but I don't recall that he was drinking so much at that point. He only stayed with us for about 5 months, and then we visited with him in England about two years later... while we were there, he couldn't help himself and stole a bottle of wine that I'd brought from California as a gift for someone, and though he paid some money for it the next day, the mood had changed and we left him to travel elsewhere.My memory of Huw is that he was very intelligent, funny, sensitive, and unhappy. He didn't seem to know why he was unhappy (or maybe depressed), and that probably made it worse. I'm pretty sure the Huw you knew is the same guy that I knew, and I'm sad to hear of his death, especially under those circumstances. It makes me wonder what he was carrying around inside all those years... Thanks for posting the memorial.Regards, Mike G