Kenton Lawn Tennis Club

MARCH

Membership for the 2022/23 season commencing April 1st is now open.   Please click on "Membership" for more details.

After a 2+ year hiatus, we are pleased that our popular quiz night will be returning on Saturday May 14th hosted by Peter and Gail.   Further details on how to book your table will be provided nearer the time.

Our new  ultra-claytex courts are being installed from March 28th , with courts 4,5,6  out of action for ~two weeks  followed by courts 1,2,3. 

JANUARY

Another year has started but we don’t hibernate for winter and plenty of things are still going on!

The AGM appointed our committee for 2022.  Welcome to two new faces: Kinjal as Secretary and Andrew as Coaching representative and a big thank you to Sona who leaves the committee after several years as Secretary.  We’ve also established a new sub-committee to focus on social tennis, member engagements and events.   This is led by Gail and includes Bharti, Helen, Kishan, Mush, Naina, Nickesh, Shivani, Shauncy & Sona.

Key dates for members’ diaries are:

• Family Event - Saturday 26th February
• Spring Party – Easter Monday 18th April 2022 (this event replaces the Christmas Party we had planned)
• Martin Galvin tournament – Sunday 17th July 2022
• Finals Day (all club tournaments) – Saturday 10th September 2022
• AGM – Sunday 27th November 2022

Other dates still to be set includes a quiz night, grounds day and open days.

The court refurbishment, replacing all 6 courts with a new ultra-claytex surface, should now take place once the weather warms up and we hope this will be complete before the summer season starts. More details will be communicated once we get a firm date from our contractor.

The third round of the Kenton Singles Box League has just been launched under Naima’s supervision.  Congratulations to Lionel who narrowly beat Mateo in the final of the previous round.

Off the court, Friday night social table tennis has been a big hit both for juniors and adults under Hussein’s leadership and with Mateo’s assistance.   Watch out for further details shortly!

The Friday night darts league is also starting again between different sections of the club.  It’s more of a social event than competition and no skill is required – if you can hit the board that’s fine!  Please let Gail know if you would like to play for the tennis section darts team.

Finally, a reminder that social tennis is from 3pm-5.30pm on Sundays and from 7pm until the lights go out on Wednesday’s.   We have “organisers” for most these sessions who will mix people up and try and ensure everyone gets good games so please come along.

OCTOBER

The winter months are approaching but that doesn’t mean the tennis activity slows down!  The singles box league is now in full swing with over 70 entrants – big thank you to Naina for organising it – and we have lots of teams (adult, junior and vets) entered into Middlesex winter tournaments. 

Shavani is organising our Christmas event and received lots of positive responses from the survey form so this is going ahead on Saturday December 18th.   Auditions for Santa Claus will start shortly!

Our annual Martin Galvin Trophy will be played on Saturday November 20th at 1.30pm (Sarper will send out more details on how to enter before the event) followed by our Tennis AGM at 4.30pm.  

This will be our first AGM for two years and we’d really appreciate your support.   The agenda includes the election of the committee.  Over the last 2 years we’ve had a massive amount of change due to the pandemic but have come through it strongly with the growth in membership from ~180 at the start of this year to 337 members today.    This has taken a huge amount of effort from the committee and others who nearly all have full time jobs and do everything on a voluntary basis.  We urgently need new blood to make this sustainable, including a few positions on the committee (e.g. Secretary) and other activities such as organising our social media communications/website, captaining teams, helping out with junior tennis, organising social tennis, grounds maintenance and helping out at social events or behind the bar.   If you can get more involved or would just like more information please talk to one of the committee or e-mail us on [email protected].

One piece of bad news is that the resurfacing of our courts planned for this month is now delayed until Spring.  This is hugely frustrating for all of us, and especially for Steve and the team who have been driving the project.  Our contractor has hit significant supply chain problems that have delayed the work and this cannot be carried out in winter months as the temperature has to be above 10 degrees for the glue attached the surface to the hard court underneath to work. 

SEPTEMBER

Finals day on Sept 11th went superbly: great weather, excellent tennis, our first "al fresco" trophy presentationn evening under the floodlights, good food and to the bar afterwards to watch Emma Raducanu win the US Open.   Big thank you to Lucy as our tournament organiser, supported by Helen (juniors) and Peter (vets).  Congratulations to our many champions across 20+ finals in different categories: see 2021 tournament results for all the results.   Well done especially to Aamir for his 13th Men's singles title and Devmini for picking up her first adult title with Alison in the the Ladies Doubles.

JUNE 26TH

It’s fantastic to see so many new members (we’ve recruited around 120 since April) and old members packing the courts.  Please do your best to welcome and integrate our new members.   Our membership is now higher than it has ever been and approaching 300 with about half of those juniors.  The summer season league season will be over shortly (by early August) which will free up much more court space.  The club tournaments (all 22 categories) are well underway and we encourage everyone to play their matches promptly so everything keeps on course for Finals Day on Saturday September 11th.

New courts & funding

As most members will have observed, our court surface is in urgent need of renewal with the carpet coming apart on several courts despite regular gluing down.  The courts have been excellent but they are well beyond their anticipated life span.  We’ve had a small sub-group of members visiting different clubs and sampling different surfaces and have shortlisted and are getting quotes for two surfaces.

Our original intention was to replace courts 1-3 last year until Covid intervened.  Since then we’ve also seen Court 4 wearing badly and therefore our strong preference is to replace all 6 courts if we can find the funding.   We have over the years accumulated a significant sinking fund for capital projects that can cover resurfacing courts 1-3 but we still need to raise significant additional money to cover the remaining courts.

Middlesex Tennis had been providing interest free loans that we had hoped to access but we’ve spoken to them and they cannot offer  anything now due to a big drop in their sponsorship income because of the pandemic.  The Lawn Tennis Association as a policy will only make funds available for new developments, rather than replacing existing facilities, so they are not a funding option either.  

Hence we are hoping some of our members can help out by taking out a longer term membership offer.  To be precise:

• Members can take a 4 year adult membership for £1000. 
• For reference the standard (non-Covid adjusted) annual fee is £260 and would probably be inflated a bit over a 4 year period – so you may save a bit of money but the bigger benefit is you’ll have lovely new courts to play on!  
• This is effective from April 2022 to April 2026. 
• We would offer refunds if you move away from the area or had a serious long term injury during this period.

We fully appreciate that many members will not have the financial means or wish to support this: there is absolutely no expectation that you individually will.   However, if you are in a position where you are able and happy to help please can you e-mail [email protected] with “4-Court” in the subject, indicating if you would be likely to take up this membership (and if you have more than one adult in your household for how many people).  There is no firm commitment at this stage, we just want to gauge how money much we can raise by this means to confirm if we can refurbish all 6 courts.