It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Welcome to our final newsletter of 2024.

Our opening hours for the holiday season have been issued - Christmas Day is the only day in the year when the clubhouse is closed.  Elvis has appeared at the club for a very blue Christmas.  Waitrose car park is gridlocked at most times of the day.  And the heating is on the blink - apologies it’s so cold in the clubhouse. Our plumbers are on the case working through the usual suspects to get to the root cause. We hope to have the place feeling toastie for you ASAP.

Time for a brief reflection on the past 12 months, and a sneak peek into 2025.

Looking back on 2024

We’ve been making more improvements all around the club; some small, some material:

1. Refurb of tennis courts 10-12, where the playing surface was worn out and had become treacherous.
2. Included within that scope:  upgrade to LED floodlighting; safer and neater step entrance to court 10; retaining wall on the far side of court 12 to prevent mud slides; and improved footpath lighting alongside court 12.
3. Redecoration of the entrance lobby and players’ bar, from the utilitarian bare brick decor that had been in place since the current clubhouse opened in 1998.
4. Included within that scope:  a third (and final) set of bifold doors from the terrace to the clubhouse; a breakfast bar looking out to our show courts with charging points for mobiles/tablets/laptops; a painting and short bio of the club, mirroring the artist’s work at the station (have you seen this month’s Berkhamsted News page 40?!); a doorbell for non-members / those without their fobs; and a new tennis ball recycling bin, to replace the cardboard version - and not to be used for general rubbish please.  Before and after photo montage attached - please excuse the mugshot.
5. Club signage on squash courts 1 and 2, foam rollers and stretch mats for warm-ups, and a Dunlop racket display cabinet to 'try before you buy’.
6. Upgraded sunken driveway lights alongside court 6a to better illuminate walking to/from the car park.
7. CCTV cameras added to the club car park, removing a significant blind spot in our CCTV coverage.
8. Various repairs to fix the water ingress issues in the clubhouse roof (done) and the ITC (being done).
9. Upgraded SkyTV, with independent feeds to each of our big screen TVs; auxiliary speakers for when we have a full clubhouse at major sporting events; and enabled mirroring of phones/tablets to the lounge TV for squash and tennis subscription channels.
10. Drinking water tap between tennis courts 9 and 10.

That’s a decent list!  We’ll keep nudging things forward on all fronts.

Looking forwards to 2025

The major project next year will be the modernisation of squash courts 3 and 4 to glass backwalls, giving us a continuous run of 6 glassback courts.

We’ll be meeting with court contractors and builders in January to begin planning and scheduling the work.

For tennis, we’ll be doing some follow-up work to the court 10-12 project, to improve the fencing at the far corner of court 12 and tidy up the pathway at the other corner of court 12, and we’re looking at upgrading the floodlights on courts 1-3 and 6a, giving us LED lighting on all outdoor and indoor courts (other than tennis court 6b, which is unlit).

In the clubhouse, we’ll be painting the lounge, now that the rain leaks have been resolved, and it’s also high time we made some improvements to the ladies toilets.

And online we’ll be launching a refreshed website (front-end landing and navigation pages - phase 1) and reviewing our back-end systems (for potential phase 2).

To hear more about the club, please come along to the 2025 AGM on Monday 3rd February in the main lounge, everyone is welcome - a date for your new calendar!

Season’s greetings

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year to all our members and everyone connected to the club!

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank you all for supporting our club in 2024.  With special thanks to my fellow Council and Committee members for their enormous voluntary work on all our behalf; the fantastic volunteers who run the box leagues, teams, tournaments, club nights and organised sessions; our excellent office managers and groundsman; our brilliant coaching team; and our fabulous bar and catering team.  Without you, we would not be the club we are!

Until next month and next year, that’s all for now!

John Shaw

Chair, BLT&SRC