Welcome to our April Newsletter.

Ray Pitman

Ray’s funeral is on Friday 5th May in Somerton, Somerset.  Further details are available from the club office.

Au revoir

In recent weeks we said goodbye to two of Tyrell’s BTF coaching team:  Chris Stringer and Jezz Baker.

Chris and Jezz had both been with the club for some time.  Chris in particular, having coached at our club for nearly 30 years, and his likeable personality and skills rightly gained him loyal customers and friends.  They will both be much missed.

Chris is still coaching in the area, as Club Coach at Wendover and school coach at Beechwood Park school.  Jezz has been appointed to his first Head Coach role, at High Wycombe; although he will continue at our club in a part-time role for the time being.

More details about BTF are in the new ‘Spotlight on…’ feature at the end of this newsletter.

AGM minutes

We hold our AGM in February each year.  We recently circulated the minutes.

If you didn’t read them then, why not take 5 mins to do so today [link].  We’d like to think they’re informative reading about the operations of the club.

Broadwater

The pot-holes have been filled by DBC!  

And, for the first time in living memory it was unprompted and without months of wrangling over who pays (mindful that Broadwater is a private road, not adopted by the Council).

Painter and decorator?

Our resident painter and decorator, Terry Wilson, has recently moved from the area.

Do we have any members who do painting and decorating?  If so, please contact Susannah or Vicky in the Club Office.  It’s nice to be able to call on a member for the occasional bit of brightening-up brushwork that is required around the club (for which we’ll pay the going rate).

Tennis

We’ve done brilliantly to get into Div 1 of the national league, but we’re now up against elite tennis clubs with deeper resources.  Nonetheless, it is bringing the most amazing standard of tennis to the club.

We have two home matches coming soon.  Whether you are a tennis player or a squash/racketball player, why not come down to the club and enjoy a brilliant afternoon:

Sunday 7th May vs Cumberland 

Sunday 14th May vs Roehampton

The bar will be open, great food will be available, and we’re pretty sure the sun will be shining.  Come and enjoy the best beer garden in Berko!

For the rest of us mere mortals, the draws for the 2023 Club Champs have been published, culminating in Finals Day on Saturday 24th June.

Squash and Racketball

And here’s another reason to make sure Sunday 14th May is in your calendar for a family trip to the club.

It’s Club Finals Day for squash and racketball - it’s going to be Super Sunday at our place!

Then on Saturday 27th May we’re going to be holding the annual John Cheshire Doubles afternoon.  Always good fun and all about the taking part rather than the outcome; all players of all standards are welcome.  Pencil it into your calendar - details coming soon.

Are you a tennis player who could be tempted to try either racketball or squash?

Why not come along to either Racketball Lunchtime, 12 to 1pm every Thursday, or Women’s Evening, 7.30 to 8.30pm every Wednesday.  Simply bring some non-marking trainers; rackets and balls are provided - and a coach to show you how to do it.  Just £7 a session - contact Adam if interested adam@best-academy.co.uk

Social

Pizza Fridays are back! 

With Junior Tennis Night ramping up again for the Summer, the club is once again the place to be in Berko for young families on a Friday evening.  Or anyone for that matter.

Have a drink, have a pizza, the weekend is here!

Come and join us on Friday 5th May

to kick start the Bank Holiday weekend in celebration of King Charles’ Coronation.

As well as the usual delicious pizzas, the menu will include a special Coronation Chicken Burger and a Great British Bar Snacks Grazing Board.  And the bar will be serving a special Earl Grey Martini!

A reminder that, whilst the club is open every day of the year other than Christmas Day, we don’t open the bar on Bank Holidays and we allow our locking-up volunteers to close the clubhouse a bit earlier than usual, so they too can have an evening off.  There are 3x BH Mondays coming up in May.

Spotlight on… BTF

Introducing a new section to the newsletter, where each month we’ll take a brief closer look at one part of the operations of our club or the people involved in delivering those operations.  It’s our version of bite-size ‘explainers’, which seems to be a new word in the BBC vocabulary.

In this first edition we tell you a little bit more about Tyrell Diaz Stevens, Director of Evolve Tennis Ltd trading as Berkhamsted Tennis & Fitness, i.e. BTF.

In 2020 we outsourced our tennis coaching programme to BTF.

Our in-house coaching had been very successful but there were several different components and various trading entities involved, and it needed a bit of a restructure and simplification.

Tyrell had been coaching at the club since 2008 under the Berkhamsted Elite Tennis Academy (BETA) banner.  He was awarded the new contract and BTF began, with full responsibility for providing our coaching programme and for employing and managing the coaches to deliver the programme.

So, who is the man behind BTF?

Tyrell hails from Sydney, Australia, although his father (Diaz) is from Chile and his mother (Stevens) is from New Zealand.

His father was a professional footballer who subsequently took up tennis, and Tyrell had a racket in his hand as soon as he could walk - and from the age of 5 could be found on the tennis courts more often than not.  He was top 10 in Australia throughout the junior age groups - going professional was the natural progression.

From 18, Tyrell was touring in Europe during the Australian off-season.  After a few years, however, the economic realities of life on a pro sports tour became an increasingly daunting prospect and Tyrell decided to embark on a coaching career.  Initially in Hemel Hempstead, where he had a playing contact.

It was there that he met his wife, Maddie.  Maddie is a Marketing Executive for Hult International Business Schools (Ashridge House is one of their sites) and a former world top 5 junior player.  [Maddie, if you ever decide to pick up a racket again, BTF do a very good rusty rackets session.]

Tyrell and Maddie have 2 children, Ashely and Logan.

Then, 3 years later in 2008, Tyrell came over to our club, initially because some of his players wanted to practice on indoor courts for the increasing number of indoor events on the tour calendar.

And that’s where the story loops back into the above.  End of Spotlight on… edition 1.

That’s all for now, until next month.

Club Council

(John Shaw, Michael Beavis, Phil Trimmer, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock)