Summer has truly arrived and the club is at its best, with it’s large terrace and lawn, views of the tennis courts, and open plan lounge and bar. Read on for our June newsletter...

Summer has truly arrived and the club is at its best, with it’s large terrace and lawn, views of the tennis courts, and open plan lounge and bar; and it’s great to see all the indoor and outdoor courts busy most times of the day and, in the evening, so many of you staying for a post-match drink and chat.

Club Survey

We’re conscious that, whilst we run the club to the best of our ability and time availability, other than the AGM and our own individual conversations with members, we don’t get that much feedback from our membership.  We’d like to tap into your thoughts, expectations and aspirations for the club.

So, we’re putting together a brief members’ opinion survey, which we’ll probably do on an annual basis.  Please look out for for this and take just a few minutes to respond; not least the freeform sections where you can enlarge on what you’d like to see and where we may be able to do better.  Your opinions are vital to us and we will report out to you on all points raised.

Tennis

The club champs are now getting to the business end of the events, heading into semi-finals evening for singles on Wednesday this week and doubles on Thursday from 6pm, and culminating in Finals Day on Saturday from 10.30am.

The kitchen will be open from 6pm on Wednesday and Thursday night and on Saturday between 12pm-4pm, with cakes, pasties and coffee etc. from 10am.

Do come along to support and enjoy the occasion - who will be immortalised on the honours boards this year?

Our National League team are through to the play-offs!  Another excellent win at home in our final league match, once more superbly well attended, took us to 4th place in Division 1 behind the strongest (and biggest) 3 clubs in the country.  The top team automatically qualify for the championship finals, with the next 3 teams fighting it out in the play-offs.

The play-off draw is on 27th June, when we will know who we play and whether it is home or away, with the match to be played on Saturday 22nd July.

If we win that, the championship finals are in Bournemouth on the weekend of 8th - 10th September.

Squash

The next major event looming on our squash calendar is our PSA Challenger Tour pro squash tournament, the 2023 Berkhamsted Linksap Open, in just 2 weeks’ time from Thursday 6th - Sunday 9th July.

Tickets are on sale now from John Shaw, £15 adults, £5 U18s:  email john.gs@btinternet.com or message 07775 542712

Please come along - your support is a vital part of being able to bring world class squash to our local club and to continue to run this event each year.

21 of the 32 players (16 person draws in each of the men’s and women’s open) are world top 150 - it will be a fantastic tournament!

Welfare Officer

We are very pleased to announce that Sarah Markwort has agreed to take over from Carolyn Parry.

Carolyn has held the role for 15 years and has done an amazing job for the club - thank-you Carolyn!

This is a hugely important and mandatory role for the club and we are delighted that Sarah has agreed to take up the position.

Facilities

New bifolds are in the lounge and the car park improvements have been done.  Two relatively small projects that should make a big difference, particularly the car park.

Next up is the refurb of the ladies showers, commencing on Monday 10th July.

Then we will be turning our attention to the big project for 2024:  the overhaul of tennis courts 10 - 12.  The playing surface on those courts is reaching its end-of-life and the lighting system is from a bygone era.  That will complete the wholesale refurb of all of our outside courts over the past 6 years.

We will bring the proposal to you at an SGM to be held later this year, with a view to commencing the work in February when Winter is largely behind us and the weather is more conducive to groundworks and surface laying.

Spotlight on… BEST Academy

So far, we’ve thrown the spotlight on our two outsourced business partners:  Tyrell and BTF who provide our tennis coaching programme; and Claire, Graham and Isalie who provide our bar, catering and event management services.

This month we look at Adam Fuller who runs the BEST Academy for our squash coaching programme:

Adam became our head squash coach on a self-employed basis in 2010, succeeding Pete Cheshire when Pete moved to Italy.  Although Adam was progressing steadily through the rankings as a professional player at the time (including wins against Ryan Cuskelly and Tom Richards, who both went on to become world top 15 players), he was already spending a fair proportion of his time coaching across Hertfordshire to supplement the meagre earnings of a pro squash player, and the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Adam was running around squash courts ever since he was a toddler, when his Dad cut an old wooden racket down to size for him to use (there were no junior rackets in those days).  At that time he could regularly be found at the Knebworth club and Herts Country Club where his Dad played.

Then from about the age of 10 he really started to progress and was in the national top 3 at every age group through to Under 19s.  In fact, for the latter part of his junior days, he was based at Berkhamsted and coached by Pete.

Adam then went to Sheffield University to do a Sports and Business degree, and was a regular player for the Hallamshire club alongside Nick Matthew (who went on to be world #1).

While he was at Sheffield, he met his wife to be, Gemma.  Adam and Gemma now have 2 children, Amelie and Ben.

After Uni, Adam and Gemma lived in Potters Bar and Adam split his time between Berkhamsted, where he trained under Pete with Chris Ryder, and the Potters Bar club where Paul Carter ran a training group comprising among others Pete Barker, Daryl Selby (both reach world top 10) and Adrian Waller (world top 20).

These days, Adam is recognised as one of the leading squash coaches in the country and juggles 4 roles.  Primarily, he is our head squash and racketball coach.  As part of that role, he is also the squash coach to Berkhamsted School, where squash is now well established on the sports curriculum.  Adam is also the England Junior National Coach, leading the coaching set-up for all age groups up to U17.  Finally, thanks to Adam, we are 1 of 5 England Squash Performance Hubs to whom pro players eligible for funding by Team England are directed, and Adam (often aided by Carts) is the coach to a group of pro players at our club, among whom are Adrian Waller and our own Grace Gear (world number 52).

Although squash is not the burgeoning sport it was 40 years ago, it remains vibrant here.  Indeed, our club has become increasingly higher profile in the squash community in recent years and that is in no small part due to the work of Adam.

That’s all for now, until next month.  Look out for the Club Survey landing soon, and please take a few minutes to have your say.

Club Council

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