Club Newsletter - August 2023 | |
August 16th, 2023 | |
You will have seen the opinion survey landing in your email inbox. 10 questions requiring just a few minutes of your time to complete. | |
You will have seen the opinion survey landing in your email inbox. 10 questions requiring just a few minutes of your time to complete. Please do it, including a few sentences to accompany your ratings. We would love to hear from as close to everyone as possible.
We will review all the responses and report back to you on the results in due course.
We won’t put a deadline on it just yet - let’s see how rapid the response rate is.
Club Code of Conduct
We have updated our Code of Conduct. It can be found here on the club website.
Most of you were probably unaware - or had forgotten - that we have a Code of Conduct. It’s the sort of thing that gets put on a shelf to gather dust but, in fact, it’s actually a useful list of the club’s do’s and don’ts to be found in one place.
Although it may not be this Summer’s most popular reading material spotted poolside, it's worth a quick read. And it’s only 3 pages.
The second page comprises the Tennis Court Etiquette for the club. We’ve now included a section in here regarding Spectators.
This season’s National League matches attracted a couple of hundred people watching, as did Finals Day, and everyone joined in with their vocal support and encouragement. Which is fantastic. The NL competitors will be used to that sort of environment; our club finalists won’t be. So, while refreshing the Code of Conduct, we thought for completeness on etiquette we ought to add this section.
Tennis
The Rebo Wall has been delivered and they’re coming back shortly to do the installation so we’re ready to go with it next week.
Coming soon is a Club Handicap Tournament to be launched in October. Details dropping shortly.
We’ve got the National League final in Bournemouth on the weekend of 8th - 10th September, at The West Hants Club. The pinnacle of the LTA’s club league system and we’re in the finals weekend for the top 8 clubs in the country! See the ‘Spotlight on’ item below for a more in-depth look at who will be playing for us. We will be taking some travelling fans - everyone welcome - but, for those unable to be there, matches will also be streamed live on the Tennis Channel.
Looking (much) further ahead, a number of you are already asking about the date for next year’s Club Finals Day, to protect the day in their calendar. Saturday 22nd June: commit to it now!
Finally, do you remember that there was a film crew at the club around this time last year? Well we can now reveal all. We were a location setting for the new Amazon Prime tennis drama series Fifteen-Love starring Aidan Turner. Unfortunately it’s a case of blink and you’ll miss us, but we have made it to the silver screen!
Squash and Racketball
The new season is imminent. Time to get going again if you’ve not been playing much over the Summer, or ramp things up a notch if you’ve just kept your game ticking over.
The ever popular start-of-season Squash Fun Evening will be on Friday 22nd September. All standards are welcome, with participants split into graded groups for round-robin games. Look out for the email from Richard Carr and Gill Trimmer.
For the more serious minded, there are three local tournaments scheduled for the start of the season and it would be great to have a strong Berko contingent involved: the Tring 3 Counties Masters Open 8th - 10th September; the South of England Masters at Nuffield St Albans 29th September - 1st October; and the Herts County Closed 6th - 8th October venue tba (usually Radlett). Details can be found on the Herts squash website www.hertssquash.co.uk.
Social
The return of Quiz Night on 20th September! Details to follow soon...
Plus the Rugby World Cup starts in just over 3 weeks, and we’ll be showing all the key matches on our big screen.
Club Open Day
The second of our two annual Open Days will be on Sunday 24th September.
Do you know anyone who may be interested in joining? Someone who could be tempted to return to tennis/squash/racketball, or to give it a go as a beginner, and enjoy the social camaraderie of our club?
Suggest they pop down and we’ll show them around and they can ‘try before they buy’: courts and equipment will be available for them.
Spotlight on… our National League tennis team
The format is the same as most club matches: 4 singles matches followed by 2 doubles matches; generally, but not necessarily, the same 4 players pairing up for the doubles.
We have fielded a pool of just 7 players to get to the finals, and we hope to take them all for the trip to Bournemouth. With back-to-back matches on Friday and Saturday, plus Sunday if we make it through to the grand final, we need to have cover for injuries and fatigue.
So, who are our Magnificent Seven? Who’s Steve McQueen and who’s Scamper the dog? (Actually, that’s The Secret Seven, which is something else altogether, but you get the drift).
Good luck guys!
That’s all for now, until next time. Get ready for a busy September!
Club Council (John Shaw, Phil Trimmer, Michael Beavis, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock, Matt Markwort) |