tennishistory.com.au

Only this week, someone sent me an ad for the Chesterfield racquets and in the fine print was a company I hadn’t even noticed before, owned by Best & Gee York St. Sydney. As half the battle is being a diligent P I, I jumped on the phone to a company which today is still owned by B&G. Today the owner rang me and filled me in on some quick history about the company which startedin 1923 using Canadian Ash. It wound down in the mid 1970’s so the brand has enjoyed a great following in Australia. Learn more on the website www.tennishistory.com.au

Since the brand was Sydney based you will probably find more examples up there than in Melbourne. If you own a couple, please send down some pics. Product catalogues would be fantastic to help identify a models list.

Having grown up with wooden racquets I can still remember the day that I saw my first T2000. With looks not dissimilar to the a Terminator robot sent from the future here was a racquet which just looked so cool. No string holes like conventional woodies. Flashing glints in the sunshine all made any player wielding such a weapon feel a little taller, a little faster and the shots a lot more accurate. Metal had arrived…and it could not be stopped. They were soon everywhere and being virtually indestructible, many are still available today. To be a little different my move into the new age came in the form of Yonex Gold 7500. Not many people had seen these and afterall they looked more valuable being gold and had a great shape. My racquet always looked new because indeed it was. A big serve and power game was no match for the welding on the shoulders and the poor distributor honouring the 12 month warranty ruefully handed over racquet after racquet. Whilst build quality was an issue I confess that my first YY8500 looked a true piece of beauty in that shiny green livery that finally matched the wonderful lawn courts Kooyong delivered. Just last month after 4 years looking, I finally found a really nice condition example which now hangs on the wall…..Anyone else enjoyed the love affair? …… Rod

It could take a long time sitting in a library searching for articles about tennis in newspapers from the mid 1870’s. Well thanks to a National Library initiative, there is now an online search engine with a key word search that isolates articles, headings, text and ads. Consequently, we have found some wonderful reference material in the form of ads to include on the site. A huge benefit of this material is that we can identify makes and models being sold by retailers prior to the development of the local industry and those produced locally. We have loaded some on the www.tennishistory.com.au website to provide a visual time warp back to earlier times. Check out racquet retailing in particular for informative display ads. http://tennishistory.com.au/equipment/racquets/racquet-retailing.html

See the national Library site at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home and explore Australian Tennis History or any other subject as it was written at the time.

Cheers Rod

Interesting Shaped Racquets Rackets

Hi Everyone, I am interested if anyone remembers playing with any of these racquets. Personally I remember hitting with the Snauwert Ergonom.

Did anyone play with that double hander?? That looks really interesting. What about that bent handled one.

How did they play? What worked and didn’t work? Was it hard to serve with but great on ground strokes? Tell us leave a comment.

You can see the full article of all Interesting Shaped Racquets on the site at this link. There are some great close up photos !

Actually there is one on the site called Maynard Air Racquet. It looks like you use a bike pump to lock the strings into the frame of the racquet.

Also there is one “Blackburne Double String” which has 2 sets of strings on each side of the frame. Imaging stringing it. The first side would be ok but what about the second side!

Did anyone ever use play or string that racquet?

Enjoy Michael

Tennis History Australia tennishistory.com.au

Well after many months of hard work http://tennishistory.com.au has finally gone live !!

Backing it up we have created this blog. We aim to use this blog to talk about interesting items, maybe if you remember using any racquets, watching any matches, meeting tennis heros etc.

Please feel free to contact us with any suggestions on topics and enjoy the site.

Rod and I worked hard to gather content and create a dynamic web site that we can extend daily.

Subscribe to the RSS feed to never miss an article on this blog. RSS is not too scary. It basically looks at our site, and automatically emails you any new articles it finds.

Simple !

Michael