The Legana Tennis Club celebrated its 100th Anniversary with a cocktail party in Riverside on 22 June 2024. Patrons from the club and wider tennis community attended this wonderful celebration of the club. Learn more about the history of the club below.
The club started in 1924 on land donated by Bernard Atkinson. The theme of volunteer labour started then and has never stopped. Volunteer sweat and tears were added in abundance to the road gravel, tar and sawdust of this 100-year-old club’s first court.
That year, as Max Burr recalls in his LTC history, it was a club of 36 — 18 women, seven men and 11 juniors paying four, six and two shillings respectively for the year’s membership. Over the next decade membership fluctuated with a mid-1920s high of 42 and a low in the Depression of 12. Despite the waxing and waning interest, the club survived and continued to serve the community but soon after World War II went into a five-year recess.
John Gerrard and Owen Hall stimulated enough interest to reform the club in 1952 and up to 15 players gathered each Saturday to share the court, with mixed doubles the most popular format.
Attendance at the club, Mr Burr writes, “was a fairly loose arrangement among people who shared a common sporting interest, living in a close-knit rural setting”. Another recess followed when an internal dispute led to a shortage of members.
The Beaconsfield Council had been developing land bought from Sinclair Bulman into a recreation ground and after the successful establishment of a cricket oval in the late 1960s Don Wallace urged the main community group, the Hall Committee, to build tennis courts. The old court near the Uniting Church had fallen into disrepair but the rec ground was deemed suitable for new courts.
Frank Simmons, Eldon Griffiths, Don Wallace and Bob Austen were among the many volunteers who raised money and gave countless hours of labour to build the clay courts at their current Fulton Street location. Mr Burr says Don Wallace “to a large extent can be considered the father of the modern Legana Tennis Club”.
The courts were completed but it wasn’t until late 1976 that the club was formally re-formed. Legana teams played in the City and Suburban competitions but the club had no facilities apart from courts and there was still a long walk to toilets at the Uniting Church.
Despite this, the club was financially sound and facilitating much tennis. In 1977-78, the B1 women’s team of Spurio, Freeman, Van Der Speck and Farrer won the club’s first pennant.
Plans for a clubhouse were drawn up and a 21-year lease agreement was struck with the council.
The clubhouse was opened in November 1980 and membership was soon nudging 50.
Within a few years the courts had been resurfaced, clubrooms upgraded and coach Rob Vernon and Ros Burr were able to organise the first club championships, allowing Neil Mayne and Elaine Cox to kick off the honour board with the 1983 men’s and women’s singles titles.
The 1980s also saw more capital works at the club, with a crucial extension to the space behind the baselines, subsidence repair and the construction of a third court. The club broke a nine-year pennant drought and continued to provide many dozens of West Tamar residents with a healthy social outlet.
The club’s fundraising and volunteer activities improved the LTC facilities through the 1990s. Much hard work went into upgrading the water supply from garden-hose level to the mighty fire-hose power members enjoy today. Similarly, light towers were installed with members rolling up their sleeves for numerous working bees. “It was a case of all hands to the wheel with Michael Clifford, Barry Davenport and me taking lead roles,” writes Mr Burr, also paying tribute to the presidential leadership of Karen Butterworth.
Other improvements, such as the introduction in 1997 of the veterans championships, made the 1990s a rewarding decade for the LTC and a fitting conclusion came with the 1999-2000 Tennis North division 1 pennant. “The team of Andrew Corbett, Ben Austen, Kathy Fleming, Alisha Butterworth, Ros Burr and Warren Blackberry was simply unstoppable all season.”
Early in the millennium, lights were added to the bottom court and the club went from strength to strength. In 2002 there were as many as eight weekly organised competitions or coaching clinics.
Some of the regular social nights consolidated in the 1990s and 2000s continue today with Thursday nights still attracting a broad variety of ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds and abilities.
A few years ago the 40-year-old claycourts were replaced with synthetic grass, ending the time-consuming practice of sweeping, rolling and watering the courts.
Membership in 2024 is pushing towards 100 and the club is looking forward to the next century of tennis.
Max Burr’s conclusion to his history published in 2004 is relevant today: “For years the Legana Tennis Club has been a significant feature of the recreational and social life of the Legana community. Many people have contributed to its success, and many more have experiences of the club etched into their memories, that will remain with them throughout their lifetimes. It has managed to bridge the generational gap and the social gap, and brought people from all economic groups together on equal terms. It has provided a role model for many people during their formative years and has no doubt helped form lifelong values and friendships.”
“All this from the simple process of hitting a ball over a net. But perhaps the Legana Tennis Club is much more than it might appear on the surface.”
Written by Legana Tennis Club President Andrew Faulkner.
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