KEEPING IT REAL
Keeping it real The ladies who court Real Tennis
Words: Sally Jones
IT’S SET POINT. Charlotte Cornwallis sprints into the corner of the dark, high-walled court and thunders the ball hard against the wall and over the drooping net. Her (male) opponent intercepts it just before it soars into a side wall gallery, and cuts it heavily cross-court. Cornwallis runs wide, bending low to dig the ball out with a punched shot which skims the net and thumps hard into the grille, a square wooden hatch, set into her opponent’s back wall. It’s a clean win. Game and fi rst set to Cornwallis. She punches the air and the crowd applauds enthusiastically.
The venue is the historic tennis court at Salford in the heart of Manchester, but this is no ordinary game of tennis. For a start, the rackets are wooden and asymmetric and although the balls look like ordinary tennis balls, they are heavy and hand-stitched. The court itself resembles a cloister with open galleries beneath sloping porches, known as penthouses, round three sides of the court, while at the receivers’ end, an inclined buttress known as the tambour stands just in front of the grille.
Welcome to the royal and ancient game of Real Tennis, popularised by King Henry VIII and more recently Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex. (It’s also how the Prince came to meet his wife Sophie Rhys-Jones during the preparations for a 1993 charity event at the Holyport Club in Berkshire.) But the player who’s taken it to a new level and is fl ying the fl ag for the women’s game is world champion Charlotte Cornwallis, 34. With the season starting in September, Cornwallis, one of only a handful of female professionals in the world, has been training hard for the lucrative Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander National League. Because she is the best female player ever, most of her training and competition is against men.
As recently as 30 years ago, the nearest most women came to one of Britain’s 25 Real Tennis courts was cutting the cucumber sandwiches for match teas or watching their menfolk play from the freezing galleries. These days, following the founding of the women’s association by a handful of intrepid enthusiasts in 1981, several hundred women play and compete alongside their male counterparts on a thriving international circuit. The best, including Cornwallis plus six times world champion Penny Lumley, world number two Jo Iddles and US number one Frederika Adam also hold their own in mixed championships and are ranked in the top 30 British amateurs.
The clubhouse at Manchester looks every inch the gentlemen’s club with its traditional panelling, stags’ heads and heavy Victorian decor (there’s even a skittle alley), but it’s rapidly becoming a recognised centre of the women’s game. Apart from Cornwallis it boasts several top female players such as Dr Aldona Greenwood, who recently pulled off the two best results of her career. She was the only woman in the team that won the Boomerang Cup World Doubles Championship in Melbourne, as well as winning the prestigious VetCell International Doubles tournament with fellow Mancunian Tim Parker at Moreton Morrell, Warwickshire.
Manchester also hosted its fi rst ever women’s World Championships in May this year when it attracted a record entry from France, Australia, the US and Britain. Now scores of other female players from all backgrounds are fl ocking to try the game known to afi cionados as "Realers", thanks partly to the example of Cornwallis and Jo Iddles their hard- fought battles, usually in major fi nals, are the hottest ticket in the sport.
A FORMER HOCKEY international, Cornwallis won her fi rst world title in 2001 at the state-of-the-art club in Washington DC. Ironically enough, her victory was not too far from the spot where one of her distinguished ancestors, General Cornwallis and his British troops, was defeated at the Battle of Yorktown which led to American independence and the loss of the Old Country’s rich if rebellious colony. Since then she has gone from strength to strength and is unbeaten in women’s championships since 2003 even though Iddles, her nearest rival has held match points against her but failed to convert them.
Last season, Cornwallis became the fi rst woman to win the Browning Cup Young Professionals’ Championship and also the fi rst female to achieve a single fi gure handicap; the Real Tennis equivalent of a scratch golfer. She’s also helped to spread the word among the up-and-coming generation of talented teenage girl players; she’s currently coaching a group of rising stars, including Essex sisters Sarah and Claire Vigrass, aged 18 and 16 respectively, who are already inside the top 15 in the women’s world rankings.
Against the odds, Cornwallis has somehow managed to combine her Real Tennis exploits with a demanding and peripatetic job as a national account executive with Kendal-based team leadership group Catalyst; hence her links with Manchester, the nearest court to Cumbria. Her work often involves travelling thousands of miles a week, fl ying all over Europe (usually with bmi). Her busy schedule and Real Tennis commitments means she has to fi t in her on-court practice and fi tness training wherever she happens to be luckily, she has access to clubs in Paris, Hatfi eld, Holyport and Hampton Court, the game’s unoffi cial headquarters.
"It’s a fascinating game so it’s worth all the sacrifi ces. It may look old-fashioned and quirky but power and tactical awareness are both crucial," says Cornwallis. "Real Tennis has been nicknamed three- dimensional chess and it’s a game of angles and spin as well as brute strength. My strengths are my athleticism and weight of shot plus the experience I gained when I was working full-time as a professional at the Bristol and Bath Club at Clifton. It’s also helped to be the only woman playing at the top levels of the National League. I used to get frustrated if I wasn’t playing as well as I knew I could but when you’re playing really gritty matches against men, day in, day out, it forces you to become much more consistent. Several women are hot on my heels and we often have close matches in major championships but I know that if I play at the top of my game, I should just have the edge."
ONE BENEFIT OF the growing strength of the game as a whole has been increasing publicity, fi nancial sponsorship and prize money from blue chip sponsors. The women’s World Championship at Manchester attracted record amounts of sponsorship from big name companies in the North West of England, including merchant bank Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander, PZ Cussons, as well as property developers CTP and Wineflow.
Cornwallis, for example, recently played in an exhibition match followed by a friendly tournament for several of Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander’s major clients, squash-mad building society finance directors who even managed to beat their hosts a tactical defeat perhaps?
This fi nancial support has given the game a shot in the arm nationally as well as in the North West. A state-of-the-art four-court centre, due to be built in Surrey in 2009 complete with glass walls for television coverage will become the world’s biggest club and help train scores more young professionals. The game’s celebrity links have also proved a major boost. Apart from the Earl and Countess of Wessex, actor Robert Powell and his wife ex-Pan’s People dancer Babs, Ingrid Tarrant and David Gower are all enthusiasts.
Tennis stars Martina Navratilova, Gabriela Sabatini and the Australian doubles specialists, the Woodies have also tried their hand at the game. Most recently Wimbledon champion Roger Federer had his fi rst taste of it at Hampton Court during a promotional appearance for his watch sponsors, Maurice Lacroix. I got the chance to partner him for a few games and his enjoyment and natural fl air were obvious; so much so that after the event was over, instead of returning by limo to Wimbledon as scheduled, he opted for a private hit with his girlfriend Mirka. As a former lawn tennis international herself, she too immediately looked at ease on court and could no doubt provide a real threat to the game’s current stars if she takes up the "Real Thing" once Roger hangs up his rackets. Cornwallis and Iddles you have been warned!
REAL TENNIS FACTS
- The forerunner of modern tennis, Real Tennis developed as a medieval European street game which was then played in the monastery courtyards as a gambling sport.
- The women’s World Championship was fi rst contested in 1985; the men’s in 1740.
- Growing numbers of women play and compete at a high level in international championships and there is now a handful of female professionals competing in clubs throughout the UK.
- It is played by around 10,000 people in USA, Australia, France and Britain, on high-walled indoor courtyards of which there are 25 in Britain including one in Manchester, two in the Midlands, one at Jesmond, in Newcastle.
- A tactical game, it’s nicknamed "three- dimensional chess" as solid balls are hit with asymmetric wooden rackets over a drooping net, and off the walls and porches (penthouses)
- Scoring is similar to tennis but with an extra complication known as "chases". The umpire (marker) marks where the second bounce falls, players change ends and the other tries to make his second bounce (chase) deeper than his opponent’s. The handicap system is similar to golf
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Henry VIII and Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, are its best-known royal exponents. Anne Boleyn was betting on Real Tennis at Whitehall Palace when dragged off to the Tower of London to be executed. - Reigning women’s champion Charlotte Cornwallis of Britain has the best handicap ever achieved by a woman (9).
