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25.1.2015

Club must be content with runners up status at awards

After Pen-y-ffordd Tennis Club was nominated for the Club/Centre of the Year award at the annual Tennis Wales Awards, the club was represented on the night of January 24th 2015 by Mike Herd (Club Coach), Dave Hughes (Club Captain), Val Stewart (Committee Member), Nigel Edwards (Club Secretary), and also club member Mary Edwards.

 

The evening, which was very entertainingly compered by HTV Legend Arfon Haines-Davies, was very well attended with representatives from tennis clubs present from right across Wales.  The president of the LTA, Cathie Sabin, who became the LTA's first female president in the organisation's 125 year history when she was appointed in 2013, was one of the speakers at the event, having paid Pen-y-ffordd Tennis Club a visit earlier that day.  And it turned out that another of the speakers, Ken Skates AM (Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism), was once a regular player at Pen-y-ffordd Tennis Club!

 

However there was a little disappointment when eventually the time came to announce the winner in the Club/Centre of the Year category - the three contenders were Montgomery Tennis Club, Radyr Lawn Tennis Club and ourselves, with the award being given to Radyr LTC, who are quite a large club with 10 courts, based in Cardiff.

As reported on the Welsh Sports website, "Radyr celebrated its centenary in 2014 and ended the year with a membership of 491, and junior membership at an all-time high, with 201 children receiving coaching. Two boys won through to the third round of the 'Road to Wimbledon' competition, and the club enjoyed success in the Courtstall Summer Doubles Leagues with the Men's 2nd team being promoted for the second successive year, winning all of their 10 matches".

 

It was, nonetheless, a fantastic achievement for Pen-y-ffordd Tennis Club to have essentially been named as one of the top three clubs in Wales, and considering just a few years ago the club was close to going out of existence, this has to be seen as a huge positive!

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