How time flies – last Year’s Lawn Tennis Writers’ Annual Awards Lunch
From watching top tennis players compete in the ATP Nitto Finals at the 02 to organising the traditional Lawn Tennis Writers’ Annual Awards lunch which for for the past fifteen years has been my responsibility and still is! Thankfully our new chairman, Daily Telegraph’s Simon Briggs was far more hands on compared to past chairmen and now our treasurer oversees all the bills and invoices which has made my life a lot easy and lessened workload considerably..
The lunch was held in Centre Court’s newly refurbished Debenture Lounge at the All England Lawn Tennis Club after a hiatus of a year and mostly attended by the great and the good from the world of tennis. Proceedings kicked off with a mid-day drinks reception, apart from the prosecco, all gin and tonics were kindly provided by #free Fever-Tree and #Silent Pool gin. As is the norm all guests were asked to take their seats promptly at one o’clock but it took a good fifteen minutes before all 150 of them were finally seated and cue for the first course to be served. Between the first and second courses Simon delivered his welcome speech, something that is not easy given that the entire room is full of tennis aficiondados but he did a sterling job and referred to several poignant issues that had occurred in the past year.
Judy Murray was the LTWA’s nominee for the Services to Tennis Award and sat on the chairman’s table alongside AELTC’s new chairman, Ian Hewitt, COE Richard Lewis and several other dignitaries from the world of tennis including Clare Wood, a former top pro player. After the first course, a rather exotic sounding dish of Shiro Hoi Sin Mackerel, we were served the main course of tasty Cambrian Mountain Lamb. Between the main course and desert, trophies were awarded and more speeches delivered including an inspiring speech by Judy Murray.who spoke about promoting the need for children from all backgrounds to be given opportunities to learn to play tennis. Dan Evens, the newly crowned British number one was the nominee for the International Award but as he was unable to attend the lunch, his Award was presented to Ross Hutchins. It was Ross’s father Paul, who last year was presented with The Services to Tennis award when suffering from Motor Neuron disease and delivered an inspiring speech from his wheelchair. Sadly he died early last year after a long battle with the disease and the reason why we choose Motor Neuron Disease charity for our charity raffle and auction.
Once the more serious matters were over with, it was time for the more frivolous side to the lunch to begin with comedian and author Tony Hawks taking to the podium to host the legendary charity raffle and auction ably helped out by TV presenter and tennis commentator Annabel Croft. It was Tony’s innate sense of humour and quick wit that soon had the whole room in fits of laughter as he first proceeded with the auction, and then the raffle. All raffle tickets were put into a large silver bowl and picked out individually by Annabel with Tony making appropriate quips at whoever won a prize. The tennis racket I donated was won by a lady sitting on the WTA table only as the poor woman come to collect her prize, Tony’s quipped “I wouldn’t bother trying to learn to play tennis with April’s racket, it doesn’t have a backhand as April doesn’t have one!
In all we raised around £5,000 for Motor Neurone Disease, as well as many laughs from Tony’s amusing dialogue, funny quips and jokes.