Head Coach Vinny Duddy said that the Avenue Tennis Club’s annual Open Day on Sunday 4^th July was a fantastic success with lots of new potential members, adults and juniors, coming to the club and having some coaching and fun with the Avenue’s coaching team.  Starting at 10:30 Barry Ramsden and Craig Phillips took nearly 30 youngsters on court with the mini red balls (Under 8’s) and went through a series of racket and coordination skills finishing off with some fun games.  Jamie Allen took the older kids on 2 courts with Vinny taking 12 adults onto the other 2 astro courts.  Vinny wanted to thank the ladies from the club Poo Jenkins, Pat Hunter, Elaine Amos and Sue Parsons who worked extremely hard to provide all the attendees with hot food and drinks and some excellent strawberry cream teas.  Club Chairman, Gordon Hunter looked after the bar and made his infoamous Pimms drink which went down a treat.

At 12:30 all the coaching stopped so that the Somerset Closed Finalists could play their match to find out who would be Somerset’s Number 1.  Matt Barnard, Somerset Men’s Captain pictured on the right above took on the Avenue’s Coach, Craig Phillips from Brean in a really super hard hitting fast match.  Matt used all his experience to make the match difficult for Craig but in the end Craig’s hard and accurate ground strokes proved too much with Craig running out as winner in two sets (6 v 3, 6 v 4).   Matt and Craig were very considerate to the on lookers finishing their match just in time to watch Rafa Nadal take on Thomas Berdych on the Avenue’s large screen.  Vinny passed on thanks to Tony Pryce Sports who sponsored the prize monies for the tournament and to Prince Rackets demosntrator Peter Clarke for their attendance at the club’s Open day.

The club is running a Wimbledon new members deal during July where new members can join the club for the next 9 months for the price of 6.  Effectively this means the cost per day for a new adult member is 36 pence (£100 per 9 months) with an under 10 being only 5 pence per day (£15 for 9 months).

Details of the events and tennis coaching courses held at the Avenue Tennis Club can be obtained from the office (01278 782758) or from the club website (www.avenuetennis.com