Sorry about the short notice but this might be fun on Sunday.  Not as fun as social play at Gosforth, but still pretty good…

To celebrate the launch of the All Play website (www.allplaytennis.com), which aims to get more people playing tennis, we are holding a really exciting open day at Sport Central (Northumbria University). You can drop in anytime throughout the day and join in some of our many games – including Cardio Tennis and Touch Tennis – and learn all about how All Play can help you find people of your own ability to play in your local area.

AllPlay Open Day:

Date: 12 February 2012

Venue: Sport Central, Northumbria University, Northumberland Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST

Time: 2pm – 5pm

The open day is aimed at 16 – 116 year olds and there are great prizes to be won, including Babolat rackets and free coaching sessions with a coach of your choice, so come on down and see what it’s all about!

There’s also some links below to let you know more about both Cardio Tennis and Touch Tennis, which we’ll be providing snippets of on the day:

Cardio Tennis:

http://www.lta.org.uk/players-parents/Cardio-Tennis/Home/

Touch Tennis:

http://www.touchtennis.com/

If you want more information about the Open Day, please just get in touch with me on the details below.

Many thanks,

Christine Klee -  North East and Cumbria
Tennis Services Assistant

D: 0191 522 5005

Sunderland Tennis Centre
Silksworth Lane
Sunderland
SR3 1PD

Head of Junior Coaching Glen Newton would like everyone to know that this Sunday 29th January all 5 courts will be needed between 9:30-10:30 and 11:30-12:30 to host LTA Ratings tournaments.

Apologies if you were wanting to use a court this Sunday morning; you could still come along to watch some of the quality juniors that we have at the club or come in the afternoon to participate in social play.

Chris G

Want to work on your backhand? Maybe your forehand? How’s your volleying? Now you can improve them all – after receiving positive feedback from members, the ball machine was purchased and has now arrived.

Glen Newton has offered to manage members’ use of the machine and in everyone’s interest it makes sense that we have some rules on the use of it. So:

Use of the machine MUST be pre-arranged and confirmed via Glen
It is the responsibility of whoever uses the machine last to make sure it is stored away correctly. AND CHARGING. (Check with Glen as to where it should be plugged in)
Please don’t use the machine in the rain (or when courts are drenched) as the wet balls will hamper the functionality
U12′s must be supervised if they want to use the ball machine
If any malfunction occurs do not attempt to fix it – report the problem to Glen
Please do not use before 9am nor after 8pm
Hire of the machine is £5 per hour

Steady now, form an orderly queue please

I’ll tell you something, being a Junor at GLTC just keeps getting better. Why? Check out the Junior Ratings Tournaments (under the Tournaments tab). Cool.

..has sadly passed away. He ‘ll be missed by all who knew him. The funeral service is on Thursday Jan 12th at 10am at St Charles’ Church, Church Rd, Gosforth. Mourners are invite by his widow Margaret for a cup of tea to 8 Spital Terrace after the service.

Our condolences go to Margaret.

The AGM is on January 19th and the club will need new faces on the committee; how about you? You must have some ideas as to how the club could be run better, differently or more efficiently. If you’d like to see the club with a new Secretary, President or indeed changes to personnel in any of the committee posts, why not you?

All members welcome at the meeting. See you there.

Congratulations to the U12′s below who have all improved their LTA ratings due to their commitment and dedication. In alphabetical order:

James Ashcroft, Kirit Nagra, Will Ridley, and Timothy Sung

Performance Coach, Glen Newton commented “These 4 guys have worked really hard over the last few months in both Development and Performance Squads and it’s great to see their hard work paying off. Fingers crossed they will keep it up.”

It may seem some time ago but we’ve just received confirmation as to how each of our teams finished in their respective leagues. One of the results for our mens 3rd team (a 17-1 victory) and 4th teams were scratched due to opposition teams being withdrawn.

Got to draw your attention to this result though:

Vets mixed 1st team won 5 lost 0 and finished 1st in A division and won the championship! Fantastic!

Mens 1st team won 6 lost 0 finished 1st in C division and were promoted
Mens 2nd team won 5 lost 1 finished 2nd in E1 division
Mens 3rd team won 3 lost 2 finished 3rd in G1 division
Mens 4th team won 3 lost 2 finished 3rd in H division

Ladies 1st team won 3 lost 3 finished 5th in A division
Ladies 2nd team won 0 lost 6 finished 7th in C division and were relegated
Ladies 3rd team won 2 lost 4 finished 6th in D division and were relegated

Vets mens 1st team won 3 lost 3 finished 4th in C division
Vets mens 2nd team won 2 lost 3 finished 4th in F division
Vets ladies 1st team won 3 lost 2 finished 3rd in A division
Vets ladies 2nd team won 3 lost 3 finished 4th in C division
Vets ladies over 55 team won 1 lost 3 finished 4th in that division
Vets mixed 1st team won 5 lost 0 and finished 1st in A division and won the championship!
Vets mixed 2nd team won 2 lost 1 tied 1 and finished 3rd in E division

The newly re-surfaced courts were used this weekend for the first time, including a winter league game featuring two well-known players, shown in action here on a gloriously sunny afternoon.

If you want to see how the courts looked as they were done over the last three weeks, check out the photo gallery on the Gallery page, which takes you from the rolled up surface of the old courts (down to a wafer thin 4mm) all the way through to today’s match, played on the plush new 18mm surface. You can click on each image in the gallery to make it larger.