A friend dropped by and handed a few free tickets to the Clash of the Continents tennis exhibition at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Why not? I was on leave and had time to spare and had never been to one before. My wife, a neighbour and I arrived at about 3pm and managed to watch the tail end of the first match and the full match that pitted Japan’s and Asia’s No. 1 player with an Argentina player, once ranked No 10. The match was absorbing with a few light moments of entertainment though I wished there had been more intensity, more tension. Before I knew it, the match was over and two hours had passed. A few interesting things about tennis and me:
I picked up tennis when I was in secondary 2 in Swiss Cottage Secondary. There was no proper coaching so I picked up the game watching TV and reading books in the library. It was a poor way to learn.
It was a clay court and that meant preparatory work on the court before you could play. We had to even out the clay and had to drag a heavy roller up and down the court to flatten the ground. When balls were hit out onto the slope we had to climb a fence and search among the bushes for the ball.
I had a bronze medal from the national games. We played and lost to St Joseph’s and St Patrick’s and we had a walk over with either Beatty Secondary or Outram Secondary. There were four teams in the whole of Singapore. That’s why Swiss Cottage was third and I had a medal. 🙂
I remember those tennis days too! I was on the same team and although we lost every match we got a trophy prize by default ha ha. Our school was one of the very few that had its own tennis court!
James, I think you were the one that persuaded me to play tennis. Didn’t we sit beside each other in class in Secondary 2? Thanks for keeping a wonderful blog of memories of Princess Elizabeth Estate(torn down to make way for private condominiums). Go to http://ijamestann.blogspot.sg/
I not sure if I was the one but basically the group from Princess Elizabeth became the core of the Tennis Club, Joseph Lau, Robert Yaw, Tan Hock Meng, you and me. Yes we were beside each other in Sec 1 & 2 and were in the NCC as well. Thanks for being there for me all those years!