Argentina and Spain at Hurlingham, 21st June 2009

The ICs of Argentina and Spain were our guests at the Hurlingham Garden Party on Sunday 21 June 2009. Already our visitors had had a brief exposure to grass court tennis at Edgbaston Priory until they were rained off after a short while only. But at St.George’s Hill they had a whole day on grass and it was obvious that they all started to fall in love with it. On Sunday we were very lucky with the weather and the sun shone the whole day. The courts were in as good a condition as grass courts come, and the visitors enjoyed every minute of it. We should not be surprised if soon we will be seeing grass courts being built in Spain and many an Argentine may now finally try one of the three grass courts that exist already in Argentina, as it happens at the equally named Hurlingham Club of Buenos Aires.

There were in total 32 players including an excellent turn-out of GB members, who were teamed up with the visitors. They were allocated to four box leagues in which every team played everyone else. Afterwards some teams continued to play against teams from other boxes and even after that some visitors still wanted more grass tennis and continued playing amongst themselves. It was a most enjoyable and memorable day.

Winners in the Rafa group were Karen Cass and Norberto Herrero. The Roger group was won by Nick Jones who alternated with David Collins playing with several partners. The Andy group went to Antonio Durall and Alan Purnell and the Juan Martin (del Potro) group was won by Luis Cevasco and Andrew Pisker.