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From: The Racketeer 45, April 2002

Lethal Spin [9]

by Frank Raistrick

Chris Taylor again
To continue the saga of Chris Taylor. I rang him one day about a Men's match and was astounded to hear:

'Hi! This is Chris Taylor, the official LTA professional coach of Mapperley Park tennis club.' There was a pregnant pause while I absorbed the implications.

'You what?' I said intelligently.

'Oh, it's you.' he said. 'Ignore that - it's just a joke.'

'It wouldn't be a joke if this was the secretary of the LTA.' says I. 'What's going on?'

'Oh, I was a bit short of the readies, so I've been doing a bit of coaching during the day - some lady members.'

He was always changing his job and usually unemployed. I told him he was playing with fire as he had no coaching qualifications whatsoever, and sure enough, some nosy parker contacted the Notts LTA to inform them what Chris was doing, and asking if he was qualified to coach. He wasn't popular with everybody.

The LTA wrote to him and asked for an explanation, and a note appeared on the club noticeboard stating that Chris Taylor had no qualifications to coach tennis, and he would like to apologise and to offer a refund to anybody who wanted one.

I felt very sorry for him, bad lad though he'd been, and asked him if he'd like to help Lisa and me with the Friday night LTA Grass Roots coaching scheme. Lisa and I had obtained our Part One certificates, and were enjoying the involvement with a crowd of lively beginners. Chris agreed readily and his own enthusiasm was contagious, the kids loving him, and even if some of his advice wasn't exactly out of the official manual, he added his own extrovert personality to the course.

Nobody could call him orthodox and I sometimes winced at the thought of scores of little Chris Taylor clones hurtling around Mapperley Park playing his own eccentric brand of tennis.

I advised him to take his Part One, with some reservations about his ability to subdue his natural variety of exotic shots while taking the course, but he exerted his considerable charm on Jim Lee, our superb County coach, and passed. Despite his own doubts which he expressed to me, Jim was too nice a man to fail Chris, recognising his ability to communicate to pupils. I hasten to add that he did fail quite a few good players, for various reasons, such as inability to feed gently to very young pupils, one eminent county player among them.

Another reason was if they showed that the course bored them, or if they took it for a wrong reason - some merely wished to improve their own game.

Chris retired from tennis much too early, to move to the golf course. He was uniquely talented - there'll never be another, missus! He is very happily married to the lovely Jenny and they have two sons and a daughter. I found him a fascinating and intelligent companion and we are still very good friends. One last memory: I went to pick him up for a match one Sunday morning, and was surprised when the curtains were still drawn at ten o'clock. After the doorbell failed to bring him I pushed the door which turned out to be unlocked. As I went in, a brand new Aston Martin screamed to a halt outside and a young female vision with trousers tucked into shiny boots strode healthily up the path.

Inside the darkened room, thick with stale tobacco smoke and beer fumes I made out two naked males, one, which turned out to be Chris, was snoring away on the settee and the other, who was Rob, his drinking mate, similarly occupied in a big leather chair.

The girl followed me in and took one look, uttering a very unfeminine oath, before striding out again, never to darken the doorstep again, as I discovered later - Rob's love affair was over. Despite the inevitable hangover Chris played a blinder. I bet the New Inn's income plummeted when Chris left to live in Loughborough.

Barbara Raistrick
I've been very moved by the letters I've received from Mapperley Club members - it's a long time since I was there. The latest are from my good friend, Cynthia and Jack and Margaret Britton - we go back a long way. Jack is one of the great men of Notts tennis, reviving the leagues after the war, and I have always been a great admirer and friend of both. Another kind letter was from Pat and Shirley Darlaston, and it eases the pain to know that people are thinking of me although I still haven't come to terms that I'll never see Barbara again.

New Year's daze
On a happier note, a quick story. Shirley expresses surprise at my memory - let's test yours, Shirley. One winter the men's keenness was on a high, and several of us were trying to raise a four for New Year's Day morning. I was surprised when Pat told me to count him in, but three of us turned up at Sherwood Rise Tennis Club on a freezing morning. They had offered us the use of their courts, ours being frost-bound. But no Pat.

We rang the Darlaston number, but Shirley said that there was no chance of him turning out - he was still flaked out in bed as was his wont after New Year's Eve. I never did enjoy a threesome!

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