I hope everybody enjoyed their summer tennis, and played a little more than I did.  I have had tennis elbow for the best part of a year now, and finally went under the knife 10 days ago.  I hope to be back playing in about 4 weeks.

However, we are now moving into our winter schedule, and at Townsend that means floodlight bookings for courts in the evenings. 

Yesterday evening, Louise and I went with Gordon Willis and his wife, Denise, to see Tom McNab's play '1936' at the theatre in Broxbourne.  For those of you who don't know, Tom has been a midweek member of the tennis club for many years and is a regular in "Mick Bishop's" group that play every week during the day.

I am delighted to announce that we have just been awarded the LTA's Clubmark status. This is a very important achievement for the club, and means that "the LTA endorses and supports a club’s tennis programme, policies and procedures, action and development planning, and club management."

In my opinion, Townsend Tennis Club is really thriving at the moment. The playing standard is as high as I can remember, the social side is really buzzing, the finances are healthy, and we have a strong committee to keep the club moving in the right direction.

In this age of astronical transfer fees for top-class professional footballers, has Gianfranco Zola, West Ham's manager, pulled off the signing of the summer?

The committee is having to confront the problem that the current floodlights will have to be replaced very soon. This is a huge expense for the club, and we are looking at ways to fund this.

Why is it that most of the members that do not renew will have normally been a member for between 1 and 3 years? Once somebody has been in the club for more than 3 years, they tend to stay with us for a long time.

As I sit here in front of my PC, the sun is streaming in through the window and my thoughts turn to dusting off my summer tennis outfit.  Actually, my summer tennis outfit is the same as my winter outfit but without the thermals.