President's Newsletter Season 2022-23

We welcome you all to the upcoming season including Millswood Lawn Tennis Club’s 100 year birthday celebrations!

Our Centennial year

Millswood is turning 100 this year! What a milestone for our club. The club’s first meeting was in December 1922. We are celebrating the day at our Open Day on October 8th. We are inviting past players to come and join us in the celebration. We are also hosting a cocktail evening on Friday 18th of November. We hope to see you at Open Day and the Cocktail Party! Watch for more details to follow for the Cocktail Party.

As part of the anniversary we are releasing some merchandise being tennis shirts and caps and red wine with our 100 year celebration label upon them. All merchandise will be available to purchase on Open Day. Make sure you have a look.

Open Day and 100 Year Celebration – Saturday October 8

All members, past members and visitors are welcome on this day which begins at 1.00pm for those having a hit.

The season opening will begin at 2.30pm with the exhibition match at 3.00pm Given that tennis is a game for the young and old we are organising this match with the old and the young on display. One of the exhibition games features 3 of our elder players being Jack Schocroft (93), Peter Foord (90), Richard Blomfield (83) and a special guest

from Memorial Drive, Henry Young who will be 99 this month! Concurrently, we will play a match with some students of St Thomas’s Primary School.

The Mayor of Unley Michael Hewitson, Ward Councillor Don Palmer and our State Member for Babcoe, Jayne Stinson will be joining us for this special 100 year celebration. Come along and catch up with the members, both past and present for High Tea. As we are catering for this, any member wishing to contribute, please make your donation at the club on the day. Thank you.

Additional Visitor’s Days

We are also encouraging visitors to come out and have a hit on any of the 3 Saturdays following Open Day, again at no cost (ie Oct 15, 22 and 29thth). Please note there is one free visit only. Visits subsequent to this are $20.

Working Bee Saturday September 24

Saturday 24thth of September at 9:00am is our working bee. Please bring along some gardening tools. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Maintenance of our Tennis Courts

We have again appointed James McDonald of Lawn Nation to maintain our courts.

We will again be “Top Making” two of our courts this summer being courts 3 and 4.

These courts will be closed for 8 weeks from mid-December until early mid-February.

This is a very heavy scarifying process to reduce the significant amount of thatch in the lawn that has built up over the years. Given the level of scarifying is far more invasive than what we would normally do it will take the courts a couple of months to recover and be ready to play. It does need to be done in the summer months. As part of the process about 4-5 tonnes of sand will be put on the courts which will also help to level the courts. Courts 5 & 6 do not require this procedure so the project will be complete this year.

What’s on at Millswood?

Wednesday Night Fast 4 Tennis

Come and join us at twilight tennis using the Fast 4 format from 6.00pm to 8.00pm with drinks and BBQ afterwards. We will begin this on Wednesday November 2nd for 5 weeks only and finishes on November 30th.

The cost is $10.00 to non-members and no cost to existing members. If you stay for the BBQ it’s an additional $10.00.

Fast 4 Tennis is a shortened version of tennis;

· Matches are first to 4 games

· Tiebreaker at 3 – 3

· No deuces, receiving teams elect who receives, one point only

· No lets on serve, either receiver can elect to play the ball

If you would like to make up a team this year please contact Mark on 0413 801308.

Tuesday Social Tennis

We are encouraging members of the club who would like an additional hit to join us on Tuesday mornings. We will be playing two intra-club formats on that morning, a men’s group and a mixed doubles group. For an enquiries please contact Mark on 0413 801308.

Coaching for members and non-members

We are continuing our tennis coaching for both members and potential members. If you know of friends and family who would be interested then please contact us. Our coach is Bill Purling and this begins on a Saturday afternoon beginning at 4.30pm. The coordinator for this is Christine Bednall so if you would like to organise a lesson with Bill contact Christine on 0438 862 853.

Social Events

The year kicks off with the monthly BBQ’s always the first Saturday of each month beginning on November 5th. BYO meat & salad to share. Further social news is to follow.

Covid 19 Update

Fortunately, Covid numbers are declining and we are now able to hold functions with more confidence at our clubhouse. Sanitiser will still remain at the clubhouse which we encourage you to use. We also request that if you do test positive after having been at the club that you communicate this so that we can inform the people you have been in contact with. We also ask that if you are unwell that you stay away from the club to protect fellow members.

Finances and Fees

There will be an increase in member’s fees this year to help meet the rising cost of such things as the groundsman’s expenses including their increasing cost of labour chemicals and fertilisers plus the increasing cost, water rates, council rates, our Tennis SA fee and insurance.

Our fees this year are as follows;