By: Dame BERNICE V. LAKE, D.G.C.N., Q.C.

Is it merely a matter of coincidence that Zina Garrison should come to Anguilla approximately fifty years after Althea Gibson blew her kisses to New York in acceptance of her city’s acknowledgment of her triple-crown victory at the soul-place of tennis?

What have the unfolding years in the world of tennis meant to us here in this neck of the woods?

We need to ask and answer these questions.

Dame BERNICE V. LAKE

We have always had our sports of strength and endurance – bicycle as well as foot races – but in the Anguilla of the 1950’s the only known sports of skill was cricket. To a lesser extent there was netball and football and at the Warden’s House you could catch the occasional glimpse of the crack of the shuttle-cock of Badminton. Tennis was no where on the horizon.

It was otherwise in the larger islands. There was football and of course tennis. Tennis was the game of the privileged defined as Caucasian which excluded even those of Moorish mix who hailed from the Iberian Peninsula.
Just as tennis in England was confined to the Wimbledon Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, tennis in these parts was enjoyed by the planter class at the Victoria Club opposite the Old Governor’s House on Victoria Road in the outskirts of Basseterre or the Victory Club opposite Government House in St. John‘s, Antigua.

The ability to play tennis was the bench-mark of elitism, privilege and ‘whiteness’.

This bench-mark was in operation world-wide.

Confined as it was to the hot-house of privilege the game as played by women in particular was executed in a nimble, dance-like grace reminiscent of the ballet. Any old newsreel with Christine Truman, Virginia Wade and even down to Christ Evert will show that the skirts were similar and the back-strokes demonstrated a flowing movement with the same swan-like quality of the Nut Cracker Suite. Power was inelegant.

Post World War II across the universe a revolution in social conditions, education and attitudes to sport was in ferment.

My school occupied the Old Governor’s House and become the next door neighbour of the Victoria Club . It was then that I was exposed to the sport and took to it. But the game still retained that ethereal quality of gentility.
It was in 1957 that I saw the muscular robustness of Althea Gibson on Centre Court at Wimbledon. There was a new and challenging dimension to the game which suited our physique of strength and my disposition of individual competitiveness. The sight of Althea Gibson swinging her racquet with that gangly stance of relaxed abandonment but deep compelling grace of a well honed body shone light upon a new game over which privilege could not claim dominion. I wanted to be a part of that new game. But tennis is like the piano; its optimum age for making acquaintance runs from 3 to 5 years of age. It was too late for me. That realization light a passion in me to one day breed a tennis champion. But that too was not to be.

Tennis is a game of sacrifice, materially and physically and I set about collecting my gear and accoutrements for the objects of my ambition. Regrettably, it was during the hey-day of West Indian Cricket supremacy and the individual and lonely discipline which tennis demanded could not stand up to the competition and attraction of cricket as a socializing team sport where the camaraderie of a team could be enjoyed. And so my few candidates fell by the way-side.

It is for this reason that I have so respected the work and commitment of Richard and Oricina Williams to their children; so too the father of Paradorn Srichaphan.

I had realized from an early age that in the contact team sports, such as Netball, the athlete peaks early and exits from the game early. Tennis promised to be more enduring.

As the years passed tennis became my sport of choice.

I have followed Zina Garrison’s career with great interest and amusement – the highs and the lows as well as the idiosyncratic body movements of alertness and concentration as she waited to return service. It was a particularly poignant moment for those committed to breaking down the social barriers in the game when Zina became a Wimbledon finalist - that call of encouragement from Althea Gibson reaching out across the Atlantic infusing her with energy and confidence and urging her to carry on where she Althea had left off. It was an eye-pricking moment.

For a long time Zina carried the baton until Chandra Rubin and finally the Williams Sisters transformed the entire dynamics of tennis in all its social, physical, financial and career opportunity dimensions forever. Through them we enjoyed the challenges of the game marked by strength, delicacy of shots and mental court craft. They all gave us a direct joy as well as the opportunity to live vicariously playing out personal dreams which have not been directly realized.

To-day we in Anguilla not only know about the game. We no longer confine it to a matter of social skills; chip and charge reflects the dominant attitude to the sport; grace is now combined with strength according to the endowment of talent and not incidents of birth and wealth; we see it as an avenue for personal as well as career development for the young in our community; escape routes from the traps of delinquency which would destroy our youths; and ultimately it is an agent for the cohesive, cultural and economic advancement of Anguilla as a whole.

It is from this perspective that the role of the Anguilla Tennis Academy must be viewed, and appreciation for its development, after a short period of only five years should not go unheralded. Such an initiative in parts of the world as remote as ours makes the upper echelons of tennis anybody’s game. It all depends upon talent, championship disposition to compete at the highest levels and the will to commit to the rigours of uncompromising training which unmasks the hidden skills with which so many of our youngsters are naturally endowed.

I wish Miss Garrison and the Academy well!

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