Weekly call home

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33128, 19 January 1973, Page 5

Weekly call home

Miss Monique van Haver, a Belgian player in the 1973 BP New Zealand tennis championships at Wilding Park, telephones her parents in Brussels every Sunday when competing overseas. She reverses the charges.

“My mother and father are a little afraid for me when I fly so much—sometimes I have three flights a week,” she said yesterday. “They! like me to ring them every Sunday, to know I am safe.” If she has a lot to tell them she prepares it on paper before the call comes through, to get all her news into three minutes' conversation. And. of course, she likes to know what her family has been doing. She tries to be concise, and sometimes it is easy 1 enough when there is little to report.

Her partner in the women’s doubles championships. Miss Michelle Gurdal. has only rung her parents—in Verviers, Belgium—twice in the two months she has been: away from home on her present tennis tour. Friendly rivals The two blue-eyed, suntanned blondes are friendly, rivals. Miss van Haver is a former women’s singles champion of Belgium in both indoor and outdoor tennis. “Michelle is now our women’s singles champion and she won the Coupe Poree ini Paris last September.” said Monique van Haver. “We are good friends on and off the courts and always ask to be billetted together because we speak the same language. (French) and because it is easier for practising when we are together.” Miss van Haver, aged 24, has been playing tennis since she was "half-past eight” (80 as she put it. Miss Gurdal; started when she was seven and comes from a keen tennis family. ‘‘Killer instinct'” Both girls love tennis for the soon of it, but Monique

van Haver admits she is developing the "killer instinct.” < "Evonne Goolagong does not need it to win, she is a natural tennis player, but I do if I am to win big cham-

pionships,” she said earnestly. Michelle Gurdal also goes on the court determined to win.

“I am not glad when I make mistakes,” she said in halting English. “But I try not to let anyone know when I am angry with me.”

Tennis is the full-time occupation of the two petite Belgians. But Miss van Haver, an avid reader of philosophy, says she works for a short time during the winter for her father, a Belgian representative of a computer and accounting machine company. The girls call themselves “authorised” tennis players. “That means we are not! professionals and have no [contracts. We do not ask for; prize-money, but if there is a money prize for a tournament ;we can keep it if we win it, ;and our travelling and accommodation is paid for,” 'said Miss van Haver.

Misses van Haver and Gurdal have reached the semifinals in the women’s doubles championship at Wilding Park.