Stalwarts soldier on

Press, 18 March 1981, Page 24

Stalwarts soldier on

JOHN BROOKS

Two stalwarts of the Sumner Tennis Club's senior men's team will remember the last day of the B.N.Z. competition with contrasting feelings. Ryan McCutcheon marked the end of his sixteenth season in the grade by gaining his fiftieth inter-club singles victory, but Grantley Judge damaged a disc in his backbone, and left the court in considerable pain.

However. Judge, who gained his fiftieth singles win earlier in the season, hopes to be back in action next summer, serving his club in the No. 4 position. Still a classical stroke-maker. Judge made his senior debut as a teenager in 1956, but

doomed when we saw the flat sea at Oakura. But we proved we were strong enough, as well as good enough boat handlers.

. “More important, we were fit enough. All five of us are footballers to some degree” (Kreft and Lindsay have both played in the senior grade for Shirley) "but .this surf boat racing is physically a very hard sport. You must reach a tremendously high level of fitness, far more so than for football, and we found that most of us had pulse rates in the region of 50 and 52 a minute.”

There is another footballing parallel drawn by Kreft. The North Beach crew, he says, "is very aggressive. We get worked up almost to the state of going into a game of football, whereas so many other guys just wander down to the beach for their races.” That aggression may have just been the little nudge which sent North Beach’s boat between the flags, that hairsbreadth clear of Whangamata.

missed 10 of the subsequent 25 seasons in Christchurch, mainly through overseas, sojourns. He numbers the Canterbury men's singles title and the' national ■ mixed doubles, with Judith Davidson, among his accomplishments, and was nationally ranked for several years. Most of his inter-club tennis was for University, but he also had a season with Elmwood at the beginning and 'led Sumner when it returned to the senior division in 1976.

McCutcheon was thrice South Island champion in singles and was No.l for United when it won the Christchurch competition in 1970. He had 10 seasons for United, one with University, and has now completed five with Sumner. A former New Zealand Plate winner, he played Slazenger and Wilding Shield tennis for Canterbury and captured the national’junior mixed doubles title with Cherry Andrew. His competitive nature is still much in evidence, but a question mark hangs over his future participation. He is leaving his options open for next season and. in the meantime, will continue his career in A grade squash.