Ruia Morrison

Tu Tangata, Issue 30, 1 July 1986, Page 46

Ruia Morrison

by Michael Romanos

FOR Ruia Morrison-Davy MBE, New Zealand’s greatest women’s tennis player, life has moved beyond the realms of Wimbledon. Today her achievements in tennis are a distant drum but the dignity and the sense of responsibility as a projection ofherfamily, her race and the people who helped her

mould a career, remains.

Dubbed “Tiger” by a tennis wit, this five foot little tiger was the first Maori to play on the famous grass courts of Wimbledon, the focal point of world tennis. What an impact the 21-year-old Morrison had made in 1957 at Wimbledon which was her maiden trip beyond Australia and NZ as a fledging international tennis player. She demolished three reputed players before succumbing to American Betty Pratt in three sets in the quarter-finals. She had made the last eight as a complete unknown. Ruia was to play Wimbledon several times more but none surpassed this initial effort. Last April I first sighted Ruia the school teacher, at the poolside in the Aquatic Centre in Rotorua. She was tickling the toes of a pupil who was about to swim a length in backstroke. “I’m trying to teach her water motivation,” chuckled Ruia who obviously still retains the good natured impishness she was noted for.

“Ruia, why don’t you join the kids in the pool,” I asked her. “If I did it would quickly empty out the pool” she replied. At 50, Ruia has filled out from the eight stoner of the 1950-1970 era, but she still gives the impression everything is done with speed and energy. A kind of compact Grant Batty. Ruia is not the only past national sports figure among the teachers at Rotorua’s Kaitao Intermediate. Mirth Solomon is a former NZ netball player to two world championships and Eunice Miriarangi Donaldson (nee Jenkins) reached the top in NZ at three sports - softball, netball and basketball. Kaitao Intermediate has fine amenities and good staff but a detraction for me was the strong element of cigarette smoking among the staff. It must be difficult for the pupils (55 percent Maori) to be expected to accept the miseries and dangers of smoking when this kind of example exists.

Ruia Morrison remembers well her 1957 performances at Wimbledon. Her fourth round (quarter finals) opponent, Pratt was representing the West Indies. “We played on a really hot day. It was 103 degrees fahrenheit and a real endurance test. In the third round, Sheila Armstrong the English junior champion, and I were scheduled to play on centre court which is everyone’s ambition especially the British but it had rained for two days and they had to

reschedule the match to court three.

Armstrong was very upset but I would have been overawed by centre court in front of nearly 20,000 people. It would have been like playing a rugby test debut at Eden Park.” Morrison was in the first NZ team to play in the Federation Cup (the women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup) in 1965. As player-manager, Ruia speared the NZ team to wins over Argentina and Japan before losing to Australia in the semifinals.

Against Australia (played in Melbourne) Ruia lost a marathon two setter to the then world’s No. 1 player Margaret Court 6-4, 7-5. In 1970 Morrison was again playercoach of NZ in the Federation Cup. Morrison said her greatest highlight was in the exposure of her talent. “I’ve been able to meet such wonderful and different people. I have met the aristocrats of tennis and so many top people from all sports. I have shared their ideas. If I had stayed just an ordinary club tennis player, cum mother, cum school teacher, none of these things would have happened.

“I have travelled overseas, met royalty, visited palaces, and I have been accepted as a person. I just thought of myself as a very ordinary person. These are still wonderful memories for me. I still keep in contact with some of these people, like, out of the blue I was asked to host Fred Perry for three days earlier this year. “I’ve been out of sight, out of mind for so long but still people recognise me for what I was. Wimbledon would have to be my greatest playing highlight. It’s the most tangible thing I’ve ever done. It’s a very special place. I didn’t know where it was in 1957 and I had no aspirations to go there. All I wanted was to play tennis, hit a ball and win as much as possible. “Basically, as a kid I was one of nine children, a very close family. In the 1940’s the environment was very whanau-based. I was born a Maori and I still am. I still have these concepts of whanautanga. I’ve never had the ambitions to be singled out as an individual or to do specially well. But doors opened for me and that’s the way my life has gone.

“Wimbledon became special because the whole world tennis organisation is centred there. In retrospect it is a kind of mecca. I got all the treatment except for payment. It was unreal. I got gear pro-

vided, chauffeur-driven cars, elaborate meals provided, all services, even a bath attendant if I wanted one. To be thrown into that kind of world after being one of nine children with set jobs to do in the home, was very overpowering.”

Morrison, six times national singles titleholder, played many of the top players in the world taking some of them to close games, always being very competitive. She played the likes of Maria Bueno of Brazil, Court (nee Smith) of Australia, Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King of the United States.

She beat Court in 1960 in the Wills tournament in Auckland. One of her matches against King was at the Stanley Street courts in Auckland in 1969 before a huge crowd and though in the twilight of her career, Ruia played extraordinarily well against the multi-Wimbledon champion.

Ruia was an out and out amateur player. She said her own concepts held her back. She felt she was a NZ tennis player travelling overseas, not an international tennis player who had the opposition on tenterhooks. Unbeknown to her even the best in the world feared and respected “Tiger”.

“I don’t say I would have beaten them if my concept was different but it would have helped me psychologically. I didn’t realise I was considered such a pain in the backside to play against.

“The results don’t show what I am. I became a tennis player because in myself I was a tomboy. I did everything the boys did shanghais, marbles, climbing, horse riding, anything. I was the only girl among a group of 20-30 boys. Quite often I would wear dad’s clothes.

“When I went to primary school I always had a stick in my hand and I would swish any target whilst I was running the mile and a half to and from school. If I missed the object a blade of grass, the head of a flower, I would go back and have another go. By doing this I gained all the basic skills for tennis playing. So when I went onto the tennis courts I was called a natural. But really I had learnt tennis by all this swishing backhand, forehand, timing, co-ordina-tion. Only the finer points of the game were needed to be learnt.

“It came to the stage as an eight-year-old I was introduced to a tennis ball. I whittled out my own bat and I used to hit the ball against the weatherboard on the side of our house which drove my parents mad. But everything fell into place. The weatherboard had the ball going in all angles but I kept hitting it back.

“My father who was always interested in tennis, bought me my first tennis racquet a learners type - when I was ten. I broke it the first game I played with it which near broke my heart. So for the next seven years I used Dad’s full sized, men’s racquet. I played with this heavy thing until I was given a good quality suitable racquet by Dunlop.

“I didn’t move fast on the court but I had this ability called anticipation. I seemed to know exactly where the ball was going and where I should be positioned to hit it back. I worked hard at my game. I really was a perfectionist.

“I liked drinking scotch but I only took up smoking in England in order to keep warm during the English spring. My first cigarette was under a blanket in an English hotel.” Ruia has the fondest memories of Jeff Robson, the NZ tennis and badminton representative, as a player and a person she could relate to. “Whatever Jeff suggested that would help my game I followed to the letter. There has been no one else whom I have had such a close rapport with. I gravitated to Jeff and his point of view. With Heather Robson (Jeff’s wife) it was a similar thing. I would love to have played with Heather in doubles when she was in her prime. With the empathy between us I feel we would have had a successful partnership.” The birth of her first son in 1966 stopped Ruia’s tennis career for a year and on a scaled-down playing and scaled-up coaching basis, Ruia came back into tennis until 1970. Already a

paid coach from 1968, she attended the inaugural national meeting to set up professional tennis coaching in NZ and Ruia was subsequently appointed our first official women’s professional tennis coach.

She coached professionally for three years, earning a living from coaching in the Bay of Plenty and Waikato regions until family and teaching considerations clashed. Morrison said she could never have

played tennis for money. “All I wanted was to play tennis for tennis’ sake. There were times when people pressured me to win a game or a tournament and that put me off immediately. I wanted to win on my terms.” Morrison has no involvement in tennis today. She is totally committed to her parents, sons and school. “Looking at it on a long term basis, my parents needed looking after and I was asked by the family in 1974 to take care of them when I came back from spending two years in Australia.” Since 1974 Ruia has done the odd coaching stint and she helped revive the local Koutu tennis club. She played in the national Maori tennis champs in 1982 in Auckland and went through to the semi finals in the open singles after having not played for almost 12 years, “The interest has always been there to carry on in a social and coaching capacity but the time has not been available to me.”

Ruia has been teaching for 18 years but she said this year is the first she has felt relaxed in her job. “I have never been an upfront person,” she says. Ruia Morrison is Arawa tribe on both

sides of her parents. Her father, Hingawaka is half Scottish and half Arawa. His parents were James Morrison and Ngapuia Teriana Tu Tupara Tokaitua. Ruia’s mother’s (Tanira) parents were Kihi Kingi and Erenora.

Ruia was on the Whakapapa committee to organise the Morrison family reunion in 1983 in Rotorua. Five hundred people attended with three quarters of them Maori including famous entertainer, Howard Morrison OBE.

Ruia was sent to boarding school at Queen Victoria Maori Girls College (Anglican) in Auckland to further her tennis and academic careers. She had to gain special allowances from the church to play tennis in the weekends and for a club. At age 18 she became the youngest school pupil in Auckland to play for the Auckland senior women’s representative netball team.

Of her children, Ashley, 19, and Robert, 9, the last named seems to have taken his cue from his mother. Robert captains a school cricket team and he is showing some tennis ability. Ruia said she is not going to push her son into anything. “That’s not my way. If it happens, it happens. It would please me if he excelled at tennis but then again I would have to go through all the pressures of coping with it.”

Ruia played in the NZ Maori championships as often as she could. When she was 14 she won the Maori senior women’s title. “The Maori champs were good because it was inter-tribal and it got a great response. They were and still are very social and some extremely talented people have played in them. A cousin (first) Barry Grey won the men’s title twice. There have always been good Maori players since I’ve been around because of their natural co-ordination skills. But I don’t think the doors have opened for other Maori people in the past like they did for me. Players like Mary-Anne Dewes, Lettie Karauti, Fred and Bill Keyes and JB and Peter Smith were very talented.”

Morrison was awarded the MBE (Member of the British Empire) in a presentation by the then Governor General, Lord Cobham at Government House in Wellington in 1961. “Initially I was totally confused as to why I got it. The citation said: Services to tennis and the Maori people. It was beyond me. I didn’t want to be singled out. I felt very humble and thrilled when I got it. Lord Cobham said to me during the ceremony “see you at Wimbledon” - and sure enough he turned up later that year. “The award has been a great source of amusement to other international tennis players and people generally. But I’ve had to live with it. It still goes on but I am not self conscious anymore. I was told that at the point I received the MBE I was the youngest person ever to receive it.”

Ruia did not just get to Wimbledon in 1957 by chance or on her ability alone. The story is quite involved.

“John Waititi was a great friend of mine who saw the opportunity from 1956 for a Maori to go overseas and represent the Maori people. As an individual he saw I had the necessary talent to put the Maori on the map.

“He organised me to go in 1957 to Wimbledon by getting the sanction of the NZ Tennis Association. He wrote to all the tribal boards in NZ for financial assistance. The response was fantastic. The thing then went national through the press. It was called the “Ruia Morrison Fund”. Howard Morrison was one of the drawcards in a tremendous variety concert at the Auckland town hall which was all part of the fund raising.

“The funds lasted me four years. It kept me playing virtually full-time and also allowed me to attend teachers training college for a few months each year.”

Ruia donated some of her own funds to help establish Maori golfer Walter Godfrey overseas after Godfrey had won the New Zealand amateur open title in 1958 at age 17.

Each year from 1957 until 1961, Ruia tripped overseas for seven months of the year.

“I could have gone on another trip in 1962 but I was mentally and physically on the down. I had fibrositis in the diaphragm and I was doped up to my eyeballs for the national championships that year. I lost my national title to Sonia Cox -1 was in three finals in Wellington but they didn’t play the other two because I was in Wellington Hospital.”

Morrison did not win the national women’s singles title in 1962 but she won the title in 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963 and 1965. She won the national doubles title in 1956, 1957, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1965 and the mixed doubles title in 1960.

The 1960 national championships presented Ruia with all three national titles. As well, in 1955 she scooped the pool in winning the national under 19 singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

Morrison said she doesn’t think there is the depth of talent in tennis in this country today.

“It’s professional now and that means dog-eat-dog. It’s a full time business and this has changed the exposure of tennis talent.”

Morrison played the stop volley to perfection, she could play superb passing shots and her best game was when she was on the attack.

“I didn’t consciously think of myself as aggressive, but I didn’t cater to my opponents either. I was out there to hit winners. If I had the option of a shot I would take one that caused the least embarrassment to my opponent but when it came to playing in a final, the quicker I got off the court, the better. I was always very nervous before any

game. But once on the court I became detached from my surroundings.” It’s obvious Ruia is immensely proud of her achievements. Her love for hitting a ball with a racquet has taken her far beyond her wildest dreams. But by the same token, through the individualistic aspect of the sport, there persisted a con-

flict of mind and spirit: family and tribal extensions where the individual is of less importance. Ruia admits to this conflict but says she never wanted to be a tennis star. She doesn’t regret the ‘stardom’, but has welcomed the anonymity the years have brought.