The Men's Singles League at Welwyn Tennis Club was the brain child of Gary Wright and started in the summer of 2008 with 12 players covering 2 divisions.

 

The points scoring (1 point per set won + 2 points for a win) remained unchanged until the summer of 2014. 

 

An autumn/winter league quickly followed with a reduced number of players in 1 division.

 

Over 2009 and 2010 the league continued to grow in popularity as a friendly and competitive alternative to the plethora of doubles activities at the tennis club.

 

The Singles League membership peaked in the summer of 2010 with 19 players in 2 divisions. Updates for league tables and results were made in Microsoft Excel on a periodic basis and sent out.

 

Players sent in their match scores via email, phone or text.

 

Players paid £5 to enter and this money was spent on trophies.

 

It was just before the start of the summer of 2011 that Gary stepped aside citing work commitments.

 

John Morris stepped forward and took over the running of the league.

 

Martin Hockaday and Richard Davies took the Division 1 honours, finishing 1st and 2nd respectively. Moray Souter and Sunny Pal took the Division 2 equivalent.

 

During the autumn / winter league of 2011, Sunny Pal, a recent new joiner to the tennis club took an 8 week sabbatical to look after his new born son, Ahrin.

 

Having some time on his hands whilst Ahrin slept and working in IT, he (Sunny not Ahrin) devised a real-time mechanism using Google Docs to allow players to enter results and the software to magically update points and league tables instantly.

 

Sunny presented this to John Morris to aid the administration of the league. As John and Gary admitted, it was quite an overhead to manually enter all results and update the league tables.

 

John was suitably impressed. So much so that he promptly resigned and Sunny inadvertently took over the running of the league.

 

Some subtle changes were made for the summer of 2012. Gone was the entry fee; trophies were purchased from the autumn league money and recycled i.e. winners would keep the trophy and hand it over to the next season's winner and so on.

 

Taking the honours for each division was Richard Davies and Alex Trollope.

 

In the autumn / winter of 2012, an extra division was created with 5 players in each. Taking the honours on this occasion for each division was Martin Hockaday, Stuart Turkentine and Martyn Traynor.

 

Further changes were made for the 2013 summer. Each player had to have moniker or nickname. This extra fun element, a brazen take on SKY Sports rebranding of darts, created a record 24 players over 3 divisions.

 

'The Conch' and 'The Holy C' were some of the more unusual entries!

 

Winners for each division were Martin 'The Iceman' Hockaday, Jamie 'The Wand' Martin and Rhodri 'The Dragon' Davies.

 

For 2013 autumn / winter, again there was a record entry, this time of 26 players. 2 divisions were created, but they were split into 'pools' of equal ability. So Div 1 was split into Pools 1A and 1B, Div 2 into Pools 2A and 2B. Once the league matches were completed, a play-off match was played as a straight shoot out between the Pool postions. So winner of 1A would play the winner of 1B for 1st place; 2nd place in 1A would play 2nd place in 1B to determine 3rd place etc. This then established a final table.

 

For summer 2014, a new website was created. A bonus point system was introduced. If a player loses in straight sets, but picks up at least 6 games, they earned a bonus point.

 

Winter 2014 had a record entry of 33 players in 3 divisions where divisions 2 and 3 were split into pools. A further inovation was introduced where 3 bonus points were awarded if half the matches were played by the 'halfway date' and a further 3 points if all matches were completed before the 'deadline date'. 

 

Summer 2015 increased the record entries to 41.

 

Winter 2015 had the closest Div 1 ever with the top 3 having the same win / loss record. Sunny 'Postman' Pal prevailed.

 

Summer 2017: New sponsor, BeActive. Men's Singles League rebranded as Gentlemen's Singles League.

 

Winter 2017: Inaugural Ladies' League created. Jane Hurst and Sally Parkes make history as the first ladies match to be played. For the Gents, a limit of 30 players was imposed. 5 divisions of 6 were created.