Welcome to our first newsletter of 2026.

Behind the scenes, our focus at the moment is twofold, both of which are keeping us very busy: 

1. the AGM this coming Monday at 7.15pm for a prompt 7.30pm start in the club lounge; and
2. readiness prep for switching to new service providers for our website hosting (and releasing a much-refreshed club website), membership database and subscriptions, membership email distribution, and most of our box leagues, as our current supplier of these software services is retiring their product at the end of March.

AGM

Briefing papers for the AGM have been issued, a slide deck is ready, and a couple of us are rehearsing our words for the evening. We hope to see plenty of you there, to find out more about the operations of the club and our plans for the year ahead.

Among other things at the AGM, we will be announcing our Member Of The Year, and doing the draw to reveal the lucky winner of a years free membership from those who responded to our 2025 Members Opinion Survey.

Membership services

What began as a seemingly simple job to update our website grew into a much bigger task, when it became apparent that the age of our current club management software system meant it required a complete rebuild by the provider. They eventually decided to switch off the system rather than overhaul it.

Which is why we are in course of transferring our box league arrangements, with just the tennis singles boxes remaining to be done. We had to act decisively and promptly. Following a thorough vendor selection exercise, we have engaged with ManageMyMatch (MMM) for the other membership services (eventually rolling out to include court booking and club access) and the transition process is underway.

The migration to MMM will be a significant change for all of us, commencing with the imminent membership renewals process that will launch shortly after the AGM, as usual. The process will be different to previous years and we will be writing to you soon with details of how to register with MMM. Working with MMM, we will guide you through.

Volunteer opportunity: Club Welfare Officer

After 3 years in the role, Sarah Markwort has decided to step aside. Our huge thanks to Sarah who performed this core job so well.

It is a mandatory role for all clubs and, if you are potentially interested in succeeding Sarah, we would love to hear from you.

If that might be you and you would like to find out more about what’s involved in being our Welfare Officer, please contact the club office.

Tennis

We had a great response to join the new Ladies Tennis Ladder. An excellent additional way to meet others and play friendly matches without the deadlines of box leagues. It will be getting underway very soon.

Sign-up for the 2026 Annual Club Tournament is now open. We are starting earlier this year to give players more time to play their matches within the set dates for each round.

Our national league team have continued their excellent progress, winning 4-0 against Coolhurst from Crouch End and, last Sunday, 4-0 against another North London club, Cumberland, who came into the game unbeaten. We are now in 2nd place, 1 point behind league leaders Queens Club who we face at Queens on Sunday 8th February. We hope to have some travelling fans there!

The project to upgrade all our outdoor floodlighting to LED was completed last week, with 6a now benefitting from instantaneous and clear illumination.

As we have flagged before, pickleball is coming soon to the ITC. We will shortly be adding marking lines for 4 pickleball courts to 1 of our 2 indoor tennis courts (court 4). Dual-purpose tennis and pickleball courts are now commonplace at clubs with indoor courts, such as all David Lloyd Clubs, Roehampton and, more locally, Halton. The evidence and feedback are that the pickleball markings are unobtrusive and will not impact our indoor tennis regulars. For those who are adamant they only want to see tennis lines on a court, court 5 will remain as it is.

We are now working through the operating procedures for pickleball court bookings, net set-up and dismantling, and so on. News coming soon.

Squash and Racketball

Sign-up for the 2026 Club Champs has closed and the draws are out: Go!

Box leagues have migrated to SquashLevels for both squash and racketball and everyone seems to be getting the hang of the new system, albeit with a few trial-and-error gremlins. No worries if you need a bit of help, Rob and Andrew have admin rights and can edit any incorrect scores.

Lets leave you this month with a couple of time capsule facts about the club. Did you know that 50 years ago in 1976 our tennis and squash clubs merged to form BLTSRC; and 20 years ago in 2006 we opened our indoor tennis centre? You see, this years AGM is historic and you have to come along!

See you on Monday!

Club Council

(John Shaw, Adam Suggett, Pete Walker, Matt Markwort, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock)