Esna Boyd, a pioneering champion of girls’s tennis who featured within the first Australasian girls’s closing, takes her place within the Australian Tennis Corridor of Fame.
Melbourne, Australia, 21 January 2025 | Michael Sexton
A century after she performed within the first Australasian girls’s closing, Esna Boyd has taken her place among the many immortals by being inducted into the Australian Tennis Corridor of Fame.
A ceremony at Rod Laver Enviornment saying her elevation was overseen by her three granddaughters, who had made the lengthy journey from the UK to honour their well-known ancestor.
“We’re extremely proud. We’ve all the time recognized and cherished her reminiscence however now her fame and achievements have exploded, and it’s actually thrilling and a privilege for 3 family members to be a part of it,’ mentioned Vicki Wienand.
Esna Boyd first got here to note by successful the Victorian Schoolgirls’ Championships in 1918. Her rise as a participant was in parallel with the formalisation of girls’s tennis in Australia. Esna reached the ultimate of the primary seven girls’s singles finals – ultimately taking the title in 1927 when she charged by means of the match dropping just one set.
Her assortment of trophies grew to eight Australian titles (one singles, 4 doubles, three combined doubles) plus a number of state titles in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
The esteemed participant and coach Pat O’Hara Wooden wrote that her recreation was primarily based round a robust forehand that he described as “a round-arm sweep made with the entire of her arm with virtually no wrist motion, and which will get the entire weight of her physique.”
In 1925, Esna was chosen for the primary Australian girls’s group to go abroad and play at Wimbledon. The Victorian was captain of the second tour in 1928. That yr, the influential tennis author A. Wallis Myers in The Every day Telegraph ranked Esna on this planet’s prime 10.
The excursions have been gruelling however served their function in elevating the usual of the Australian’s play. Esna returned with a hardened perspective and appealed to future generations to focus on their backhands and experiment with totally different grips. Her ambition was to assist produce the primary Australian girl to be a world champion.
“We’re all good fighters,” she wrote after the 1928 tour, “however we should practise extra aggressive techniques earlier than we will beat the world’s greatest.”
It was on this tour that her life took a dramatic flip when she met Angus Robertson. The couple have been married in 1929 and Esna moved to Scotland to start out a household. Tennis was not forgotten although, as she gained six Scottish Hardcourt titles, together with one by which she competed whereas three months pregnant.
“Her son Invoice was all the time tickled on the thought that he had helped her win the Scottish championships,” mentioned Esna’s daughter-in-law Mary Robertson. “I believed it was frightful.”
When the Tennis Australia Awards Committee (made up of previous gamers and officers) voted to induct Esna, the search went out for kin. Esna had just one sibling, a sister, who had remained in Australia however who had no kids and so the web was forged globally. Finally, contact was made with Tom Nicoll in Scotland who confirmed he was a great-grandson and information shortly unfold among the many clan.
“We’re bursting with satisfaction however displaying it in a suitably restrained trend,” laughed grandson Angus Nicoll. “We knew she was a champion, however we didn’t realise how a lot of a champion she was.”
The spoils and memorabilia from Esna’s profession are scattered among the many household and so members gathered all of them collectively in Glasgow the place they admired freshly polished silverware, checked out outdated images and dusted off match reviews and diaries.
“She was spectacular, adventurous, proficient and fairly pioneering and that’s inspiring to all of us actually, particularly me and my sister,” Ms Wienand mentioned.
In a brief period of time after listening to the information, Esna’s three granddaughters determined to make the trek from wintry Scotland to summery Melbourne in order that they could possibly be on the ceremony.
The ladies gathered on centre courtroom and unveiled a bust of their well-known grandmother that’s now completely displayed in Backyard Sq. at Melbourne Park.
Australian Tennis Corridor of Fame
2025: Esna Boyd
2024: Lleyton Hewitt
2023: James Outram (JO) Anderson
2022: Maude Margaret Molesworth and Joan Hartigan
2021: Mary Carter Reitano
2020: John Fitzgerald
2019: Dianne (Fromholtz) Balestrat
2018: Jan (Lehane) O’Neill
2017: Beryl (Penrose) Collier
2016: Rex Hartwig
2015: David Corridor
2014: Kerry (Melville) Reid
2013: Judy Dalton
2012: Ken Fletcher
2011: Owen Davidson
2010: Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde
2009: Wendy Turnbull
2008: Pat Rafter
2007: Mark Edmondson
2006: Daphne Akhurst
2005: Australian Open Centenary
2004: Brian Tobin
2003: Pat Money
2002: Mervyn Rose and Thelma (Coyne) Lengthy
2001: Mal Anderson and Nancye (Wynne) Bolton
2000: Ken McGregor
1999: Australia inducted into the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame
1998: John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Lesley (Turner) Bowrey, Adrian Quist
1997: Fred Stolle, Jack Crawford, Gerald Patterson
1996: Frank Sedgman, John Bromwich, Sir Norman Brookes, Ashley Cooper, Harry Hopman
1995: Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall
1994: Roy Emerson, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Neale Fraser
1993: Rod Laver, Margaret Smith (Courtroom)
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