Corby Tennis Centre is buzzing after undergoing a big refurbishment

Corby Tennis Centre has undergone a major refurbishment, and must now be considered one of the leading indoor tennis venues across the country.

In addition to the new air halls and fantastic LED lighting, the courts have now been resurfaced by Plexipave.

The team doing the courts have been working on the facility at the All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon and finished putting the lines down at Corby on Monday this week.

This summer has been a particularly successful one for the tennis centre, as they have won most of the team tennis events they have taken part in.

For the first time, they had a ladies team taking part in Northants Division One, captained by Gee Farnsworth. It was a strong squad, including players Sophie Walker, Fiona Frost, Othelia Stallbrom, Deborah Powell, Alexandra Manilovic, Anca Hollingsworth and Iryna Zahedi, and the ladies who were undefeated all season to win the league.

This was mirrored by the Corby Men’s first team, who also won the Division One title.

The team was helped by the emergence of Jakob Bonnett who comfortably held his own at the top level and new addition Andy Palliser, alongside regulars of Kyle Rae, Alan Jordan and Matt Richmond.

The team was hugely helped with the appearances of Jack Haworth and Joe Tyler when playing the best local opposition of County A and Northampton A, who they beat 6-2 and 7-1 respectively.

In the East Northants Leagues, the ladies first team captained by Ruth Morecombe and the mixed first team captained by Wendy Brown and Gavin Potter were both victorious while the men’s B team captained by Jamie Tyler won promotion to Division One.

It is purely coincidence that the new indoor courts are the exact same colour as the US Open courts, which saw such an amazing two weeks of results for British tennis.

As well as Emma Radacanu winning the ladies singles, we had success in Joe Salisbury winning the Men’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles finals, as well as a number of victories in the wheelchair tennis events.

Corby Tennis Centre manager Craig Haworth said: “I am delighted with how the courts have turned out.

“It has been a huge struggle for many venues to stay open during this past 18 months, but with the support from our members and the public and the graft that my wife Juliette has put in

behind the scenes, we have been able to not only stay open, but to improve our facilities to an amazing extent.

“We are a small Community Interest Company, so to have been able to put the funds together for such a major refurbishment is a great achievement, and a credit to our directors Karyn

Slatter and Tim Davies who have helped so much.

“The indoor courts are absolutely fabulous. I was delighted to be able to invite many of our team

captains and squad players along to open the courts and have a game.

“We have an incredible number of top events taking part here this winter and have all eight indoor courts booked for events every weekend day until the end of April.

“This weekend we have LTA National Training, then the following weekend it’s the 4 Nations Championships, where teams from all four countries send around 20 of their top juniors for a full weekend of competition.

“We also have the LTA British Tour Event in February, as well as the 12 Counties Champs and veterans events that I run.

“Our coaching programme is absolutely buzzing at the moment, and I am hoping that Emma’s

incredible result will see even more youngsters, especially girls looking to take the sport up, and now they can do it locally, at one of the leading tennis venues in the country. ”

Haworth, meanwhile, is doing his bit to raise money for Cancer Research following the recent loss of his father-in-law Ray.

He will be donating funds from his coaching fees to the charity and is hoping to raise £1,500 before the end of the year.

You can donate by visiting his Just Giving page at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/craig-haworth1