Evelyn Attwood. Photo / Supplied to RNZ
By Bridget Tunnicliffe of RNZ
The first New Zealand woman to compete at the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world died this week, aged 101.
Evelyn Webster competed at Wimbledon under her maiden name Attwood in the middle of last century.
Webster’s ability on the tennis court started to turn heads when she was as young as 11.
In February 1940, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article about Australian tennis players competing in the New Zealand championships in Wellington. The report noted some standout players who competed in the under-18 junior tournament.
“Outstanding competitors this year were... Rosemary Hodges, of Auckland, who won a narrow victory in the girls’ singles from Evelyn Attwood, of Levin.
“As both these girls are only 11 years, they should develop into first-class players. Evelyn Attwood also played in the women’s championship, attracting a good deal of attention by her diminutive size and strong shots,” it read.
Throughout her entire career, Webster was usually smaller than her opponents but son Tom Webster said his mum found ways to overcome her height disadvantage.
“She could not sprint across the back line, although she took big strides to make up for it but she could run up to the forecourt and slam dunk the ball down right up at the net and it was rather frowned upon because it was not the done thing but it is the norm now.
“She always claimed that was her greatest trick, she snuck in there as fast as a rat to dump the ball down.”
In 1941, Webster won the junior girls’ national title at the 18-and-under championships in Christchurch. In 1948, she became the national ladies singles champ, and it became apparent she needed to travel to England if she wanted to get more competition.
Tom said his mother had to save to get to England.
“She worked for the army, as a typist in Parnell leading up to that. She had to earn her own way and there were no sponsorships that there are now.”
Webster was born in Helensville, her father was a teacher so she and her siblings moved around a fair bit. Eventually her father became a school principal in Levin, where she spent quite a few years of schooling.
“There were a lot of Māori kids in the class and Mum grew up learning a lot of Māori songs. She blazed onto the courts of Wimbledon humming Māori Battalion songs,” Tom said.
“She could sing and she did cut a record with her sister, but I don’t think she would have made the top 10, put it that way.”
Webster based herself in England for four years from 1951, where she worked fulltime as a secretary in London.
She competed at four Wimbledon tournaments from 1951 to 1954 in the ladies’ singles and doubles.
“I think Dunlop gave her a tennis racket and they funded some of her travel around the counties because she played a lot of county tennis and she won quite a few of those tournaments.
“Training did not consist of a coach, there was not one, so she found a back alley in Kensington with bricks on it that were not quite even and pounded the ball against the bricks and the bricks returned the ball to her in rather erratic ways, so that was her coach.
“I think she came back late ’54 to New Zealand because her dad was starting to get elderly and her sister was with her and she wanted to come home and as she said ‘I wasn’t winning tennis anymore so bugger it’ - she was either winning or she wasn’t interested.”
The family held on to newspaper articles from the likes of the old Auckland Star and the NZ Herald reporting on her tennis successes, and Tom and his brother Mike still have her trophy haul.
Webster kept active post-tennis.
“Mum’s other claim to fame was that her and Dad were the main instigators in creating the anchorage for boaters at Smokehouse Bay in Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier. They built communal facilities for visiting sailors – ‘Webster’s Wonderland’ as it became known by some.
“My Dad, Eric, came from a very strong boating family and Mum took to that with great gusto, you know thousands of trees were planted around the 10 acre block there, it required a lot of maintenance and she was right behind it all.”
Her active lifestyle was perhaps the key to her longevity and Tom said she also enjoyed the odd tipple.
For the second half of her life Evelyn lived in Milford, on Auckland’s North Shore. On Thursday, her two sons Tom and Mike, extended family, and friends gathered for a memorial service at Milford Cruising Club.
– RNZ