Cairns tennis stalwart Tom Horn in the Big Q&A
For more than 60 years, Tom Horn has been a major player for tennis in Far North Queensland. The Edge Hill Tennis Club president, coach and six-time FNQ singles title winner joins the Cairns Post for this week’s Big Q&A.
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For more than 60 years, Tom Horn has been a major player for tennis in Far North Queensland.
The Edge Hill Tennis Club president, long-serving coach and six-time FNQ Men’s Singles title winner chats to the Cairns Post’s Rowan Sparkes about the Australian Open, his early days on the court and big changes in the sport.
Tom, you’ve been a player and a coach for more than 60 years, but let’s wind the clock back. How did you first get into tennis?
I started playing tennis as a 10-year-old in school. There was a coach from Brisbane, Laurie Ridgeway, who used to play overseas before becoming a coach. He came up here to live and he started off a lot of young children playing tennis in those days. That’s how I started, playing and coaching under him. I attended Cairns State High School after that and they had five tennis courts there, so they were fairly active with coaching programs and fixtures. From there, I joined the Cairns Tennis Club on the Esplanade and took part in fixtures and coaching programs there. Back when I played, it was amateur and you played for the love of the sport, the friendships and the people that you’d meet. Playing in the Far North, the big three tournaments you wanted to win were in Mackay, Townsville and Cairns. I was lucky enough to win in Mackay and Townsville and the big tournament up here I won about six times.
Who did you come up against during your playing days? Any names we might recognise?
Cairns and the Far North actually had a lot of good players and tennis was very strong in the region. Players used to come up from Brisbane and I played against a lot of notable players back in those days. Some of the top players in Brisbane, like Charlie Fancutt (right) – the Fancutts are a well-known Queensland tennis family. Charlie had just gotten to the semi-finals at Junior Wimbledon and he came up here and I played him in a couple of finals. But there were several players like that who would come up to play.
How long have you been involved in tennis in Cairns?
Probably ever since I first started playing. Then I began coaching, volunteering at the junior tennis association, in my teens. At about the age of 25, I went away and did my professional coaching exams. I used to work full time and do some part-time coaching, but I’ve been retired now for about 20 years, so full-time coaching has become a part of my life.
What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in your 60-plus years on the tennis court?
The biggest change has probably been in court surfaces. We started out playing on asphalt courts – colas courts, like the road – that was how they were back in those days. We’d go away to play in Mackay and you’d have to play on ant bed or granite courts, even Townsville had ant bed courts back in those days. Every club gradually switched to very quick cement and then the new surfaces started to come in, like Plexipave and clubs turned to that. Here at Edge Hill we’ve probably had synthetic grass courts for about 12 years now. Because it’s kind on the body, it keeps a lot of people involved in the sport for longer. Probably the other big change is the racquets and strings. We played with wooden racquets back then, but now they’ve moved to using graphite and all different processes. And balls – they were just in boxes once, now they’re in pressurised tins. That’s done a lot for the game, changes to racquets, balls and strings.
How is junior tennis going in the Far North, in terms of player numbers and talent?
There’s always young ones coming through, it just depends on how far they want to take it, how much they want to practice, and travel is a big thing, to go and test yourself in tournaments in Brisbane and other parts of the state.
In your opinion, who takes out this year’s Australian Open?
In the men’s, I think Djokovic. He has a good style of tennis and good court manners – any young player who bases their game on him is going to be very good. In the ladies, we would’ve liked to see Ash Barty win, of course.
Did you see Nick Kyrgios and Rafael Nadal the other night? What did you think of Nick?
There was only a few points in the whole match and he certainly controlled himself, which was good to see. If he can be a bit more like Ash Barty with the way he handles himself with the press and media, he will only get better.
Originally published as Cairns tennis stalwart Tom Horn in the Big Q&A