Despite its modest population, Hess Gap (NSW) produced arguably the most dominant regional tennis club anywhere in Australasia. The supremacy of the Saturday Summer Mixed Team in particular was legend. The club won an astonishing 36 Beverley Valley Tennis Association Pennants from the club’s inception in 1933 through to 1976. When they failed to even make the finals in 77/78 season, most assumed it was a mere blip on the radar. However, after going through the 78/79 season without a single win, the club fell into crisis. What happened next, would reverberate through regional tennis competition administrations throughout the nation.
An emergency AGM was called in the clubrooms at the Hess Gap Recreation Reserve on the night of August 15th, 1979. Jim Naylor, club captain at the time, spoke at length about that legendary meeting in the local history book, ‘This is a Fine Hess We’ve Got Ourselves Into’ (David Davidson – Dr Drongo Press, 1987)
‘The reality was, that our best tennis was behind us. Our youngest player was Peg Rogers, and she was 47. She had missed half the season - varicose vein surgery from memory. The younger teams were running us ragged across the en tout cas and we just couldn’t keep up. We’d canvassed the whole district, but we couldn’t find any young folk to fill the breach. The club had a reputation to protect, and we were desperate. In normal circumstances, we would have laughed at Judy Duncan’s suggestion and moved on with the meeting, but these weren’t normal circumstances.’
Judy Duncan’s suggestion was predicated on the realisation that the team were no longer feared by the opposition. According to Judy …
‘There was a time when we’d just have to unzip our tennis racket covers and teams would just wilt before we had tossed to see who would serve. I can remember in the 70/71 season, I was breast feeding my youngest Trent, while we were playing a mixed doubles rubber against Rickman’s Hill. We won 6-0, 6-1. The only reason we dropped a game at all, was because Trent bit my nipple on my second serve, and I double faulted. We needed to get that air of superiority back. No-one feared us anymore, but that got me thinking – what if we weren’t us anymore? … To be honest, I was as surprised as anyone when they suggested that I put my idea forward as a formal motion.’
Here is that motion, as petitioned by Judy Duncan at the Hess Gap Tennis Club Emergency Meeting on August 15th, 1979.
‘That for the duration of the 1979/80 season, all Hess Gap Tennis Club Players shall assume the identity of internationally renowned tennis players. They will not only use these pseudonyms on the team sheet, but will also dress, talk, behave and socialise as these tennis stars throughout each fixture.’
The motion was carried unanimously. The meeting was to continue on into the wee hours of the next morning, as the 4 regular team members excitedly thrashed out just whose identities they would assume. Margaret Court was eliminated as an option early as, according to Judy Duncan …
‘ … even though she was clearly one of the best players of the era, she was also a massive dickhead.’
Over the following 6 weeks, the team-mates made their choice and set about adopting their new identity. They sourced the appropriate attire, rackets and accessories, modified their hair styles and employed the services of Gill Sergeant’s cousin Hannah Batty, who worked as a make-up artist in the film industry. Gill on how his cousin became involved …
‘Hannah was actually working on pre-production for the first Mad Max film at the time, so she was back in Australia. I told her what we were doing, and she said she was happy to help out with making prosthetics to make our make overs more believable. To be honest, I thought she’d only be doing facial prosthetics, but she went the extra mile for the boys. I had to take mine out during the first rubber, because the chafing was unbearable.’
The first round of the season was to be played away at Gypsum Vale and the opposition were left dumbfounded when the quartet of Judy Duncan, Jim Naylor, Peg Rogers and Gill Sergeant turned up in a chauffeur driven limousine in elaborate tennis themed, fancy dress.
Judy Duncan was the first to alight the Lincoln Continental, impeccably attired as the ice maiden, Chris Evert; Jim Naylor followed - the trademark red headband divulging that the bad boy of tennis was in town; Peg Rogers climbed up through the sunroof in a signature Martina Navratilova flat collar, halter tennis dress and Gill Sergeant stumbled out last of all drinking vodka from a bottle and cursing in the dialect of Romanian playboy, Ille Nastase.
Gypsum Vale Captain Jill Danvers spoke of her initial reaction in ‘Gypsum’s It Up Really – Sporting Tales from The Vale’ (Greg Clifford, Greg’s Free Press, 1991)
‘Oh, we all had a bit of a giggle … at first. Seeing them all dolled up like that. Then when they started talking in funny voices and carrying on like pork chops, we thought, hang about!? Something fishy here. So, Ted Fraser and I head into the first mixed doubles rubber against Peg & Jim. We couldn’t believe our eyes, or ears, when Jim starts going the full McEnroe at Simon Trennery, our number 4, who was the chair umpire for that tie. He’s smashing rackets, belting balls over the fence into the dam, calling us all manner of names. When he started flipping the plates of pumpkin scones and curried egg sandwiches, Becky Ainsworth stepped in and said ‘enough is enough pal!’ Unfortunately, their hijinx worked and they put us off our game. During the afternoon tea break, while we polished off whatever we could salvage after Jim’s McEnroe meltdown, I had Gill Sergeant corner me in the clubrooms. He was doing shots of Tuica Plum Brandy by this stage, and he reeked of rotting stone fruits and sweat. Kept going on about toppling Ceausescu. It was terrifying. We went down 5 nil …but there were more logs to be thrown on that fire, let me tell you!’
Gypsum Vale protested the result on the grounds that false names were used on the official team sheet, and the match was awarded to Gyspum Vale by default. Jim Naylor sums up the feeling of the group at the time in his ‘Method Tennis - A Handbook for Tennis Players and Actors’ (Lord Howe Island Press, 1984
‘It was a strange, almost out of body sensation. We weren’t just dressed up as these tennis stars, we became the tennis stars. Gill’s cousin Hannah had lent us this pile of books on method acting – Stanislavski’s ‘An Actor Prepares’ … Stella Adler’s ‘Art of Acting’ … ‘The Lee Strasbourg Handbook’ – We devoured them. By becoming our characters, we actually became much better players, and in my case as McEnroe, a much better arsehat.’
When Mates Luck Tennis Club turned up for the second match of the season at Hess Gap, they expected that they would all have a bit of a laugh about what had transpired at Gypsum Vale and that would be that. However, rather being chastened by being stripped of their win, Hess Gap Tennis Club had doubled down. The Mates Luck team arrived to find that a press conference had been called. The Hess Gap team stood behind Judy Duncan, who was in full flight addressing the local media in a flawless Florida accent. The ‘Ice Maiden’ explained in perfunctory terms, that each of the Hess Gap team members had officially changed their names by deed poll and thus, they would legally be playing as Chris Evatt, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and *Adriano Panatta.
(*Gill Sergeant had switched his identity from Ille Nastase to that of the flamboyant Italian winner of the 1976 French Open. Gill would go on to assume a different identity for every match until the end of the 79/80 season, routinely undertaking the expensive process of changing his name by deed poll every Monday.)
Hess Gap once more intimidated their opponents into submission and took out the fixture against Mates Luck 5-0. With the legalities of their assumed identities no longer an issue, their opponents had to take the result on the chin. Mates Luck Captain, Clem Dunne summed up the prevailing mood after the loss in ‘I Thought We Were Mates – A History of Adultery in the Mates Luck District.’ (Jed Luscombe, Lonely Man Press, 1995)
‘Sure, we were angry. It just didn’t seem right, but we had to admit, they completely out played us. But it was the way they did it. Martina Navratlova kept deliberately volleying directly at my crown jewels and she rarely missed. I would have happily moved on from the whole sorry affair, but Jan my wife went home with Adriano Pannatto and started an actual affair. We separated soon after.’
As the season rolled on, the Hess Gap Senior Saturday Team continued to dominate their opponents. As the finals loomed, they remained undefeated and had only dropped one rubber for the entire season. This isolated hiccup was brought about by Gill assuming the identity of Australian World Number 87, Mark Edmonson. He went on a 3 day bender leading up to the day of the tie against Tippabanga South.
While they were racking up the wins on the court, their plan was taking its toll off the court. By this stage of the season, the whole team were going ‘Method’ for the entire week to ensure they were in killer mode by Saturday afternoon. Jim Naylor’s McEnroe tantrums saw him rack up a series of public disorder charges and he was barred from every pub in the district; Peg Rogers had embraced Martina’s sexuality and left her husband for Pauline Clifford, the receptionist at Hess Gap Primary School and the actual Chris Evert took out a restraining order on Judy Duncan after she broke into her Hilton Hotel room during the Australian Open. Evert’s husband, English tennis player John Lloyd was later heard to say …
‘With the lights dimmed, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference. I only knew it wasn’t the real Chrissie when she had an orgasm.’
Despite their personal lives being in tatters, Hess Gap made it into the Grand Final where they were up against the only team that they had lowered their colours to all year: Gypsum Vale. However, inevitably the stress started to take its toll on their game.
For the Grand Final, the Beverley Valley Tennis Association decided to employ professional chair umpires to oversee the match to try to curtail the extreme behaviour of the faux international contingent representing Hess Gap. Subsequently, John McEnroe & Martina Navratilova defaulted the first mixed doubles rubber after the former broke 8 rackets and then drove down to the sports store, bought more 8 more and brought them back and broke those as well. The second mixed doubles rubber was awarded to Gypsum Vale after Chis Evert was left alone on the court after the Russian Alex Metreveli drove to Canberra in an attempt to defect from the Soviet Union.
The tie was abandoned soon after and the 1979/80 Beverly Valley Tennis Association Senior Saturday Pennant was awarded to Gypsum Vale.
The club tried to pull themselves out of the morass the following year, but the damage was done. The club folded.
Today, the courts lay in disrepair at the back of the Hess Gap Recreation Reserve. The tractor seat umpires chair hovers just above the long grass that has long since taken over the en tout cas; the remaining rusty light tower leans at a perilous angle and the wooden handle rots on a drag mat that has not bagged a court for over 4 decades.
Judy Duncan summed up that incandescent, explosive year in her autobiography ‘Forever and Evert’ (1985 – Gympie University Press)
‘For a brief period, I was someone else. Someone I didn’t think I could ever be, that I didn’t deserve to be. Yes, we got carried away. Gill still thinks he’s Guillermo Vilas and runs a tango school in Buenos Aires. Its funny, even though it ended my marriage, it destroyed the club, and I can never travel to the USA, I don’t regret it. To quote Chris Evert herself … ‘To be a tennis champion you have to be inflexible. You have to be stubborn. You have to be arrogant. You have to be selfish and self-absorbed.’ … the same goes for pretending to be a tennis champion … I think … I also looked heaps better with blonde bangs.’
Fabulous! 🤣👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏