King's special place in local sporting history

Marking 35 years of squash at King's Club

Rob Batiste discovers how it all came about and - in the coming weeks - takes a look at the finest players to tread the courts and some other stars who very nearly performed there. THIRTY-FIVE years ago next week Guernsey said 'welcome, so glad you are here', to a venue which has produced more outstanding talent than any of our island sporting locations.

Squash is the game, King's is the name.

It's remarkable to think that when Richard and Joyce Moore planned for the opening of the island's first, purpose-built, four-court, squash centre, they fretted as to whether anyone would turn up to the opening ceremony and join.

Their concern was such that Moore, ever the entrepreneur, arranged to get two international singing stars, the Crying, Laughing, Loving Labi Siffre and Australia's Miss Grease herself, Olivia Newton-John, to appear.

The long-retired Moore has, this week, been fondly recalling the great early days of Kings and the mental strain of getting it all off the ground once he had decided to take the big financial plunge and transform the old Guernsey Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club land into a purpose-built squash centre.

'A lot of people thought I was an idiot,' he says, 'and very few people had much confidence in it.'

Importantly, the Midland Bank believed in the project, though, and despite a particularly worrying period for the Moores during which Richard found himself writing cheque after cheque to convince various local businesses that he had the money to complete the building, it opened with 500 inaugural members.

The first applicants for membership were local doctor, Stephen Heyworth and his wife Deirdre, and their names top a list of past and present members that three-and-a-half decades on is into many thousands.

But only months before the opening, Moore was losing sleep as to where the members would come from and so concerned was he that through his link with Guernsey resident Ronnie Hazlehurst, he had the notion to get the Aussie singing star to perform.

'The deal was agreed and I was going to pay her £1,000. It's nothing, is it, when you look back.

'That was for her to come over along with her mother, who would chaperone her.

'The other deal was to bring over Labi Siffre and the plan was for him to accompany her.'

The plan was aborted only when, suddenly, applications for membership began to flood in.

'I thought, ''what's the point of paying £1,000 when I cannot get any more members in anyway,' said the former King's owner.

By the time the Moores sold out in the mid-eighties, membership had doubled to around 1,000 and two more courts had been added.

The gamble had paid off big time.

'Obviously, I'm extraordinarily proud of it. To have started it from scratch,' said the man who got the King's title from the fact that it was situated in King's Road and that the big club in London was Queen's.

But, unlike most traditional UK racquet clubs, Moore set out to ensure that his club was for all and not simply men or the upper class.

He admits simple economics was behind the policy.

'But I thought to make it work I needed to get every Tom, Dick and Harry through the door.

'It was all for purely financial reasons.'

Moore is eternally thankful he made that decision and says the crossing of classes has paved the way for change at other island sporting institutions, such as the golf and yacht clubs.

'It made for a melange of everybody - the wealthy and not so wealthy.

'They all mixed together. The leagues mixed them and the males and females mixed together.

'The ordinary man in the street made the club and the camaraderie between them was fantastic. It made for a few marriages. Mind you it killed some too.'

King's has been more than just simply a sports club.

It has been a conveyor belt of real racquet talent and, to the credit of the Moores and former manager Reg Harbour, a centre for high-class international competition.

As a squash-mad novice journalist 30 years ago, I was privileged to step into a domestic sporting arena that was growing like no other sport before or since, with the possible exception of indoor bowls, but was churning out county champions and national standard players as if there was no tomorrow, starting with John Le Lievre and continuing to this day with Chris Simpson.

In the coming weeks we will take a closer look at who were the finest domestic and international players to step onto the No. 6 showcourt, but by way of introduction today look at the big events that Kings and the Guernsey Squash Rackets Association have overseen there.

When King's opened its doors it did so with an ethos altogether different to most UK squash clubs. It allowed women not only to watch, but play too.

A nostalgic dip into the papers of January 1974 shows that among the monthly league winners players at the time was one Diana Rowland, one day to become wife to the Bailiff.

In 1974, Harbour pulled off a remarkable coup by attracting the British Professional Squash Championships to the club.

The tournament, one of the oldest in the world and dating back to the twenties, had disappeared from the scene in 1960, along with the demise of the Gentlemen's Club.

The championship's renaissance came in Guernsey and in late March the brilliant Egyptian, Ahmed Safwat, was handed the magnificent BPC Trophy from the then Lt-Governor, Sir Charles Mills.

The British Professional Championship was to stay here for three years and, for a while, was replaced by the British Airways Open and then the John Player Open, all the time the events moving up a notch in standard.

More of the world's best arrived.

Mohibullah Khan, who was to make the world's top five before being jailed for his part in a drugs pushing network, played at Kings, as did his renowned compatriot, Moh Yasin. Many a fine player from Australia and New Zealand flew in, too, and there was the cream of England also.

But as the sponsors dried up the annual tournament went until, in 1993, and capitalising on the world status of Lisa Opie and Martine Le Moignan, the Guernsey Women's Open Championship arrived at Kings. Michelle Martin won an all-Aussie final against Liz Irving and such was its success that it led to the construction of a glasscourt inside a marquee on the club's tennis courts when the open returned.

As always, Kings and the GSRA organised the events expertly and in 1994 the world women's championships came, matches being divided between the squash centre and the glass showcourt at Beau Sejour.

The Aussies ruled but Guernsey had long made its mark on the world game thanks, in so small part, to the Moores.