Sport for the new Millennium

Sally Jones says the once elitist sport of Real Tennis is now reaching out to a much more modern audience, attracting enthusiastic sponsorship and corporate hospitality along the way

You are a sponsorship manager of one of the handful of blue chip firms still feeling moderately bullish when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on Gordon Brown. You have a few cherished clients you want to entertain, memorably but with a measure of elegant economy to avoid any hint of snouts-in-the-trough triumphalism when so many are suffering.

Where do you take them? The Test? Bit samey, goes on for hours and they may hate cricket. Glyndebourne? Redolent of privilege and featuring the peculiarly English dowdiness of its female clientele and the picnicking is an exercise in one-upmanship: my quails’ eggs trump your gravalax. And you feel a fool, trussed up in black tie or taffeta on a train at three in the afternoon.

So how about… Real Tennis? Yes, that’s right, the pukka, supposedly amateurish game most often associated in the public mind with Henry VIII, Hampton Court and exquisite Etonians in long white trousers and fringes pushed romantically across their foreheads, wafting around with warped-looking rackets that appear to have been left in the summer house too long.

Bizarrely, the game that originated as a street sport in Europe, along with similar pursuits such as trinquet and pelota, and arrived in England via the monasteries and royal courts, is thriving in the 21st century as a vehicle for sponsorship and corporate hospitality. One reason is the potent mix of old-style elitism and the raw power of the modern game. Gone are the days when graceful world champions with drooping moustaches would cut the ball elegantly corner to corner over the picturesquely drooping net. Explosive hitting is now so crucial at the top level that most new spectators in the cloister-style viewing gallery, known as the dedans, are warned to keep away from the netting to avoid the danger of intercepting a speeding ball between the eyes.

Among the current sponsors are a string of exclusive names and City firms, including Neptune Investment Management, plus Pol Roger Champagne, Hiscox Insurance, IT consultants Square Mile Sourcing, Swiss watchmakers Maurice Lacroix and VetCell Bioscience. Admittedly many firms are dragged in through the passion of an influential executive or director. One early sponsor, George Wimpey the housebuilder, became involved through its chairman, the late Sir Clifford Chetwood. M&G Investments also came into the game thanks to former finance director David Watson, an accomplished player, while British Land’s Sir John Ritblat, still playing a mean game of Real Tennis and rackets, boosted the sport with generous sponsorship.

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