Hayati Meah Memorial Intersection Tennis

At the last AGM, the members resolved that the Tennis Intersection event should be designated as the Hayati Meah Memorial Intersection Tennis , in honor of the late Hayati Meah. I knew Hayati quite well as he welcomed me to play tennis with him when I first started out playing at the club a few years before he passed away. As any newcomer knows, its often difficult to find someone to play with when no one knows you... I always remember that Hayati would go out of his way to ensure that newcomers didn't go without a game, and would invite newcomers such as myself to join his foursome and play. I now try to do the same because of him.

He was also a great sportsman who liked to see all the sections of the club interacting , so its very appropriate that we held the intersection tennis on 26 feb 2011 in his honor. To foster even more interaction, we developed a format of play that emphasized cooperation and sportsman ship. We were delighted to have representatives of 7 of 10 sections in the club participating in the event.

The tennis section took part by supplying players to the other sections to balance out the numbers so that we had 4 teams of 7 players participating. The Soccer and Squash sections came with nearly full teams, The Badminton and Hockey sections were joined together to form one team, and the Snooker and Cricket Sections were joined to create the final team.

Each player on each team was given a score card. The cards were divided into two buckets and a draw was conducted to determine who would partner who and who would play against who...

Then the players went down and played 1 set of tennis, before coming back to the terrace and reporting their score. After the 1st round scores were reported, the cards went back into the bins for another draw and another round of tennis.

After playing 3 rounds in the hot sun like this. We reassembled the cards back into their teams and calculated the total games won and lost. Most were predicting that the soccer team would win with the strength of their players...but surprisingly Badminton/Hockey team and the Squash team won the most games , tying at 99 games won each. Squash emerged as the champion losing 84 games vs 90 for Badminton/Hockey.

Again in the spirit of sportsmanship, all the participants received prizes and enjoyed an excellent lunch at the club restaurant. Hayati would have loved it, because at the end of the day, we all had fun and enjoyed our tennis and enjoyed mixing with our fellow club members.