{"id":6833,"date":"2013-06-26T14:37:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T06:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=6833"},"modified":"2013-06-26T14:37:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T06:37:48","slug":"gwyn-white-100-years-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2013\/06\/26\/gwyn-white-100-years-young","title":{"rendered":"Gwyn White 100 years young"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2013\/06\/26\/gwyn-white-100-years-young\/attachment\/gwyn-white\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6837\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6837\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/files\/2013\/06\/Gwyn-White-375x306.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"306\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, 13 June <strong>Gwyn White<\/strong> celebrated her 100th birthday in grand style at the <strong>Alexander Park Tennis Club<\/strong>.\u00a0 Surrounded by her many friends in a packed clubhouse Gwyn was indeed the \u201clife of the party\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Daughter Joy, son Ian and other tennis buddies recalled many interesting, and at times risqu\u00e9, stories relating to Gwyn and her sporting life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gwyn White<\/strong> (nee Shirley) was born in <strong>Claremont<\/strong> on 11 June 1913.\u00a0 At four and a half she was the youngest student at the then new <strong>Graylands infant school<\/strong>.\u00a0 At 17 she took up tennis and without any coaching was an instant champion.\u00a0 Her first club was the ANA later to become <strong>Claremont Tennis Club.<\/strong>\u00a0 The White family were founding members of <strong>Floreat Park Tennis Club<\/strong>, however as the club did not have an \u201cA\u201d grade ladies pennant team Gwyn represented <strong>Subiaco<\/strong> and won four consecutive victories from 1949\/50 to 1952\/53.\u00a0 In those formidable teams with Gwyn were the <strong>Ryan girls<\/strong>, <strong>Margaret Heron<\/strong> and <strong>Margot Arcus<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Loton Park<\/strong> became Gwyn\u2019s next club and in 1994 she and others joined <strong>Alexander Park<\/strong> where son Ian was a life member and former President.<\/p>\n<p>At 60 years young and approaching her prime the formation of <strong>Tennis Seniors<\/strong> in 1973 opened new opportunities for Gwyn to excel on courts all over the world.\u00a0 One of her many victories came in the 1988 <strong>Australasian Veteran\u2019s Championships<\/strong> in <strong>Perth<\/strong> when at age 75 she was a member of the winning ladies 60s team.<\/p>\n<p>Gwyn went on to represent her country at world <strong>Senior\u2019s carnivals<\/strong>.\u00a0 There was one match in <strong>Perth<\/strong> in 2001 at <strong>Alexander Park<\/strong> where she teamed up with fellow club member <strong>Judy Sartori<\/strong> and they easily defeated a much younger pair who were heard to say \u2018we were beaten by an 87 year old and her partner with one eye\u201d.\u00a0 <strong>Else Crow<\/strong> had everyone present in stiches of laughter (and some of the men blushing) with stories of her trips abroad with Gwyn.<\/p>\n<p>It was just a wonderful day and Gwyn is an inspiration to us all and truly a living legend in the sport we all love.<\/p>\n<p>A contribution by Ken Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, 13 June Gwyn White celebrated her 100th birthday in grand style at the Alexander Park Tennis Club.\u00a0 Surrounded by her many friends in a packed clubhouse Gwyn was indeed the \u201clife of the party\u201d. Daughter Joy, son Ian and other tennis buddies recalled many interesting, and at times risqu\u00e9, stories relating to Gwyn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}