The club was founded in 1921. There were grass courts until the mid 1930s and the eight acrylic courts which replaced the old red shale ones were installed using lottery funding in the mid 1990s. The squash courts were built in 1973. The club established an Open Junior tournament in 1948 and in its time it has been won by Virginia Wade and also by Buster Mottram.

Tony Scarlett is making his way to the top

By Steve Roberts

THE EVENING NEWS – Special Edition – London, Wednesday,  August 15, 1951

When Tony Scarlett was 12, his father, a sports goods outfitter of Acton, gave him a tennis racket, he had just restrung for a birthday present.  Since that day, just over three years ago, young Tony has had a racket in his hand almost daily.

“He took to the game from the start”, says Mr. Scarlett. “It was obvious he had a natural aptitude for tennis, and he showed such enthusiasm I decided to give him every opportunity to reach the top at the sport”.

And young Tony is already well on his way to the top.  Reward for his daily training – in the winter on covered courts near his Kew home, in the summer at the Sheen Lawn Tennis Club, where he has already played in the club first team – comes on Friday when he appears at Queen’s Club, West Kensington, in the semi-finals of the EVENING NEWS tournament.

It was in this annual talent-finding tournament of ours, inaugurated in 1922, that Fred Perry, Pat Hughes, Headly Baxter, Roland Carter and a host of other stars-to-be first became news.

Tony is in our new 12 to 15 years group. Like all the semi-finalists in the other eight sections, he has beaten players of his own age from all parts of London to qualify for Queen’s.

Club members in Wartime, Christmas 1941