Tennis is one of the longest-played sports at Ormond and the College has produced national and international champions.
A tennis court was installed at Ormond when it opened in 1881, and the College immediately began fielding teams in inter-suburban competitions – there being insufficient other University of Melbourne colleges to create a competition.
Several Ormond players went on to be champions, some whilst they were still students. In 1889 medical student Arthur Colquhoun became Victorian state champion for the second time. The repeat victory earned him outright ownership of the Buckley Cup, a gold and crystal jug worth 50 guineas – enough to pay Ormond fees for 11 years.
An Ormond tennis team. Year unknown.
One of Colquhoun’s opponents was Ben Green, who was an Engineering student at Ormond when he set a new record at the intercolonial tennis championships – a predecessor tournament to the Australian Open. Green won 14 straight matches to take out the men’s singles, mixed doubles and men’s doubles. Green repeated his clean sweep the following year, after which he and the winner’s trophy were both retired.
The University of Melbourne intercollegiate tennis trophy is named after a third Ormond champion, Ben Mackay, who defeated a former Wimbledon champion to win the Irish Tennis Championship in 1923, shortly before dying of military tuberculosis.
A newspaper report about a tournament at Ormond in the 1920s.
Tennis also seems to have been the first sport that Ormond’s women participated in; after being admitted to the College as non-residents in 1885 women were granted their own tennis court. By 1899 Ormond women were competing in intercollegiate women’s tennis. That year Ormondian Ida Wilson won the women’s singles championship, earning as her trophy a delicate silver pincushion in the shape of a ladies’ shoe.
Ormondians continue to play tennis, today on the roof of Wade Institute, where the court was moved in 2016.
An Ormond tennis team from the 1970s.
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