THE JOHNS DYNASTY
Mr REF Johns, OBE was one of the founding members of Coolhurst - and with no honours boards available for the first ten years of the club's history, it's not possible to tell if he shone at tennis in the formative years. However, his wife appears on the early boards as Club Champion in 1931 and 1933, at which latter date she shared the honours with her son Peter, who won the singles.
Peter Johns won the Club Championship again in 1935, and then, after the hiatus of the war, had an unbroken run of seven men's doubles titles between 1949 and 1955, on all but one occasion with regular partner, Dr Dickie. Gebhard and Reynolds then stepped in, allowing Peter Johns just two more doubles titles in 1958 and 1961. In mixed doubles, he won 13 titles, nine of which he shared with wife Katie and two with the seven-times squash champion, Miss J M Broad.
Once Coolhurst had squash courts, Peter was first to take the Championship, and he held on to it until 1952 with breaks only for the duration of the war and when one Brown wrested it from him - seven squash titles in all.
KATIE AND PETER JOHNS
Peter succeeded his father as Coolhurst President and, following his death In 1992, Katie was persuaded to continue the Johns links with the club and become President.
Katie Johns joined Coolhurst in 1948 as Katie Whitefield and won her first singles title that year - then as Mrs P M Johns, she won seven more singles championships over the next eleven years. She, like Peter, won 13 doubles titles, the first in 1950 and the last in 1966, nine of which she shared with regular partner Joan Plant. Miss Whitefield played with P M Johns in her first year to claim the mixed doubles title, then they shared nine more titles together, and she accrued a total of 13 mixed doubles honours, the last three from 1965 to 1967 with Jim Wakeley.
1981 Peter Johns presented the first Gareth Pugh Memorial Handicap Trophy to Paul Millman
R.A.F. 'BUNDY' REYNOLDS
Surely Coolhurst's longest-enduring tennis phenomenon, Bundy Reynolds appears first on the honours boards in 1951, when he won the Men's Singles Championship. He followed up this success with further wins in 1952,53, 56,57, 59, 61, 63, 64 and 65.
Bundy left his mark on the Men's Doubles Championship too - winning with John Gebhard in 1956, 57, 59 and 60. As a veteran, Bundy competed in the Veteran Grass court Championships of Great Britain, to take the over-65 men's singles title in 1978, 79, 80, 81 and 83, and the over-70 singles title in 1985 and 1986. In the Over 65s category, he and partner L C Mallett won the doubles championship of Great Britain in 1978, and was runner up in 1979, 81 and 82 with partners E Wittman, E C Roberts and R G Smith respectively.
Coming from an Eastern European family, most of his ancestors perished in pogroms and, later, Nazi purges - so Bundy always considered himself enormously blessed to enjoy life as a free man in England - and he kept this view of life, despite the early death of his son while still only in his thirties or early forties.
Fellow veteran Pat Lawrence remembered ruefully that he would often get through the semi-final of a tournament - only to have Bundy beat him comprehensively in the final. Ivor Freeman, who played regular games with Bundy in his latter years, recalls a truly 'crafty' player- a man with all-round skill who didn't need power to take apart the game of players much younger and much more powerful than he was ... right until his sight failed in one eye ... and he lost his killer backhand.
When no longer allowed to drive due to his failing sight, his wife would drive him to Coolhurst to play- and he was still playing until shortly before his death around 1993, in his late eighties - possibly even nineties.