2025 marks 50 years since Chris Holt first became involved with the Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament.

The Tournament marked its centenary in 2020 and this year the event will celebrate the 50-year achievement of ‘Mr Hunstanton Tennis’ with a party on Wednesday, August 20^th from 6pm with speeches and presentations from 6.30pm.

After joining the Tournament’s organising committee and subsequently becoming secretary for the past 44 years, there is no job linked to Britain’s largest tennis tournament that Chris has not performed – frequently juggling many at any one time.

In 2013 his work was recognised when he received the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and was named Competition Organiser of the Year in the annual British Tennis Awards organised by the Lawn Tennis Association. Subsequently, in 2020, the Association recognised Chris’s “outstanding voluntary service to tennis, and to the Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament in particular, over a long period of time” with a Meritorious Service Award. It is among the organisation’s highest accolades.

In Chris’s early years of involvement there were around 350 competitors with matches played on 18 courts. Today there are 38 courts, around 1,200 competitors a year plus about 120 playing in the Round Robin event for those aged 10 and under and 12 and under on Wednesday and Thursday of Tournament week.

Chris, who retired from teaching at Hunstanton’s Smithdon High School in 1999 although for 13 years he went on to teach photography part-time, has always believed that the essence of the Tournament’s success has been its attraction as a family and social occasion as much as a sporting one.

He once said: “After 51 weeks of work following the previous year’s Tournament I stand outside the referees’ marquee on the first day with the sun shining, tennis being played on 38 courts and lots of people watching and meeting friends and family and I think ‘we’ve cracked it for another year’.”

To buy tickets for the party and celebrate Chris’s 50 years of involvement with the Hunstanton Lawn Tennis Tournament click here