Friday Photos 69: Gems from Derek’s album

This week shows part of a collection of priceless photos taken from an album put together by Vice-President, Derek Tyler. Derek is the second oldest Table Tennis England Vice-President and was awarded the honour in 1976.

Derek emigrated to Belgium after meeting his future wife, Josine, when he was umpiring at the European Youth Championships in Ostend in 1971. He has lived in Belgium for many years but used to call in the Hastings office on his regular visits back to Sussex.

As well as being an ETTA Vice-President, Derek is a Sussex County TTA Vice-President and was a former President of Hastings & District TTA. As an ITTF International Umpire Assessor Derek carried out over 700 assessments for 54 Federations between 1981 and 2000.

An interesting anecdote from Derek, whose father was a very early player of table tennis. Mr Tyler, senior, was a dentist and when he started playing it was with a wooden bat. Using his dentist’s drill he drilled some grooves into the wood to get a better grip on the ball.

Back to the photos, which were taken by Dennis George and have been wonderfully annotated throughout by Derek. All are from the 24th World Championships held in Stockholm between 7th and 15th March 1957.

From an English perspective they are possibly best known for Ann Haydon (later Ann Jones, Wimbledon champion) who reached all three individual finals but failed to take home a gold medal. Looking at the results in those matches, she was only a whisker away. Nevertheless, a truly remarkable achievement. Ann did go on to become part of the winning European Championships team the following year.

English Players Results in the Knockout Rounds

Men’s Singles

Rd 16: Brian Kennedy, Michael Thornhill

Rd 64: Johnny Leach

Rd 128: Richard Bergmann, Alan Rhodes, Ian Harrison

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