My granny’s induction to Australia’s tennis hall of fame has proved a family journey of discovery | Ruaridh Nicoll
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Esna Boyd died in 1966 so has always been an ethereal presence in our lives but an upcoming honour has resulted in a strange rearranging of our senses of self. Early in December, my nephew Tom received a message on a genealogy website asking if he was related to Esna Boyd. Esna was the winner of the 1927 Australian Open, and Tennis Australia was looking for descendants because they are about to induct her into the Australian tennis hall of fame.
![[Australian tennis player Esna Boyd at Wimbledon ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/60199cfd1553099c0f67e988e7b7b15508cc76cc/459_34_6301_8869/master/6301.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Esna was also my grandmother, Tom’s great-grandmother. In Scotland, where we live, my family WhatsApp group lit up. It’s been an odd experience. Esna died in 1966 so has always been an ethereal presence – a long-skirted woman with Princess Leia buns in an ageing photograph who my mother would whip me with when asking why I was so terrible at sport.
![[Esna Boyd and some of the trophies she won during her career.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/dd33507e0668a52d5544533dffb41afbbd985830/0_0_2500_1500/master/2500.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
So, at first the family messages were a little desultory. “She came second a lot.” That sort of thing. We couldn’t ask mum, because she died in 1989 (as a family we can be a little short-lived and slow to procreate, like pandas). But soon cupboards were being searched, sepia photographs unearthed, tarnished cups polished, delicate letters unfolded.
![[Esna Boyd with Daphne Akhurst Cozens in the ladies’ doubles at Wimbledon in 1928]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/55dcfe39f8b0f8c5a2292834a4fcb382c5c98801/0_0_4999_3622/master/4999.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
It turns out Esna played in the first seven Australian women’s singles finals, winning only one (ouch!). But she retired with eight Australian titles – the singles, four doubles and three mixed. She also toured for Australia, playing Wimbledon, Paris and San Francisco.
New information began to arrive thanks to Michael Sexton, Tennis Australia’s brilliant historian. I’d known nothing of my great-grandfather, a farm labourer from Ayrshire in the west of Scotland who had emigrated to Melbourne, become a gold prospector, then a businessman, politician and president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce.
