TENNIS has served Margot Mather not only a successful playing life but also a coaching career involving teaching hundreds of local adults and children to enjoy the sport.

Looking back, perhaps neither element of her life would have been a surprise to the sporty youngster born to tennis-loving parents 71 years ago.

Margot and her elder sister grew up in Heaton where their father was a wholesale and retail butcher. She went to Beech House School and then on to Bolton School, by which time she had already kickstarted her life-long love affair with tennis.

Her earliest sporting memory is of “throwing a ball about with my dad on the beach” and at around the age of seven, she graduated to tennis. She joined her local Markland Hill Lawn Tennis Club at 10 and has been a member there ever since.

Her sporting prowess continued at boarding school in Abergele where she played lacrosse and hockey alongside the tennis, adding swimming to her repertoire. It was tennis, however, that proved her first and enduring love.

She left school at 16, unusually for the time, determined to make a career in tennis. Her parents insisted she took a secretarial course “to have something to fall back on” and she worked in the family business for a while.

Margot played in the Lancashire county junior team at 17, winning singles and doubles, and in 1964 and ‘65 competed at Junior Wimbledon, reaching the singles’ quarter finals in 1965.

She played in the county senior team successfully and, briefly, on the professional tennis circuit “but to be really successful then, you had to be down in London and, because I’d been away at school, I didn’t want to live away again,” she explained.

Fate took a hand then when, at 22, she suffered a debilitating neck and shoulder injury which required bone being taken from her hip, forcing Margot to retire from professional competitive tennis.

“Yes, I was disappointed of course,” she stated. “I came back and still played some county tennis but I decided that I would like to give something back to the sport and became a coach instead.”

After working initially at the Northern Lawn Tennis Club, when she qualified she began coaching at Bolton School and at St Mary’s Independent School at Stonyhurst. She stayed in this role at both schools for 45 years.

Margot continued playing in Bolton’s popular annual charity tennis tournament for many years, forging consistently successful ladies’ doubles’ partnerships first with Bridget Cooper and then with Alison Hind.

She has coached at Hawkshaw Tennis Club for 20 years, coached and run box leagues at the Bolton Arena and coached at Town Green Club near Ormskirk. Today, she is still a busy coach at Hawkshaw and what is now Markland Hill Racquets Club, where she also runs popular Summer tennis and activity courses.

She has two children, Jackie and Andrew, “of whom I am very proud” with her first husband, the late Clive Knowles. Eleven years ago, she married Tom Mather and is a happy stepmother and step-grandmother.

Always keen to help others and make a positive difference to lives, Margot joined Horwich Rotary Club and this year is its first lady president

She regrets the fact that tennis is still viewed as a “middle-class sport” and firmly believes that there is “a world of talent” still to be discovered if more children were able to access playing tennis.

She still “absolutely loves” coaching – “seeing a child get the ball over the net for the first time still gives me a buzz.” And that same buzz is there as individuals of all ages improve their skills and really get involved in the sport

As for herself, “I must still love tennis or how else could I be out there in all weathers coaching?” she asked with a smile.