Rovsinghall: A tale of tennis and discrimination

Before starting with the real story that I want to explain today you have to know that I work as a tennis coach at Gentofte Tennis Klub so that is why I can tell you about Dansk Tennis Klub and Rovsinghall. In a future post I will try to explain how I got the job, what it is like and a lot more.

Denmark holds the honor of being the third country in the world with the highest acceptance rate of same sex marriage (89 %, just behind Sweden and The Netherlands). But as you know times have changed and this was not the case some years ago.

Leif Sadi Rovsing was a tennis player that represented Denmark in the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympic Games. Besides being one of the best players in the country at the time, he was kicked out of all the tennis clubs in Copenhagen because he was homosexual. He didn't let discrimination stop him. He used his family's fortune to build his own tennis club that consisted of one single indoor tennis court in Rygards Allé in Hellerup, one of the fancy neighborhoods in the northern outskirts of Copenhagen. The cool thing about this court is not only the story behind it but the court itself. The walls are painted with Ancient Egypt style drawings and there is wood all around. If there was not a tennis court you would never say the place was built for practicing sports. The place has no heating and many coaches don't really like it but I have to say that Friday at 15:00 is my favorite training of the week because it is when I get to play here.

The "club" rents the court to individuals and clubs that need space to practice. The place is cold and the quality of the surface is not as good as in Gentofte TennisKlub but it is so special that it makes me want to run faster and hit harder.

I hope that you can feel how it is like to play there by looking at the following pictures.











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