Tribute to Christiane Mercelis, 1931-2024

There is a good reason why the trophy of the Women’s Event in our IC Weeks was named in 1997 after Christiane Mercelis who died in June of this year.  

The very elegant but modest Christiane was the incarnation of the spirit of the International Club. As a player and a person her conduct on and off court was impeccable.  Fair-play was in her nature.

Christiane was probably in the top 15 or 20 in the world. She won the Junior event at Wimbledon in 1949 having never played on grass before and after half an hour’s practice before her first round.  She went on to win the indoor championships in France, Germany and the then Soviet Union (in Moscow).  She also won in Rome on clay in 1960.  She won countless Belgian singles, doubles and mixed national titles.

She was always popular with juniors, she listened and helped.  Perhaps because she herself could remember the days in which she’d waited patiently to get on courts at her local club while adults and then older children had priority. 

Her elegance on and off court belied a sense of humour.  She admitted that sometimes she needed half a glass of good Belgian beer to calm nerves (which she never seemed to show) before a match. She once half-joked that the allowance she’d been given to cover expenses the first time she’d played at Roland-Garros were fine – provided one didn’t get past the first round! She got through her first round; and she reached the quarter-finals there in 1957. Eventually she gave up tennis when her doctor suggested that at her age (she was in her 80s) she might now have to let a few balls go past her.

She was President of the IC of Belgium from 2002 to 2010.