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I started off with a chain and ratchet type ball machine.

Right.

I’m laughing now because it had an arm that was drawn back on a ratchet on a spring and was then released. And the arm swung over at violent pace and hit the ball....

It sounds quite dangerous.

Oh! I’ve broken rackets!... The head pro didn’t have enough mechanical experience to be ... it always went wrong with him. For instance the head used to come over and not go through the jaws of the machine that held the ball. It would hit the jaw...

...and jam....

...and smash the head right up. He did all sorts of things. And people left their racket on the hopper as it was called. And the vibration of the machine would shake the racket and it would drop into the machine and the arm would come over and smash the racket in two. All sorts of things used to happen, because of the violence of it. I dare say there are some of those machines still around in actual fact. They used to move along the violence used to shake the wheels and they used to change position – they did all sorts of things.

So they’ve come along way since the beginning?

Oh, absolutely. Saying that you need the regularity... you might not need the sophistication, but I think the regularity is more or less there now.

Yeah.

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