Verkaufe 2 antike Tennisschläger,

sie gehörten meinem Ur-Großvater

auf dem einen steht: 

EDB Special 

Sykes 14

HORBURY YORKS

Dolffs & Helle

Braunschweig

Auf dem zweiten steht nur:

DLF special

In 1870 a saddler’s apprentice from Horbury risked all his life savings to buy his own business. It was a gamble that would pay off handsomely. After 10 years in saddlery, William Sykes turned his leather working skills to making footballs in the start of a venture that would see Sykes become chairman of a major international company, and turn Horbury into a centre of high tech, high quality sports manufacturing, home in its heyday to possibly the largest sports equipment factory in the world.
William Sykes Ltd soon expanded from football into other sports, beginning with cricket and tennis. In 1896, having outgrown his original premises, Sykes proudly opened the Yorkshire Athletic Manufactory. By 1903 the new factory’s production lines included 21 different models of racket.

The star of the tennis range was the company’s premium racket, the EDB, named for and produced to the instructions of Ernest Douglas Black. Known as Edmund, Black had competed in Great Britain’s first ever Davis Cup tie, playing the competition founder, Dwight Davis of the USA, in Boston in 1900. The EDB was one of the earliest in a long line of Sykes products to be endorsed by elite sports people. Further tennis stars would follow suit in future.