Backwards Tennis Rackets
First Published, August 2023
While researching tennis rackets over the years, I have come across two rackets from different eras that have the endorsers real name deliberately spelled backwards on the racket. The first is a 1960’s photo decal racket sold by the Regent Sports Company of New York that featured the photograph and signature of “Ellen Renwal”.
Ellen Renwal photo decal rackets
About 15 years ago when I was doing research for my book on player endorsed tennis rackets, I received a phone call out of the blue from a former Regent employee who told me that Ellen’s real last name was “Lawner” and that her father Irving was the owner of the Regent Sports Company.
Further investigation revealed that Irving Lawner was indeed the president of the Regent Sports Company that he founded after WWII with a $100.00 loan that he used to import tennis rackets for resale in the U.S. Additionally, I was also able to confirm that he had a daughter named Ellen.
By the 1960’s, Regent had grown to be a significant player in the U.S. tennis racket market with reasonably priced wooden rackets imported from Taiwan, Japan and Pakistan. Lawner increased his company’s sales by signing Don Budge who was featured on Regent photo decal rackets, presses and tennis ball cans. He also signed Alex Olmedo after he won the Australian Open and Wimbledon to endorse Regent rackets, as well.
I have never been able to discover why Ellen’s last name was reversed on her rackets. She was from a tennis playing family, so perhaps it was done to preserve her amateur status.
Circa 1910 REV-O-NOC Racket
The second reversed name racket takes us back to the era of convex wedge rackets when rackets bearing the “REV-O-NOC” logo were sold, along with similarly branded baseball bats, bicycles, fishing reels and hardware items. While perusing old Chicago business directories I found that REV-O-NOC was the brand name for items sold by the national hardware wholesaling firm of Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Company.
In 1903, their base of operations was a new 10-story warehouse in downtown Chicago and the vice president of the company was John Conover from whose last name REV-O-NOC was derived. The company used the REV-O-NOC brand until 1932 when they adopted the new brand name of “True Value”, which is still in use today.
As it turns out, both rackets had an underlying tale to tell. That is what makes research so interesting, because often as you peel back the layers the more rewarding the results can be.
Good Collecting
Rackets in 1913 REV-O-NOC catalog