NO MORE SHUTTLECOCKS, NO MORE SHUTTLECOCKS
Born Judy Devlin in Winnipeg, Canada, her father Frank was Irish. He worked for the Local Government Board but in 1921 was threatened by the IRA. He immediately emigrated to England.
He had been a leading badminton player and went on to win eighteen All-England titles.
As a boy (aged 12), Frank had been hospitalised with a bone infection, which caused him to lose half of one foot. Surprisingly, whilst still in hospital, a neighbour bought him a badminton set.
Bored, he picked up the racquet and hit a shuttlecock against a wall for hours on end, driving all the nurses crazy. It led to him having a life-long love of badminton.
Frank was part of an England side that toured Canada in 1930. Whilst out there he was offered a coaching job at the Winnipeg Winter Club, ass he was nearing the end of his playing career. He accepted the post.
Frank married Grace Steed, a scientist. She was also a very good badminton player and played tennis to a high standard, even appearing at Wimbledon.
Grace was related to the Reverend W. Awdry, who wrote the Thomas the Tank Engine books.
Frank and Grace had a daughter called Susan (usually known as Sue). Judy was their second child.
When Judy was small, the family moved to Baltimore, Maryland.
Frank and Grace both coached at a local sports club, and took Judy and her sister Susan, along with them. The girls played tennis, hockey and lacrosse as well as badminton.
Very quickly, it was recognised that Judy had a special talent. She acquired the nickname ‘Little Red Dev’, due to the colour of her hair.
Judy was selected for the American Junior Wightman Cup tennis team – and also the US junior lacrosse team.
However, it was at badminton that she really excelled. At the age of just twelve, she was the third best under-eighteen player in the USA.
Judy dominated American junior events before moving into adult competitions.
Her first senior tournament was the women’s doubles at the US National Championships in 1953. Her partner was her sister.
They did not win but were invited to London to participate in the All-England competition.
The sisters hated London. It was dreary and drab – bomb damaged after the war. There was still food rationing, it was freezing cold, and the hotels were seedy.
Nevertheless, there was success on the court. Judy won the singles competition, beating Iris Cooley Rogers, thus becoming the youngest ever winner of the title.
The sisters also won the doubles, beating Rogers and June White in the final.
Judy was also capped by the US women’s lacrosse team, but considered this sport a bit of light entertainment compared with the serious business of badminton. She was in the national team for five years.
Judy also represented the USA in Squash and was regarded as a top basketball player.
During her success, Judy had to keep studying. She went to Goucher College and got a degree. This meant she could only practice badminton for an hour a day. “I was going to university and studying, and I had very little time.”
Between 1954 and 1967, Judy dominated the US Open, winning twelve titles, including eight successive victories, although she was beaten in 1955 and 1956, by Texan Margaret Varner – who was to become a close friend.
In fact, Judy reached every final except 1965, when she had just given birth to a son. Even then, she came fourth.
Judy was part of the USA Uber Cup team that won three successive world championships in 1957, 1960 and 1963.
In the middle of this run, Judy married George ‘Dick’ Hashman. She partnered him in the mixed doubles in a tournament and they fell in love. Dick worked for the Atomic Energy Authority, based near Oxford, so Judy moved to Great Britain.
They lived in the Berkshire village of Wootton, although it was to be moved into Oxfordshire with local government reforms in the 1970s.
They had two sons, Geoffrey and Joe.
Judy’s sister Susan also got married the same year – to Guinness worker, Frank Peard. She moved to Ireland.
Dick and Judy would spend hours playing badminton together. Judy always believed competitive games were more beneficial than hours of repetitive practice.
It took Judy ten years to get British citizenship.
The sport was still amateur at the time, so Judy became an English and Geography teacher at the nearby Josca’s Prep School (now renamed the Abingdon Prep School). She also found herself refereeing the school’s soccer matches.
Despite her dominance on court, Judy suffered terrible nerves before a match. Her husband said, “Every time she played, she would think she was going to be beaten.” Judy said it would always take her a few rallies to settle down.
A prime example of this was in the 1967 All England Championship final. She was losing heavily to Japanese player Noriko Takagi, who had recently beaten her in the Uber Cup. Suddenly, Judy staged a remarkable comeback – the greatest recovery ever seen in a final in badminton.
Shortly afterwards, Judy decided to retire from singles play. After her last match, her little boy Geoffrey toddled onto court. She said to him, “No more shuttlecocks, no more shuttlecocks.”
Throughout her whole singles career, Judy never played her sister Susan once.
In March 1970, Judy was the guest on the radio programme ‘Desert Island Discs’.
In her stellar career, Judy won 86 national and international titles. (Thirty-one in the USA, nineteen in England, eight in Germany, seven in Canada, four in the Netherlands, four in Sweden, three in Ireland, three in Jamaica and two in Scotland.
Judy even beat her father’s record of eighteen All England titles, by one (this record has been broken twice more since then).
Her final successes were winning the Team and Women’s Doubles titles at the European Championships held in Karlskrona, Sweden.
The following year, Judy retired totally from international sport. She took up coaching and became manager of the England team.
They did extremely well at the 1978 European Championships, winning Team Gold, three individual gold medals and one silver.
Judy continued to play at county level, representing Berkshire (although she lived in Oxfordshire). She also ran a local league.
She wrote three books on how to play badminton – and had a biography written about her.
Judy then moved into sports administration and became an ambassador for the sport.
In 1995, she was thrilled to be one of three women inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame. The other two were Martina Navratilova and Sonja Henie.
Two years later, Judy was inducted into the Badminton Hall of Fame, along with her father, Frank ( posthumously).
Somebody told Judy that she would have become much more famous if she had persisted with her tennis career.
She responded, “Tennis is very slow; you have a lot of time in between to fret. Badminton is much quicker, the brain has to keep working all the time, there’s no resting. Temperamentally, badminton suited me that way. I can’t see the point of this beating around the bush, having a lot of time to do things. Just get on with it and be done with it.”
Her husband, Dick, died in 2021. She said without his support she would have had no career at all.
Her son Geoffrey worked for the Ministry of Defence and Joe became a writer, gardener and eco-campaigner.
Judy died from cancer in Oxford, aged 88. She is survived by her sister Susan.
A badminton administrator, Stan Hales said, “Something like Judy isn’t likely to happen again in the history of the game.”
RIP – Racquet Improves Performance
