Joan Curry

{{Short description|British squash and tennis player (1918–2020)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox person | name = Joan Curry | birth_name = Patricia Joan Curry | birth_date = December 1918 | birth_place = Penzance, Cornwall, England | death_date = August 2020 (aged 101) | death_place = Kingston, London, England | occupation = Squash and tennis player | spouse = George E. Hughesman <br />(m. 1958, died 2004) }}

'''Patricia Joan Curry Hughesman''' (December 1918 – August 2020) was a British squash and tennis player who won the British Open Squash Championships three times in a row from 1947 to 1949. Her toughest victory was in 1948, when she beat the 10-time British Open winner Janet Morgan in five sets. She was also the runner-up at the championship three consecutive times from 1950 to 1952, each time to Morgan.<ref>{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20100116212049/http://squashtalk.com/html/history/britishopen.htm British Open Men's and Women's Champions]}}</ref><ref>[http://www.britishopensquash.com/history.htm British Open Hall of Fame] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081013221303/http://www.britishopensquash.com/history.htm |date=2008-10-13 }}</ref>

==Career== Curry was born in Penzance, Cornwall in December 1918.<ref>{{cite web |title=Curry, Patricia J. |url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/districts.pl?r=140528457:1127&d=bmd_1644238129 |website=FreeBMD |access-date=22 February 2022}}</ref><ref name="lake2019">{{cite book |editor1-last=Lake |editor1-first=Robert J. |title=Routledge Handbook of Tennis |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |location=Abingdon |isbn=978-1138691933 |pages=186–187}}</ref> In tennis she won the singles title at the British Covered Court Championships in 1949 after a two sets victory in the final against Jean Quertier, conceding just one game.<ref name="almanack1950">{{cite book|title=Dunlop Lawn Tennis Annual and Almanack 1950|date=1950|publisher=Ed. J. Burrow & Co. Ltd.|location=London|page=157|editor=G.P. Hughes|editor-link=Pat Hughes (tennis)}}</ref> The following year, 1950, she lost her title to Quertier who beat her in a three-sets final.<ref name="almanack1951">{{cite book|title=Dunlop Lawn Tennis Annual and Almanack 1951|date=1951|publisher=Ed. J. Burrow & Co. Ltd.|location=London|pages=158, 293|editor=G.P. Hughes|editor-link=Pat Hughes (tennis)}}</ref> At the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth she was a singles runner-up to Australian Nancye Bolton in 1947 and won the title in 1949 and 1950, against Quertier and Mary Terán de Weiss in the final respectively.<ref name="almanack1951"/> She won three consecutive singles title at the West of England Championships held in Bristol between 1947 and 1949. In 1955 she won the Penzance Open title. In 1946 and 1950 she was part of the British team that took part in the Wightman Cup, the annual women's team tennis competition between the United States and Great Britain.<ref name="almanack1951"/> Curry was interviewed about her career in 2004.<ref>[https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/176301/1/PhD_Janine_van_Someren.pdf Women’s Sporting Lives: A biographical study of elite amateur tennis players at Wimbledon]</ref> She died in Kingston upon Thames, London in August 2020, at the age of 101.<ref>{{cite web |title=Hughesman, Patricia Joan GRO Reference: DOR Q3/2020 in KINGSTON UPON THAMES (240-1C) Entry Number 520978177 |url=https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp#Results |website=GRO Index |access-date=22 February 2022}}</ref> The tennis player Patrick Hughesman, who participated in the 1985 and 1987 Wimbledon Championships, is her son.<ref>{{cite news |title=Mrs Jones dominates |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/259577108/ |access-date=22 February 2022 |publisher=The Guardian |date=7 November 1978 |pages=26}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * {{Wimbledon player|name=Joan Hughesman}} * {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081222104531/http://www.britishopensquash.com/ |title=Official British Open Squash Championships website |date=dmy}} * {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100116212049/http://squashtalk.com/html/history/britishopen.htm |title=British Open historical data at Squashtalk.com |date=dmy}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Curry, Joan}} Category:1918 births Category:2020 deaths Category:British women centenarians Category:English female squash players Category:English female tennis players Category:British female tennis players Category:Sportspeople from Penzance Category:20th-century English sportswomen