Nick Howell exercises the rare profession of master paumier in Mérgnac
Maître paumier, here is a not trivial job. And which goes far beyond the framework of the courses provided. It’s very simple: from the management of the equipment to the calculation of the handicaps, through the organization of the matches or the arbitration, nothing escapes his wise eye, nor his skilled hands.
It takes a well-honed technique to make a tennis ball by hand. It can be remade up to a maximum of four years, then it will have become really too small. This know-how is part of the panoply of the master paumier.
M.Q.
Handcrafted
It’s that playing tennis can’t be improvised. The racquets are all handcrafted in a single factory in England, from whom Nick takes care of ordering.
To redo his rope, repeatote: only Nick Howell is capable of it. “It’s very thick, very taut, twice as thick as a tennis racket. Traditional machines can’t do it,” he smiles.
And what about the balls, much denser than tennis balls: he makes them all himself. 45 minutes to literally swaddle cork in different strips of fabric and felt. An operation to be reproduced every three weeks according to a precise technique that he learned thanks to an internship at Hampton Court Palace, the English « Mecca » of the palm since the XVIIe century.
However, Nick Howell really started playing tennis late, at 24 years old. Before that, cricket and, above all, golf occupied most of his days. He was even professional.
“I needed a new challenge,” he explains softly in very decent French, although still a little hesitant. His body weight transfer technique and his sense of swing quickly work wonders. He is now number 5 in the world.
In Bordeaux since 2020
This is not the only curiosity of the career of the thirty-something. Born of an English father and an Australian mother, he was born in… Bordeaux, where he spent the first three years of his life. His father was then the master palm of the Girondin club.
Although he very logically admits that he has few memories of his early childhood in Bordeaux, he does, however, remember summer vacations in Biscarrosse which reinforced his feeling of feeling almost at home in Aquitaine.
Nick Howell is the trainer of Lea Van Der Zwalmen, French n°2, beaten in the final of the Worlds in April. It also initiates the youngest, ideally from 10 years old given the weight of a tennis racket, made of wood.
Laurent Theillet/ “SOUTH WEST”
So when the opportunity to join the Bordeaux-Mérignac tennis club presented itself in September 2020, the one who has lived in the United States for a long time did not hesitate. His pleasure now: to work for the development of the club, in full reconstruction.
“I like to make this sport known, to try it out, especially with children because it is very playful and spectacular. The club has about sixty licensees but it is progressing, ”notes Nick Howell, motivated as ever for the Worlds: a home victory would certainly contribute to the influence of the palm in Bordeaux.
