Richard Cousins, CEO, Compass Group

Members of the International Lawn Tennis Club all over the world will be sorry to learn of the sudden and tragic death in an air crash, of Richard Cousins, the CEO of Compass Group and his family, over the New Year period. Richard was a great friend to the IC.

He was extremely supportive of the International Club’s Junior Challenge, our world-wide event for 16yr-old tennis players, sponsorship agreements for which he inherited from previous chairmen, Sir Francis McKay and later Sir Roy Gardner.

For the last fourteen years Compass Group has sponsored this event to an ever-increasing extent.

From 2016, Compass increased their support once again and were given the title sponsorship and it has become known all over the world as “The Compass IC Junior Challenge”, with more than 1000 junior international players having participated to date. This has often given juniors their first invaluable taste of international competition.

An under-privileged clinic takes place the day before each Challenge, which is led by the young tennis players taking part, which serves as a salutary lesson to them and the Compass Group were particularly keen on this aspect.

Richard had recently advised that he was retiring in March 2018 and that unfortunately, Compass would no longer be able to sponsor the IC Junior Challenge from 2019 onwards.

Obviously, this was not good news, but we will always be extremely grateful for the tremendous support the IC has received from Richard and the Compass Group up to this year, to enable us to stage this important IC event for aspiring youngsters.

Our thoughts go out to his extended family and his work colleagues who may rest assured that he will be remembered fondly during the Junior Challenge finals in Tokyo later this year.

Julian Tatum

NB The world-wide final of The Compass IC Junior Challenge takes place in Tokyo, Oct 6-12th 2018.