Rita Holmes (born 1917 is an English retired player of the

cue sports Cue sports are a wide variety of Game of skill, games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a Baize, cloth-covered billiards table, table bounded by elastic bumpers known a ...

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

and

English billiards English billiards, called simply billiards in the UK and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool. Two (one white and one yellow) and a red are used. Each player or team uses a diffe ...

. She won the UK Women's Amateur Snooker Championship four times: on her debut in 1953 and again in 1957, 1958 and 1963. She retired from snooker in 1964 to concentrate on her primary career of teaching dancing, but after overcoming an injury, played in the 2006 British Open.

Biography

Rita Holmes was born 1917. Her father owned the Midland Billiard Club in

Leyton Leyton ( ) is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the Ri ...

, London. Holmes started playing snooker in about 1950, and seeing Rosemary Davies, who was the 1952 Women's Amateur Snooker Champion play, decided to take up the game seriously; her father arranged for snooker professional Sydney Lee to coach her. At the same time, Holmes was running the Rita Maureen School of Dance at Chingford; her previous job had been as a ledger clerk at a bank in

Westcliff Westcliff-on-Sea (previously known as Milton, often abbreviated to Westcliff, and in the past spelt as Westcliffe-on-Sea) is a suburb of the city of Southend-on-Sea, located within the ceremonial county of Essex, England. It is on the north sh ...

, but she resigned to concentrate on teaching dancing. Standing 5-foot 1 inches tall, Holmes used a that was four inches shorter than the standard. After about 11 months of coaching, Holmes decided to enter the 1953 Women's Amateur Snooker Championship to gain experience. She won the tournament, defeating Maureen Barrett 4–3 in the final. The following year, she reached the final again, but this time lost 0–4 to Barrett. A match report in ''The Billard Player'' concluded that Holmes had been "too cautious and careful" in her playing approach. Holmes regained the title in 1957. After leading Pat Ayres 3–0 at the interval, she won 4–2. The correspondent for ''The Billiard Player'' called Holmes a "worthy champion" and commended her , but thought she should seek to improve her and use of . Holmes reached the championship final for ten successive years in all, with two further title, in 1958 and 1963. She then retired to competitive play, to concentrate on teaching dancing. She taught

tap dancing Tap dance (or tap) is a form of dance that uses the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion; it is often accompanied by music. Tap dancing can also be performed with no musical accompaniment; the sound of the taps is its ow ...

and musical-comedy dance. In 2006, she made a return to competition, aged 73, playing in the women's British Open. She won 3–0 against Laura Alves to reach the quarter-finals, where she was defeated 2–4 to Suzie Opacic. She had taken up playing again after successful treatment to the effects of an injury. After this, she started coaching from professional

Dominic Dale Dominic Dale (born Christopher Dale; 29 December 1971) is a Welsh retired professional snooker player, as well as a current snooker commentator, pundit and presenter for BBC Cymru Wales and TNT Sports (United Kingdom), TNT Sports (formerly Eur ...

, and was intending to enter the 2007 World Women's Snooker Championship, but one week before that tournament, she had a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

that affected her eyesight and was unable to play.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holmes, Rita English snooker players Female snooker players