The ten­nis fra­ter­ni­ty was plunged in­to mourn­ing with the un­time­ly death of um­pire An­tho­ny Jame­son last week.

Re­ports are that Jame­son, who held a rare po­si­tion of white-lev­el um­pire in the coun­try, a po­si­tion held by just a few of­fi­cials, died last week Wednes­day in the Unit­ed States. Re­ports don not state what he died from and his rel­a­tives up to yes­ter­day were too dis­traught to speak.

One rel­a­tive on­ly said that fu­ner­al arrange­ments were be­ing or­gan­ised. Pres­i­dent of the Ten­nis As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Hay­den Mitchell told Guardian Me­dia Sports they had lost an as­set to the sport of ten­nis.

“The ten­nis com­mu­ni­ty and by ex­ten­sion, TATT is sad­dened by the pass­ing of Mr Jame­son. Mr Jame­son has been a con­trib­u­tor to ten­nis and ten­nis of­fi­ci­at­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and of course on the lo­cal cir­cuit. He was heav­i­ly in­volved in the Ten­nis Um­pires As­so­ci­a­tion which con­duct­ed a lot of train­ing, a lot of of­fi­ci­at­ing up and down the is­lands, and he tru­ly will be missed,” Mitchell said.

“This comes on the heels of the pass­ing of an­oth­er ten­nis icon in terms of um­pires, so we’re sad­dened and he is go­ing to be missed. How­ev­er, his lega­cy will live on and the ten­nis as­so­ci­a­tion will find a way to ho­n­our his con­tri­bu­tion to ten­nis,” Mitchell ex­plained.

For the me­dia, Jame­son has been a re­li­able source of in­for­ma­tion for many tour­na­ments.

It is un­der­stood arrange­ments are be­ing made for Jame­son’s body to be flown back to T&T for the fu­ner­al. —WAL­TER AL­IBEY