Vintage Rangoon Silver Plated Award Bowl

This is a vintage silver plated engraved tennis award bowl I bought at the thrift store awhile ago. I remember trying to find out who the players were that this bowl was awarded without success so I just spent the last hour+ trying again without finding out anything. If this post is in the wrong category my apologies.

The bowl is engraved with "invitation handicap tennis tournament rangoon 1971" on one side and on the other side "mixed doubles runner-up". Measures about 4" wide x 2 1/2" tall.

Rangoon is now known as Yangon and served as the capital of Myanmar (also known as Burna) accoring to Wikipedia. Does anyone know who the mixed doubles runner-up was in this tournament? Thanks in advance for any info!

 

It's not engraved,the bowl is Repoussé,chased and stamped with letter and number stamps.

 

Hollyblue, you're right, thanks for the correction.

 

If you do a little more Wikipedia reading about the modern history of Burma/Myanmar, you will realize that this is a seriously weird item & that it's not likely you are ever going to be able to put names to it. A tennis tournament in a struggling socialist state under military rule awarding a silver bowl with English inscription to a runner up in mixed doubles?

 

Well, this doesn't put names to it, either, but I found some interesting reading about the US diplomatic circles in Rangoon, including at the time this trophy was awarded. It's a big document, but the parts I'm about to quote from below start at page 100 or so and continue from there. Just for info:

EDWIN WEBB MARTIN - Ambassador Burma (1971-1973) p100
RICHARD M. GIBSON - Vice Consul Rangoon (1974-1975) p126
FRANKLIN E. HUFFMAN - Assistant Public Affairs Officer, USIS Rangoon (1987-1989) p208

Some words on tennis in Rangoon:

Q: I was told about the one entree to the ruling group of military people was golf. Was that true?
GIBSON: Yes, golf, but also in Rangoon, tennis was very popular. The guys who had the very best access in Rangoon were the military guys, the attachés. There were two. There was an army attaché who was the DAT and there was an air force attaché who was the assistant. There was a naval attaché in Bangkok who was still accredited. These guys had the most access of anybody because the military ran the country and they had to deal with the military. They played golf but they played tennis an awful lot. Tennis seemed to be the really popular game there. That’s where I learned to play tennis.

… At the most superficial level, between our Embassy Commissary, the Embassy club, and the rest of it, if one’s life was bridge, swimming, golf, and tennis with a small, but not uncongenial, foreign community...

HUFFMAN: Another strategy that we used was tennis. When the British were there they built a lot of old, sort of colonial mansion type places and each one had its own tennis court. I had for the first and only time in my life my own tennis court. We were able to invite Burmese over to play tennis and we would have tennis tournaments with the Burmese community. So tennis was a prominent feature of life in Rangoon, more prominent in Rangoon than in any subsequent post in which I served. I had a pro who came and used my court to teach his students; he made money that way and the quid pro quo was that he would give lessons to my family so we all got tennis lessons from a pro. As a matter of fact he had been the Burmese national champion for 11 years, so he was quite good.

from: BURMA / MYANMAR COUNTRY READER
https://adst.org/Readers/Burma - Myanmar.pdf

 

Great stuff! As my mother was fond of saying, Who would've thunk it? Military brass probably from wealth & educated in the West. Considering the US attitude toward 'creeping communism' & what was going on in Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos at the time, not to mention our relationship with them now, a bit surreal to hear those days described as rather jolly if you were in the right circles. But does explain the bowl. Good job.

 

I agree that it would be nearly impossible to figure out who won this trophy. While looking around for a minute I found archives of the Straits Times (published in Singapore) are online. There are some mentions of the words "Rangoon" and "tennis" but they appear to focus more on table tennis, and also on tournaments in which Singapore had a team. (Makes sense.) But at least it's in English!

http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/BrowseNewspaper?nid=straitstimes&tvw=dg&yr=1971#browseStart

 

No more "Rangoon?" I kow there are reasons, but I still miss some of the old, rather exotic, names from history.

 

Those were the days of 'ping pong diplomacy'.

 

Thanks everyone for the replies and thanks SBSVC for posting those quotes. It kind of puts somewhat of a face to the winners of the bowl and to why it was awarded or perhaps to whom it was awarded to at that period of time.