| Arthur Fery 17:29 - Jul 8 with 2491 views | catch74 |
Where has he come from! Wimbledon would have been very sad for GB without him this year. |  |
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| Arthur Fery on 13:48 - Jul 9 with 300 views | Rsj13 |
| Arthur Fery on 11:59 - Jul 9 by SaleAway |
They do a fair bit.... have recently spent a lot of money refurbishing publicly accessible tennis courts - adding online booking systems, and making them secure, such that they stay nice....
There are a lot of strands to development, from the participation pathways, through to elite pathways. Fundamentally, the reason we generally see middle class/ priveleged players at Wimbledon, is that it is incredibly expensive to start out on tour. Unless you are super talented and manage to shoot up the rankings really quickly, then you end up in the challenger tour, basically spending all your money travelling, in search of ranking points that will get you into the bigger tournaments. This is also why LTA generally prioritises up and coming brits with wild cards into their tournaments, as the funding and ranking points from one or two rounds at a grand slam or Masters event, can be enough to kick start a career.
I know the Broady family fairly well, ( Naomi commentates now, having had a typical middling British tennis career - and makes more money now than she ever did playing), Liam broke into the top 100 but immediately got injured and has bounced around the ITF circuit since trying to get back up there. Their dad basically had to remortgage his house to fund their tennis ( after Naomi got booted out of an LTA pathway for going to a nightclub).
Fundamentally, the LTA spend a lot of money trying to develop tennis, but whether they do it the right way is a massive debate. |
I think one of the biggest challenges is space. The space per person requirements for Tennis are just massive (4 people max per match per court as well!?). You then add in the massive popularity of Padel / Pickle and that's eating into Tennis court space as well.
Obviously there is a massive class problem with all of the "british" sports, and I would say that Tennis (along with cricket and rowing) is at the top of the list in terms of the lack of diversity (cultural and otherwise). The starting point for these sports was so low, as traditionally there's been the view of "we don't need to provide public funding, because the participants can fund it themselves", so to get to anything meaningful is just a massive jump.
I think there's a reasonable amount being done to improve accessibility to the sport and generally improving engagement, but it'll take many many years for this to result in many real "contenders" coming through that way - I can't see there being too many prospects that haven't always been directly and aggressively embedded in Tennis since a very young age coming through, unfortunately. |  | | |
| Arthur Fery on 13:49 - Jul 9 with 299 views | leitrimblue |
Apparently Andy Murrays mum was the inspiration behind Zelda in Terrahawks |  | | |
| Arthur Fery on 15:30 - Jul 9 with 229 views | SaleAway |
| Arthur Fery on 13:45 - Jul 9 by Vaughan8 |
IN search for a sport my son liked, we tried out the local, free tennis courts. He quite enjoyed playing it so I enquired about getting him into a lessons, before eventually when hes good enough, can join a group thing. I can hit the ball but i'm by no means a coach.
Firstly, it is great that there are free courts, but the standard of them is absolutely awful. Nets falling off, the concrete courts have cracks in them with weeds coming out. This is fine for us as we're not serious, but anyone who is remotely average or beyond, would not want to play on those.
To play on a decent court and get lessons at my local club, I'd have to get my son an annual membership which is quite expensive (£200-250). Then to pay for the lessons on top of that would have been too much of a commitment, especially as I don't even know if he'd do it for more than a couple of months.
You can't have lessons unless you're a member......!
I know the clubs need to make money and I don't know what the answer is, but surely giving a child a chance, means in the future they'll join as a member etc.
A 3 month trial or something would be ideal. |
That sounds like a club problem... at my club in manchester, they run trial sessions for approx £10-15 which is refunded if you then join. They run weekly sessions, which can be paid for on a rolling monthly contract, so if your child has had enough, they can quit without a massive penalty:
https://thenorthern.co.uk/wp-c
And on the subject of poor courts... https://www.lta.org.uk/park-te | |
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