Essay Ideas - Local and national provisions of tennis?

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Tennis has become an increasingly popular sport in Britain over the past 30 years. This is mainly due to Britain having two top 20 ranked players and the widespread popularity of Wimbledon. The governing body of tennis is called the LTA (The Lawn Tennis Association). Their job is to look out for up and coming talent, provide necessary facilities, improve participation levels, promote the game and to generally safeguard the best interests of tennis. The LTA is split into counties so that tournaments can be arranged more easily and clubs get more individual attention appropriate to the needs of the area e.g. ECLTA (Essex County Lawn Tennis Association). As in all sports, tennis has a ladder of progression ranging from the grass roots level to national standard. The LTA provides this ladder and makes it possible for talented individuals to climb as far up it as possible.

Like all other sports, the tennis ladder starts at grass roots level, by which I mean starting to get young children playing the game and maintaining their interest. Recreational play can also come under grass roots. This is done by going into schools, organising tournaments and providing the schools with the relevant equipment. The LTA has developed a programme for youngsters aged between 4 and 10 years that takes into account that the tennis racket and full-sized tennis court are too big and that the balls bounce too high and fast for small children. This programme is called mini tennis. As the name suggests the court, net and racquets have been miniaturised to make tennis more easily playable by young children and the scoring system has been simplified. Sponge balls are also used which makes the game a lot slower and safer.

Instead of the emphasis being on playing the actual game of tennis it is on learning the basic key skills e.g. hitting the ball, being able to cover the length and width of the court and becoming confident with the ball. The LTA has divided mini tennis into three categories (red, orange and green) depending on age and ability. The size of the court, the scoring system and the size of the racquets and balls all vary throughout the program becoming progressively more challenging.

The next rung on the tennis ladder would be school tennis. The LTA encourages large numbers of children in schools to play tennis by having trained coaches come in to teach them. These programs have been succeeding and the LTA have met their targets for getting more children into the game. In the past it was almost impossible for the LTA to compete with sports such as football because it has always had some sort of a national hero, David Beckham for example. Now with British players such as Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski encouraging young children to play tennis has become quite feasible.

The tennis played by schools should be practically identical to that of normal tennis but in shortened format. The LTA encourages schools to compete against one another in a league style. The LTA have also introduced “JNR tennis” into schools. The LTA web site says:

“Robinsons JNR Tennis is the fun way to advance your tennis skills. You might have just graduated from mini tennis, or you might be completely new to tennis but feel that you can handle the full-sized game - whatever your route, Robinsons JNR Tennis offers a range of coaching, competition and fun!”

In JNR tennis they are again putting the emphasis on the development of key skills as opposed to playing the actual game.

Regardless of all the hard work of the LTA, it is now commonplace that tennis is not played in schools at all. The blame can largely be placed on the era of grant maintained schools. Many schools across the country were forced to sell off large amounts of school land and playing fields to support their low grant budget given to them by the government. Due to the shortage of space, schools often decided to become specialised in one particular sport e.g. Great Baddow High School largely specialises in basketball and Chigwell High School largely specialises in tennis.

An increasing number of sports and leisure clubs now make provision for tennis thus widening the range of participants. Someone may initially join to use a gym, for example, and try tennis because it is one of the many options on offer. This practice was largely started off by David Lloyd whose clubs are now throughout the country. In our local area in Essex there is also the Clearview Centre in Brentwood (attached is some promotional material outlining their provision and commitment to the game). The fact that a lot of these clubs provide indoor facilities now makes the sport an all year round activity and thus more popular.

More commonly one joins a specialist tennis club which covers pretty much the whole tennis ladder and caters for the whole spectrum of ages and abilities. The LTA helps club tennis by providing coaches, tournaments and most importantly by providing the clubs with fresh new players.

“Over 2,300 Tennis Clubs affiliate to the LTA. Most affiliated clubs offer coaching programmes and welcome newcomers to tennis” (L.T.A. website)

Clubs often arrange annual internal tournaments to members. As well as these, the LTA offer a large number of competitions open to anyone. Due to the sheer number of tournaments the LTA offers, they have developed a rating system whereby they can rank players and make sure they enter suitable tournaments. Ratings usually start at 7.2 and can go as low as 1.1. The ratings are divided into divisions as shown below.

Division / Ratings

(Taken from the LTA website)

Very gifted players often use club tennis as a stepping-stone to county tennis. The easiest way to get into the county team is often to enter as many tournaments as possible, to be recommended by PE teachers for trials or to try and get your rating as low as possible. The very best county standard player can also play regional tennis. This means that they are representing the whole of East Anglia against all the other regions. If players get to this standard it is sadly quite often the case that Britain cannot offer the necessary facilities and environment to improve much more. It is common that the elite player will go to America where there are excellent facilities and all year round sunshine.

Once you have reached this standard it is common and almost expected of people to turn professional. Professional players are people who get paid for playing the game, usually through sponsorships and prize money. Once you have turned professional you can be offered a place on the ATP tour or WTA tour for women. Professional tennis players commonly compete as individuals in tournaments such as Wimbledon and the American and French Opens and don’t really represent their country. The only real opportunity they get to represent their country is in the Davis cup although the Davis cup does not yet account for women.

While a large number of women play tennis is often the case that they are not taken seriously. As females are obviously a huge section of the population it is critical that LTA improve attitudes towards the female game. This may be because females lack a role model like Tim Henman or Greg Rusedski. For the last few years women’s tennis has been dominated by other European players such as Stephie Graph and Martina Hingis which will promote the game in their countries. This may happen in the near future with the British female game which has been improving with such players as Sam Smith coming up through the ranks.

At the end of the day there is only a certain amount that the LTA can do to encourage people to play tennis. Television and the media hugely influence the tennis world and are commonly the main reason why people start to play tennis. As Britain now has a couple of high profile tennis players (Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski) this has hugely influenced tennis in this country (although there is still a long way to go – browsing through this week’s Sunday paper there are 15 pages devoted to football and no mention at all of any tennis!). Young children see Tim Henman playing at Wimbledon on TV and want to be just like him, so a large number of young players are brought into the tennis system. Such magazines as “ACE” also do a lot for the game by providing the enthusiasts with the latest information allowing them to attend more tournaments and watch more tennis. Sponsorship plays a large role in getting young children playing any sport. In tennis large sporting goods manufacturers like Nike sponsor the game’s elite players such as Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Young children see the trendy Nike tennis products in the shop and buy them thus promoting the sport and giving it a more fashionable image.

Although the LTA is doing a fantastic job they have failed to recognise a key percentage of the population, the disabled. There are obviously facilities for disabled players around but I have never heard of any in my local area. It is essential that they begin to acknowledge this minority of the population, as tennis is a vastly improving sport. Not catering for this percentage of the community could dramatically reduce the growing potential of tennis.

The LTA have done a lot to improve tennis by providing tournaments and coaching but a lot of help is offered by such organizations as Sport England. Sport England provides the cold hard cash for organizations such as the LTA so that it is possible to provide necessary facilities. They so far seem to have kept abreast of the times – they have an excellent and very accessible website for example and have come up with innovative ideas such as the mini tennis league. Provided they keep up this momentum Britain should produce many more Tim Henman’s and Greg Rusedski’s to ensure the healthy future of the game.

Bibliography

(2002), LTA homepage, www.lta.org.uk

(2002), Sport England homepage, www.sportengland.org

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