Professional players need to consider themselves as a business

indiana · Tennis legend

RE: Professional players need to consider themselves as a business

EddietheEagle · County player

It goes without saying that any inter-club competition would comprise a hierarchy of competition from bottom to top. I was alluding to the absence of any real discernible system, at least one that is known and understood by the average player and where the ATP players would simply represent the top end. We still seem to be in that glorious age when the London Parks Tournament reigned supreme.

paulisi · Tennis legend

I can back that up. It is very difficult to play an LTA competition for average club players. The is about 1 per month in the NW and you generally have to Manchester, Preston or Bolton to get a game.
It's embarrassing - no wonder the LTA cannot get adults to play regularly.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Hi Guys

Very interesting thread, I really enjoy competing in the Aegon Team Tennis league and my team just got promoted from Herts 2 to Herts 1 for next year. 5 Matches a year in this format is no where near enough tennis though. Not a great example in terms of our Herts team in the national league (Gosling) not being able to field a team and being disqualified (they are a performance centre for goodness sake how can they not field a team!!).

So with this in mind a year ago I started putting together a national network of singles league. Working on this part time, as well as a full time job, part time coaching and a busy social, family and tennis life!

My idea is so simple, I couldn't believe it doesn't exist already. I have had excellent feedback in a short space of time and now have around 20 leagues across the country. I still need to market the leagues much more and struggle badly to reach the potential players. I will use my Herts league to explain how it works:

30 players rated from 2.2 to 10.2 in six divisions of 5 players each (for all standards - increasing participation)
You have two months to arrange and play your games whenever you want (flexible enough to fit round any schedule...even mine!)
You play two matches at your home venue and two away. (minimises travelling costs)
All matches must be played in Hertfordshire. (with larger numbers I could even split Herts into East and West)
After two months players are promoted and relegated irrespective of rating. (this means under and over-rated players quickly find their correct standard to compete against)
Every player pays £10 to enter and the winner takes £150 for winning four matches. (Prize Money is 50% of entries in the top division, lower divisions win free entry)

For players like myself rated 8.1 I can get some easily arranged matches, local to me, against other players of my standard and a chance to improve my British Tennis Rating.
For players at the top rated 2.2 they can use the prize money to fund British Tour and Future Event costs (or nights out and beer!) and lower players in the county can practice against the best.

I would glady appreciate any feedback on this format and especially any ideas to market it better/spread the word. What I do is send emails to club secretaries and with their traditional doubles league in mind they promptly mark the email as spam. I really need clubs to pass the emails on to members.

Cheers

Gareth Clarke