The NTC hosted the Corporate Tennis Finals day yesterday. A great day of tennis helped by nice weather. In the semi finals The Armed Forces beat Direct Line Group while Investec beat Olswang. Then the final was tied at 2 rubbers each before Phil Stephens clinched the tiebreak shootout to hand Investec the championship and bragging rights as the best corporate team in London.
Work will start now to make the event bigger and better for next year.
I am now working on the 2016 Corporate Team Tennis event. It's only for Greater London again, but I am thinking if any home county companies would like to enter they could host a qualifying event and winners would progress to the finals at the NTC. If anyone knows of somebody who might be interested in entering a team (mixed: 2 men & 1 lady or men's: 3 men) then please direct them to the website below, it's intended for all standards from club players to county/national level.
Some very serious players in that league - congratulations for setting up something that's going so well and attracting such an interesting range of people.
Yes they've actually got four teams. One is GTB, I think their global banking division. Then the main Barclays Bank tennis society entered 2 x mixed teams and 1 x men's teams. Larger companies can enter as many teams as they like. UBS and JP Morgan both had three teams this year also.
My corporate tennis finals day was held on Sunday at the Riverside Club, Chiswick, what an amazing tennis venue. Barclays won the mixed event with PWC runners up. Gartner won the men's with Deloitte runners up. Great to see a former junior world ranked player Amar Hromic playing for Gartner and being the star of the show, ex-US college player. Last year another former world ranked player Sebastien Falk made an appearance for winners KPMG. Also really good to hear the four Deloitte players were team mates at university, playing BUCS for Exeter and Durham. I'm hoping this event becomes a logical progression for British Unis (BUCS) competitors.
Coup Droit has very kindly patched me into the organisers of the Paris corporate competition, with regards to setting up some progression from my London/UK competition to a potential European Championships. Does anyone on this site have similar language skills that could help me identify if corporate tennis competitions happen anywhere else in Europe? For example my Italian friend has looked at the Italian Federation tennis site and reports that he cannot see anything similar. Does anyone know if there is anything similar in Germany, Spain, Belgium etc?
Not me, my bit was simply getting my sons to translate the letter, Born2Win
(Why have a dog and bark yourself, I reckon.....)
But, quite honestly, hats off to you - you've obviously got great gumption or chutzpah or whatever you want to call it, firstly to get your event off the ground in the first place, and secondly to even think of trying to expand it Europe-wide, let alone managing to get the first steps organised.
I'm blinkin' impressed......
NB Mind you, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Germany???? Maybe one at a time? Use the French as a testcase, make them feel special, get their feedback and then roll it out? Or am I just thinking too small ?
(NB I was also dead impressed by the French authorities - to get a reply ONE HOUR after sending your email - and a friendly, positive, 'we're working on it' one, too - wow)
But again, way to go, Born2win - if only there were more like you around.....
-- Edited by Coup Droit on Saturday 9th of December 2017 08:58:21 PM
Very interesting seeing what is happening in Rugby where the championship is moving in the general direction of a high quality semi professional League and a natural home for very good university players.
As for Germany, a quick look didn't turn up anything but local clubs are a very big deal over there if you want to do anything sporting (or any other hobby), so it may be that they soak up all the demand and there is no demand for corporate leagues.
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!