National Championships

EddietheEagle · County player

National Championships

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Glad to see Andy likes our idea. We just wanted to start the ball rolling, so have already agreed a format and venue for this year. The event can certainly evolve with other categories, juniors, doubles etc in following years...but we just wanted to get the ball rolling. This year we are only doing a men's open event, with regional qualifying during the second summer ratings run 22nd June to 31st August. The finals are 5th September in Glasgow. As always marketing it and spreading the word will be our biggest difficulty, but hopefully Andy can make some tweets about it.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

I have to admit I am skeptical about the level of commitment from the top players, given the demands on their time around the world. They are making very positive noises at the moment, but when it comes to actually committing their time to play, that is a different thing.

Having said all that, I really do wish you all the best with the plans. I hope that I am wrong and that the project is a big success.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Anne K and Jamie Baker (and Katie O'Brian ?) 'should' be big supporters. They are on the LTA Committee/Board (specifically the Performance Committee or one of those - have it filed somewhere). They could go a long way to helping the profile of the event.

I sometimes wonder why their voices are not heard more often !?!?

indiana · Tennis legend

I may be wrong, but I earlier got the impression that B2WT wasn't looking for participation of the top players ( and certainly not Andy ! ) but being outwards supportive and spreasing the word can only be helpful.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
I may be wrong, but I earlier got the impression that B2WT wasn't looking for participation of the top players ( and certainly not Andy ! ) but being outwards supportive and spreasing the word can only be helpful.

Perhaps I mis-understood and was basing my comments on tweets that were flying around this morning between Andy, Jamie Delgado and a few others regarding a National Championship. This one from Andy caught y eye.

@DelgadoJamie would love 2 watch a @JamesWardtennis vs @AljazBedene vs @kyle8edmund vs @Liambroady match a couple weeks before davis cup tie

philwrig · Hall of fame

Hate to be a party pooper but I'm not a huge fan. Is Andy really going to play ? and if he doesn't how relevant will it be ? It's tough enough playing on tour all year, and then you're going to add on another tournament. I'd be a big fan if there was a space in the calendar for it, and wasn't going to compromise our top pro's positions in the World rankings.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Don't know if it's relevant but the National Open Championships for the Men works pretty well in France, even though the top half dozen usually don't take part. It obviously begs a question as to how much worth there is in the title but you could have a 'Top 50' excluded, or 'Top 100' excluded. Or just leave it vague and everyone understands, a bit like Chelsea fielding their B team for the FA Cup when they've got a Champions League match that week.

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
Don't know if it's relevant but the National Open Championships for the Men works pretty well in France, even though the top half dozen usually don't take part. It obviously begs a question as to how much worth there is in the title but you could have a 'Top 50' excluded, or 'Top 100' excluded. Or just leave it vague and everyone understands, a bit like Chelsea fielding their B team for the FA Cup when they've got a Champions League match that week.

The Johnson's Paint Trophy of tennis (or whatever it is called)

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Just an update on this, with just under 2 weeks until qualifying starts we have just hit 100 entries! It's clearly more of a participation than performance event though, typical ratings are 6.1-10.2 so we might not even run our top two tiers. I tweeted all top25 GB Men and maybe another ten ex-top25 like Jamie Baker etc to support the idea and only two retweeted it, very disappointing. How dare they complain about prize money when they can't even be bothered to simply click retweet on twitter to help promote a new national event with £3000 prize money.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Huge congrats, Born2win.

You're really making an effort and actually doing something to bring about change.

It shows there's a demand, and an interest, if only from the mid level down (and, yes, you'd have thought a simple re-tweet wouldn't have been asking too much of the others....)

Please let us know dates/times etc. I'm not around much over summer but would love to come along and support if I could.

Shhh · Challenger level

To echo what Coup said, congratulations on making something happen born2win, I hope it is successful and grows from strength to strength

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

It's difficult to get ATP ranked players out for aegon when our total appearence fees are 5 x the prize money for the winner

what you would get is in the 1.1-3.1 is the 3.1's so it really would not be a national title . What is missing is a national singles /doubles based competition in the winter .

If it's not the competition that's important at the Top GB 50 level but more a festival of British tennis on tour it's a nice idea but the tournament calendar already packed with french league , Aegon , county cup , premier indoors and county doubles league matches and huge calendar of competitions

PaulM · Tennis legend

B2W, sorry you may have already covered this but do you have to have a rating to take part? I've never bothered signing up for British Tennis Membership, and don't really know how it works (do you just guess a rating for yourself?).

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Gary - yes we will wait and see for the 1.1-3.1 category, we need 8 players and have 3 already, but my partner is convinced he will get 5 more by the finals day. I agree we are missing a national singles/doubles competition in winter. My proposal for that, at least for now, is a districts championship for the home counties, so it doesn't include national or even county players. Obviously it could be expanded if it takes off. There is another topic on this forum discussing that one.

Paul - you don't need a rating to play but you do need a British Tennis Membership and they now come with a rating as default. You can sign up for a free BTM as part of the competition this should allocate you a rating of 10.2 You can self declare via the LTA website down to a 7.2 if you are a good player, i.e. 1.1 best in world 10.2 worst in world.

There is more info here and links to sign up here: www.tweenertennis.co.uk/btc2015/