EddietheEagle wrote:

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German league tennis players are by and large, ordinary club members. Their league system offers competitive tennis for all standards, both sexes and across all age groups. You cannot get more inclusive than that. It caters from 'lower level' to 'relatively higher level' to highest level of all. Their system seems to work and has done so for a long(ish) period of time.

I made two separate but interrelated points in connection with that. First, the OP's ideas concern open level tennis only. He/She needs to address that. In my view this is overly restrictive in that a national competition based on open level only would militate against the participation of older players who still played at a good level relative to their age. They want to play tennis too but to do so in matches where they're not facing 120 mph serves or being hit off the court in ten minutes. This has been a decades long problem of the LTA with its narrow focus on either junior or elite level tennis with disinterest in between. Second, unless money or prestige are involved, people won't bother to play. You can argue all day long against that if you wish but you won't change a basic fact of life.

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 Eddie, don't think I put forward any ideas as such - just commented that our current competition structure was illogical and that, outside of the elite group, most players in the UK just wanted accessible tennis at their own level and probably weren't fussed about prestige or money.

Not sure what issues you feel I should address.

Coup Droit wrote:

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I'm impressed you got travel expenses, Eddie !


But that's probably a reasonable reflection of the league I was playing in . . .

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Having a generous sponsor helps, CD, and more than once I ended up with a 500 euro note tucked into my shirt pocket after I'd done well during the afternoon. Usually, I helped to deliver a point in doubles having lost my singles match, but that's another story. However, I did put in a big effort, attended the pre-season team meeting and training week, post-match Monday morning training sessions, and, most importantly perhaps, did my best to splutter in German. They didn't regard me as English. Apart from playing ITFs, German tennis was basically what I did and provided purpose and drive for a few years. You know what it's like.

Apropos money, I got chatting to another sponsor once, sitting next to him at the traditional post-match dinner. His supported player had, shortly before, completely mashed me. He explained that for the top players in the 'Over's categories, it wouldn't be unusual for them to have a contract for around 5,000 euros, plus accommodation and car. Not bad for four matches across four weeks, then a short break followed by another three matches; seven matches total. Some of these players worked as coaches at the club they played for. 

German league tennis is an interesting option for any young player trying to pay his way while living the dream. It may be on the wane now, I don't know. The development of German tennis is really different to the UK in that we have a long history while over there it boomed massively to phenomenon proportions when Becker and Graff came on the scene.      

EddietheEagle wrote:

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German league tennis players are by and large, ordinary club members. Their league system offers competitive tennis for all standards, both sexes and across all age groups. You cannot get more inclusive than that. It caters from 'lower level' to 'relatively higher level' to highest level of all. Their system seems to work and has done so for a long(ish) period of time.

I made two separate but interrelated points in connection with that. First, the OP's ideas concern open level tennis only. He/She needs to address that. In my view this is overly restrictive in that a national competition based on open level only would militate against the participation of older players who still played at a good level relative to their age. They want to play tennis too but to do so in matches where they're not facing 120 mph serves or being hit off the court in ten minutes. This has been a decades long problem of the LTA with its narrow focus on either junior or elite level tennis with disinterest in between. Second, unless money or prestige are involved, people won't bother to play. You can argue all day long against that if you wish but you won't change a basic fact of life.

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I have now been organising competition opportunities for 18 months across the country and I've analysed my participants and they are overwhelmingly men aged 20-40.  Women made up around 10% of my entries so I have decided to concentrate on men only events for now.  Saying that my Corporate League in London is a team of 2 men and 1 lady.  Obviously in future I would love to have all age categories and men's, women's and junior categories.  To pilot different ideas it just makes things much more simple if I narrow down the competition to men's open for now.

With regards to money or prestige I have been concentrating on the money aspect for my county singles leagues and that has definitely seemed to encourage better players to enter.  For the proposal for team events it would be more around prestige.  Prestige for me (and perhaps the majority of tennis players in the country) can be as simple as winning their division of the local district doubles league.  For example I had three very enjoyable seasons in Glasgow, winning division 3a, runners up in division 2b and then getting annihilated and relegated from division 1b. So the prestige was winning against similar standard teams in the local vicinity, no one enjoys one sided matches.

"This has been a decades long problem of the LTA with its narrow focus on either junior or elite level tennis with disinterest in between"  Completely agree, there are masses of junior tournaments and almost a weekly British Tour event, in between there is barely anything.

Below is an excerpt of an email I sent the LTA last week, it focuses on the districts and county of Essex.

42 clubs play county organised tennis and 70 only play district organised tennis that's 62.5% of clubs and a massive 72% of teams who are competing only against other clubs within their districts.   Districts are insular so the winners of district leagues do not progress to a higher level of competition, resulting in stagnation.  Teams will play the same small number of clubs year in year out, potentially causing boredom.  Promotion and relegation only occurs once a year, therefore it can take years for a new club or new team to progress up the league structure.  Good players who are better than their local club team's standard are faced with a dilemma of either playing down against lower level competitors, or joining a bigger, usually more expensive club, further away from their location.  Unfortunately they also have a third option of not playing team tennis at all and giving up the game.

Aegon team tennis with it's format including singles only represents 8% of the total teams competing in the county.  This means it does not represent a sufficient breadth of standards across the tennis playing community.  Small club teams who currently do not compete at county level are not encouraged to enter, due to standards being too high, distances being too great, district league matches meaning no court or player availability etc etc.  The number of district league matches being played is an effective barrier to any new format of team competition.

If we could start from a blank canvas in the 2016 season, what type of league structures would we create in this country?

Would it include a myriad of district organisations playing a bunch of random format leagues with no progression, no national co-ordination and no consistency of product?

Would it include a myopic focus on doubles competition?

Would it just run for 3 months of a year?

Would you largely exclude clubs from competing against neighbouring districts or counties?

Would you care about county cup, scottish cup or regional/national competition fixtures and dates, when the vast majority of competing tennis players in this country do not compete in these?

Would you allow crazy rules to exist where you can play the same team for your 1st and 2nd team, or accept a draw at 6 games all.

For me this all supports the idea of teams competing in a district competition (involving some singles if possible) which allows progression to compete outside your district.  We all know the benefits of progression in tennis, you simply need new opponents to play against, new venues to compete at and need to avoid where possible a boring slog against the same old opponents. 

Further research could be done to build up a greater picture of team tennis in this country.  What I have done could be performed for each county at a district level.  Further key information to be gathered would include:

When does each district league season run from

Who organises the matches

Who organises the entire league

What days does the league run on (fixed dates or  fixed days/nights of the week vs negotiated at anytime)

How does each league communicate with team captains

What events and age categories does each district offer

Do they offer any singles or cup format competitions or tournaments

Does each league have a website and social media accounts

What do the regular players think about the formats, league structures etc? - (obviously league organisers opinions might be different).

What do the non-regular players think?

What do summer league versus winter league players think?

What do other countries do? why is there so much more money, sponsorship and interest involved in French, German and Italian leagues?  How does their progression work from local club to national level?