Doubles Doubles Doubles

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

Doubles Doubles Doubles

wolf · Tennis legend

I would like to see the LTA force local leagues to turn their top divisions into singles (or singles and doubles). And get rid of the AEGON regional thing.

Jaffa · Challenger level

I live in North Yorkshire and it's mixed doubles round here. How does that make anyone a better player?

indiana · Tennis legend

Could clubs not at least have selected days and / or selected courts for singles ?? Basically give people a chance to develop their singles abilities.

christ · Futures level

Is the purpose of British tennis to develop singles players or to get people playing tennis? My understanding is that getting people playing is the thing, in which case it sounds from this anecdote that it is successful: if no club has three spare courts in the evening, then the clubs are busy and there are lots of players. This is surely a good thing, no?

What is the purpose of developing singles players? I assumed that it was to get more highly ranked players, to improve the profile of the sport to get more people to play, but if clubs are already running to capacity then there is no need to get more people to play.

PS - in my region (south coast) there are plenty of spare courts at most clubs that I visit on most evenings that I visit, so it appears that there may well be regional variation.

paulisi · Tennis legend

If it's a normal club night, then fill the courts with as many as possible and get everyone playing, but you have to have players play singles and allow competition and court time for players to develop otherwise we will never get any depth in the game.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, getting people playing is clearly an important target, indeed for the LTA a funding target.

But getting players playing competitively, certainly including singles must be another target.

Without any real knowledge, so I stand to be corected, I get the impression a lot of this doubles tennis is very social doubles rather than really competitive, though I am sure some is, with a worrying age profile.

christ · Futures level

indiana wrote:
... with a worrying age profile.

This certainly seems to be an issue - in most of the clubs of my ken it appears that the average age of the players is around 50. There really doesn't seem to be much youth about (except in isolated pockets)

indiana · Tennis legend

It's the age old problem is it not of getting good athletic youngsters into tennis, to even consider it early enough, i.e. in addition to the very limited pool of children of members / good tennis players themselves.

We are tennis culturally light years away from such as France.

Born2WinTennis · Club Coach

wolf - the LTA have no jurisdiction over these district leagues, they are all run independently, usually by a committee of local club members. Hence their rules and format can vary widely from district to district, even within a county. Out of all the tennis venues in the UK slightly less than half (47%) are affiliated with the LTA. But when you filter out all the big clubs (5 courts or more) then this figure declines to only 41% of clubs being members of the LTA. That generally means when things come to a vote (one vote per club) the small clubs always win.

christ - very good points, their purpose is to do both and are probably judged by the public on developing singles players but judged by sport england (for grant purposes) on participation figures. I think the participation route is a great idea, but at the same time there should be alternatives available for keen singles players, specifically aged 18-35, where the participation curve falls off the cliff. Generally all these guys can be found playing five-a-side football, where you can get a great competitive experience and workout from £5/hour.

Maybe I should give up promoting and organising singles competitions and just concentrate on offering more exciting doubles competitions. I often feel I am hitting my head off a brick wall.

wolf · Tennis legend

I know the LTA don't have anything to do with the local leagues, but there's surely something they could do. I liked Coup's idea in another thread about witholding Wimbledon tickets for those clubs that don't comply with what they want.

In my league as a club you get one vote per team. So the bigger clubs get loads of votes. The biggest club proposed a MTB in the 3rd set for this year and turned out in their droves to vote for it. So now we get even less tennis.

At my club in the top 4 teams (16 players) there's only 4 players over 30 and I would say that's reflective of most clubs. I'm not sure there's a huge problem with age, though of course the numbers playing could get better.

The leagues I play in are taken very seriously and are very competitive.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I'm not a great doubles fan (as people know) but it does have an endearing side....

And when you see Gael Monfils decide that he's suddenly, and out of nowhere, going to get hugely hyped up, playing doubles at the ATP event in Quito, as a wildcard pair, with a French 29 year-old with no doubles ranking, and only 1592 in singles, and they beat the number one seeds, and they win 14-12 in the MTB, and Gael looks as though he's going to explode, then doubles books a little warm place in my heart

JonH · All-time great

Wow, brilliant. Monfils is such a star talent.

If I could hold a dream 8 player invitational event it would be Federer, Nadal, Murray, dimitrov, Del Potro, Kyrgios, Sock and Monfils. If I had the money to put that on.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

JonH wrote:
Wow, brilliant. Monfils is such a star talent.

If I could hold a dream 8 player invitational event it would be Federer, Nadal, Murray, dimitrov, Del Potro, Kyrgios, Sock and Monfils. If I had the money to put that on.

That deserves a thread of its own - you should start one, Jon. The 'Dream Eight' Event - who would you invite? I'm going to think about that on the tube.... smile

JonH · All-time great

Now that is an idea, leave it with me!!