Love Tennis festival weekends turning the tide on sport’s popularity

Jono Spring Jono’s Serve

It is hard to believe, but we are fast approaching the summer tennis season and many of us are in full swing with preparations for the season’s leading events.

The highest-priority engagement for most tennis clubs will be the ‘‘Love Tennis’’ festival weekend, on September 7-8. This event has become a revolution compared with the old style ‘‘open days’’.

Many times in my professional tennis career I have been involved in open days that resulted in a mere handful of tennis hopefuls turning up to their local club to knock around a few balls.

Typically, these people would be interclub players who were using the occasion to dust off their rackets and get at least one training hit in before the summer interclub season began.

The tennis landscape has changed considerably over the years, however, and with it has come the need to market and celebrate tennis in a way that encapsulates the community and boosts the profile of the sport.

As a result of genuine Kiwi initiative, along came the concept of ‘‘Love Tennis’’, the brainchild of the motivated and enthusiastic Mel Jensen, of Wellington, who is employed by Tennis Central as a part of their operating team.

What began as a central New Zealand festival weekend for tennis has now become a nationally adopted event, with Tennis New Zealand now promoting and running it through tennis clubs across the country.

For clubs who invested fully into the concept of Love Tennis it has proven to be a positive and worthwhile venture.

To use our Manawatu¯ Lawn Tennis Club as an example, about 700 people visited during the festival in 2018, resulting in a 28 per cent increase in membership growth, largely consisting of adult members.

This is an unheard of occurrence in recent years and is a contributing factor toward the club winning the Tennis Central club of the year award this year. Another local club able to benefit from its involvement in the festival was the Feilding Tennis Club.

It was able to bolster its numbers in its junior hotshot programme, which teaches beginner children the skills necessary for tennis in a specifically focused age-and-ability-modified approach to the sport.

The Rongotea-based Te Kawau Tennis Club were also involved in the event and subsequently benefited from the interest it generated.

Te Kawau went on to have a fruitful season, one that saw the club improve its facilities, with freshly surfaced courts. And its younger members made finals in both the junior boys’ and girls’ A grade interclub competitions.

All three of these clubs will once again be involved in the Love Tennis festival this year and if last year’s turn of events is anything to go by, it will be another bumper year for local club membership growth.

■ A crowd of both junior and senior tennis players braved the inclement Manawatu¯ winter weather recently for the Feilding open tournament held at the Feilding Tennis Club.

There was a good spread of winners across the competition, with Palmerston North and Feilding juniors Leo Malakar and Taryn Backhouse making their presence felt especially, winning both of their sections.

The senior open event was dominated by former No 1 New Zealand age-group player Connor Heap.

Heap is a recent addition to the Manawatu¯ region, since becoming a tertiary student of Massey University.

He beat Tennis Eastern senior representative Hamish Lee 6-4, 6-0 in the final.

Jono Spring is a professional coach at the Manawatu¯ Lawn Tennis Club