NOW WE HAVE EMMA & ANDY, WILL BRITISH TENNIS FINALLY SMASH I T WHEN IT COMES TO GRASSROOTS?
It’s been no ordinary month for Emma Raducanu. But then, this is no ordinary 18-year-old. since storming to victory in the Us Open final, the teenager has had a knockabout on the court with the Duchess of Cambridge, met James Bond and notched up an incredible two million followers on Instagram. Not bad for a girl from Bromley. It’s clearly her moment and well might she revel in it, because such a heady rise is rare in the world of sport, let alone tennis.
Raducanu’s phenomenal victory at Flushing Meadows, beating Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-3 in the final, earned her not only $1.8million, but the accolade of becoming the first qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand slam.
Fans around the globe watched in awe as she struck the final blow, with Channel 4 recording viewing figures of 9.2million viewers, having struck a last-minute deal with Amazon to show it. On a saturday night. For a women’s tennis match. Britain was a nation gripped.
It had the feeling of a seismic shift in the way we watched the women’s game. Not only because of the prime time slot it was given on a major tV channel, but in the way we — as a nation — viewed the sport itself.
It became less about the gender and more about the tennis, an intense competition between two incredible teenage sportspeople who had propelled themselves to dizzy heights in the flutter of an eye. It was dramatic and unpredictable, the essence of thrilling sport.
the event was important for broadcasters, too. Nearly half the audience were in the treasured ‘golden egg’ of the 16-34 age bracket, a hard-to-reach market rarely bothered with linear television, but which had tuned in to watch one of their own, upping the ante.
to focus on this point is important, because it’s this audience that tennis is also trying to reach to capitalise on the Raducanu success story.
While she steps out at Indian Wells this week in her first event since winning in New York, youngsters around the country will be taking to the courts, inspired by her efforts in the Us.
And it’s important they do, because it took 44 years for Raducanu to repeat the success of the last female Grand slam winner from Britain — Virginia Wade taking that accolade back in 1977.
simplifying that success, though, is far too easy. It takes years of pain, sacrifice and labour to achieve a Grand slam title. It also takes incredible natural talent and very few will have that in them. It’s why those at the top are so very special and why their achievements are applauded with such fervour.
But that’s not to say that we can’t as a nation at least try to get close to that. to even have a hope of becoming the next Emma Raducanu or the next Andy Murray, the window must first be opened for kids around the country to play, experiment, have fun and compete.
Judy Murray has campaigned on this topic for years and worked with the Lawn tennis Association to create initiatives such as sheRallies, Lil Miss Hits and more, so that girls and young women have the opportunity to play and learn in a welcoming environment. While Murray’s experience as a coach and Fed Cup captain has been invaluable, the burden of opening up these opportunities and retaining players should not rest solely upon her shoulders.
As a nation, we can’t just hide in the shadows and expect her to do it for us.
It’s notable, therefore, that the LtA has announced a £30.5m investment into public courts around the UK — £22m of that coming from the UK Government, with the LtA providing the £8.5m. According to tennis’ governing body, the move will see thousands of publicpark tennis courts in poor or unplayable condition being brought back to life for the benefit of their local community, presenting what they describe as a ‘unique opportunity to capitalise on the public interest in tennis and build on the legacy of the Murray family and others over recent years’.
the initiative is timely, given Andy Murray retweeted a picture of a court in East Kilbride, stating ‘shambles @tennisscotland’. It followed a recent tweet from tennis dad Allan Kay where he highlighted the lack of facilities after his local court was left to go to ruin.
so whose responsibility is it to maintain these public courts? the onus, in fact, lies with the leisure trusts who run facilities for councils across scotland, and, in this case, south Lanarkshire Leisure, who manage the operation of sports and recreation facilities on behalf of south Lanarkshire Council.
the cost of bringing the courts back into use, they said, was prohibitive. News of new funding, therefore, should prove to be a boost, although it’s not yet clear how much scotland will get from this pot.
Blane Dodds, chief executive of tennis scotland, is well placed to help argue the case for funds. As former CEO of North Lanarkshire Leisure, he combines knowledge of council financial constraints with experience of facility investment.
‘I’m very passionate about this,’ he said. ‘I get the issues, I get their priority challenges. We’ve tried to help local authorities and leisuretrust operators of these facilities, because we understand there are even more competing priorities now we’re coming out of the pandemic.
‘We want to not only invest in the facility to raise the standard and get it playable, but also put in a sustainable operating model. so it might be the leisure-trust operator or the local club or a group of clubs that run it. It may be a local community or even us at tennis scotland, who can put in a balanced programme, because we, I think, are best to do that.
‘It is challenging for them to invest. In the pandemic, they’re maybe not being maintained, so there are a lot of courts that are perhaps not as good or are even unusable. A fund has now been put together by British tennis and the
‘We need to make sure we are investing in the right areas’
park regeneration fund, which has been submitted to central government, and they’ve bought into that.
‘We need to make sure we’re investing in the right areas, but there’s a huge opportunity and scotland’s a part of that. We can get a lot more public facilities back on track and that’s really exciting.’
Dodds says he has made the case to ‘maximise investment for scotland’ from the £30m fund and that a plan is ‘pretty much there’.
He added: ‘We’ve done a lot of work looking at the demographics, the demand, where clubs are at capacity, to demonstrate significant needs in certain areas.
‘We’ve already talked to Glasgow, for example, and made a formal proposal to them with their eight tennis parks. that was before the announcement.
‘the funding allows us to speak to all the local authorities and leisure trusts that operate or own the tennis facilities, to say we’ve got opportunities to invest in this way with these conditions.
‘the overall message here is that we want to help local authorities and leisure trusts. so if you do have facilities out there that you want to talk to us about, need support with, please contact us.
‘We’ll talk you through what we can do and how we can access the fund together.’
According to LtA figures, tennis participation grew by eight per cent last year, despite the pandemic. some 1.7million adults in the UK and ‘many more children’ now play tennis in a local park every year.
In scotland, the picture is also looking positive. there were 5,129 new community-club members last year, half of whom were female. Community-club membership in scotland alone stands at 63,000.
some clubs — such as Fossoway tennis Club in Crook of Devon, Kinross — have paused their membership due to a surge in demand over lockdown. the notfor-profit club, which has existed in the local community since 1926, actually gained from the restrictions during that time.
Club president Gerry Keegan told Sportsmail that the club was now thriving despite the difficulties over the last year.
‘We definitely benefited from the limited leisure activity available at that time,’ admitted Keegan.
‘We put in a lot of hard work to make sure it was safe for people and we have a great coach who shows enthusiasm.
‘We did see a bounce, but our coach has helped in encouraging the youngsters to take part. they really enjoy it.’
With annual family membership costing £40, the club has done its best to make tennis accessible. they now have over 200 members, with 77 juniors on their books. Its one and only court has recently been resurfaced and coloured, and members are committed to maintaining what’s seen as a vital resource in the village community.
the challenge for many communities around scotland, however, is continuing that momentum. Dodds believes that other funding mechanisms need
to be brought into force to help them continue — with a ‘pay-as-you-go” for a nominal fee idea a key part of Tennis Scotland’s thinking. ‘A balanced programme makes sure that there’s going to be a pay-as-you-go opportunity, so the public do not need to be a member to use a court,’ said Dodds. ‘Within the programme, there also needs to be tennis-forfree opportunities to break down barriers. We’ve got quite a lot of free programmes now where there’s actually coached activity. We do that in parks across Scotland. We’ve tried to cover all the bases and have a very robust programme that brings in money when it’s appropriate, and that’s free when it’s appropriate. ‘If it’s a quality facility with a good programme that will bring in income, that income should be invested in regularly to make sure the quality remains in place. That’s the key to making it sustainable. People vote with their feet. If you give them quality, they’ll look after it and use it.
‘So I think that’s really exciting, bringing much more public access to tennis. It’s the sort of precursor to maybe joining a club or being involved in competitions and it’s a really exciting growth area for us.’
In the interim, Tennis Scotland continue to work on plans to create more indoor facilities, having launched the Transforming Scottish Indoor Tennis Fund back in 2016.
The project — between Tennis Scotland, Sportscotland and the LTA — committed £15m for the development of indoor tennis centres in Scotland over ten years, but it is yet to deliver.
Dodds says it is now well on track, having been hampered by the pandemic.
‘We had nine projects, and then March 2020 happened. And what did the pandemic hit hardest? It hit all the people we were talking to — local authorities, leisure trusts, who all went into pretty significant deficit.
‘That put a dent in terms of the timeline of some of the projects but we’re now getting that back on track.
‘We’ve got a really good team from Sportscotland and the LTA working on this. And we now have three projects that are very close to being started across Scotland this year, with another three projects next year that we expect to come to fruition.
‘We had 23 expressions of interest across the country, which we generated into nine projects. Nine projects turned into three projects, and now we’re back up to six projects, with three probably going to be over the line this year. So I think that’s back on track, to be honest.’
With Elgin, Greenock and HeriotWatt earmarked as sites to benefit from these facilities, others are set to follow, and Dodds is all too aware of how important their creation will be to step up the game in Scotland.
‘We’ve doubled the membership in tennis without them and I think tennis has done pretty well over the last few years in terms of getting that growth,’ he added. ‘If you went
to any of the tournaments this year, it was all record entries, so there’s a huge appetite for tennis here. One of the motivations for me is to actually take that sort of appetite for tennis in Scotland and turn it into something that’s going to last a long time, so that there’s more all-year round tennis.
‘It was me who put the target for new indoor facilities up to ten! I put that in before we got the money.’
Ambitious plans, and much to ponder now for the former player.
So while Scotland can’t claim Emma Raducanu as one of its own, it can hope to build on the stage she has set for a new generation following in her footsteps. Building blocks which had already been put in place by Andy Murray, who Dodds says, he’d be happy to get on board with in the future.
‘The plan is to talk to Andy a lot more, as soon as he can spend some time with us, to understand exactly where we’re going and how we’re going to get there,’ he said.
‘And if Andy has some ideas, then I would be absolutely delighted to hear them. I would love him to come on board.’
‘The plan is to talk to Andy. I would love him to come on board’