Club players and Participatory Tennis

Last of the Mohicans

‘Club-Tennis’ is the identity of participatory Tennis players. It is for recreation, fun and health. Clubs provided the tennis court facilities and membership-base. These two gave a place and players to play. Tennis was lively in the 50’s and 60’s in Sri Lanka. The system was effective and it encouraged and sustained the interest to ‘play’ Tennis.

Unlike team sports where more than ten players are needed, Tennis could be played with two. This aspect increased the probability to play Tennis regularly than most other sport. Clubs further enhanced this probability with its ‘Membership-base’ for connectivity. That is helping to find someone to play with. The availability of court and players made playing tennis so easy and Tennis caught on like wild-fire because of the club system. This is the secret behind the success of Tennis in most countries. Popular participatory Tennis activity is the doubles. This means a player needs three others. It was easy in a club.

Participatory Tennis is an idea that started in England. Even today Tennis survives with this idea. Any country not fostering these ideals cannot sustain Tennis. This is the case now in Sri Lanka. Land is not available for Clubs at affordable rates from the local authorities. What is available are at commercial rates. This means membership is expensive. All these have resulted in the reduction of membership in clubs.

Clubs Concept support

One of the methods to grade cities and urban areas for living standard is by the facilities they provide to the people. Recreational facilities come high on this priority. It is placed with equal emphasis to public transport system in good cities. Vancouver in Canada tops the list in this aspect now. The club services really peaked in the sixties in Sri Lanka. The local authorities then saw ‘clubs’ as vital aspect in urban development, government services used it for interaction. Almost every government service had its own string of sports clubs in the country even in remote areas; wild Boer visited the Tennis courts in GalOya. It was the golden era for participatory sport.

Need for fixed constitution

The unfortunate development in these clubs is the ‘contest’ for club offices. Club offices have become social symbols and the membership fought and is fighting for them. It divided the membership and threw the service priorities of the club right out of the windows. This resulted in membership strength dropping and in some cases to a single digit. After the loss of membership to sustain the finances, bars in club houses and Tennis schools in club courts came to being. Both of these drove away more members out of the clubs. What kind of a club that would be when it loses the two main attractions that made the clubs? Government land was vested with clubs for sports and not for bars and Schools. If the authorities wanted those, they need not go through sports clubs, they can do it directly and they are doing so now closing the clubs. A fixed format constitution is necessary to eliminate club politics. If this can be achieved clubs in Sri Lanka will come back.

Junior Development and clubs

Junior development has become almost mandatory and it also ‘killing’ the clubs. In most instances it does violate mem- bership rules. Looking back and looking at our national standard of Tennis which has dropped down to teenage Tennis, it can be said junior development cannot be a club responsibility. If not for anything else it cannot cope with the present mechanics of development. What was also observed was the parents of junior players with vested interest and only to the duration of their children’s junior years APPEARED AND DIASSAPPEARED making all changes in the club. These disturbed the club system and left big holes in the clubs. I find it very strange to state this from my position, but it is the truth. I have studied this for many years and I am convinced clubs cannot succeed in player development programme what more it has proved suicidal to the clubs. This is true even in Europe where I have conducted junior programs. If support is needed from clubs it should be only for 4 to 6 weeks long and prior to major events not more than two times a year. There no rule stopping juniors from joining a club as members anywhere in the world. Why do you want a separate entity which is often prioritised? We never had this before maybe that is why clubs were healthy then.

School participatory Tennis

For sports ‘Catch them young’ is the motto. Early involvement into sport gives natural coordination and comfort on the sports field. That is the base to ‘enjoy’ sports in life. A late starter can be easily spotted and often they drop off. The length of a school day inclusive of the tutorial attendance leaves no free time to children to play Tennis now. The few who play Tennis attend academies which weight their training to groups and provide meager match play possibility. Players come out of those as fixed stroke makers and not open game makers. Age group Tennis of schools is for participation and not elimination. Post school Tennis participation is not addressed in school Tennis at all. This implies to school players that Tennis and other sports stops once out of school till doctors say ‘please do some sport!’

The major problem for schools is the Tennis court. Only four can occupy a court at a time to play. Basket ball can take in excess of 10. Most schools do not have tennis courts for this reason. With space becoming an issue, Tennis is been squeezed out of schools often. The second aspect is the expense of Tennis. It has gone through the roof. What cost even more is the daily travel to and from the courts! It is often more than the cost of sport itself.

Revival plans please.

If participatory Tennis is to survive in this island a new formula has to appear. We had over 130 clubs with over 300 courts. It is down to 30 plus Tennis clubs and less than 100 courts. At present total number of club membership is around 2000 in the whole island. Right now I cannot detect a process to reverse this trend. That makes the present participatory club players ‘the last of the Mohicans’!