Participation

Introduction - Participation

ennis is a sport that appeals to a wide range of players of different ages and abilities. Therefore, it is important that your club’s tennis activities are aimed at, and able to be enjoyed by, all of your members. Most clubs have events like annual club championship events – but these types of competitions may only appeal to a small group of top players. It is important to have a varied programme that caters for competitive, social and casual players.

This section of the Tennis NZ Toolkit contains a number of different ideas for how to get all players involved in a range of interesting tennis activities. Try one out at your club in the near future!

The key component for building healthy, active clubs with bulging memberships is to cater for the needs and demands of the tennis members. Each tennis club will need to:

Identify what our members want from their tennis experience
Provide activities that meet these wants and encourage participation.

Tennis NZ research in 2007 has identified that there are five main reasons why people play tennis:

Competition
Social
Game Improvement
Health and Fitness
Sport for all ages

In this section you will find:

Competitions – challenge formats pyramid brief pyramid sample
Competitions – challenge formats ladder brief ladder sample
Competitions – elimination formats compass draw brief compass draw sample
Competitions – elimination formats knock out brief 32 knockout singles draw
Competitions – elimination formats knock out with consolation brief KO with cons
Competitions - round robin league draws (e.g. interclub) Round Robin Calculator
Social - doubles event organiser Double Happy
Social – adding a Theme (make your day as fun as possible) Adding Themes
Sport for all ages - Beginners Tennis – Easi Tennis Programme Flyer
Sport for all ages - Grasshoppers Tournament Programme – New Tennis for kids
Health and Fitness – Cardio Tennis cardio tennis brief drills
Sport for all ages - Tennis NZ Player Pathway

To improve both the information we provide and the way we provide it for this Toolkit we need feedback from you as to what worked and what did not, and how we can improve. You can do this by e-mailing your ideas to us at toolkit@tennisnz.com or by faxing us 09 528 5789 or mailing us Tennis New Zealand, PO Box 18 308, Glen Innes, Auckland.

Please take the time to work through the Tennis New Zealand Club Toolkit and we trust it continues your rewarding experience with running a tennis club.