It is Friday morning in Belair Park in Dulwich, south-east London, and all four tennis courts are in use. On one of them Avneet, a 26-year-old student, is facing her boyfriend, Sol, 29. “We learned that it’s best to get here early in the morning,” he says. “This way you can actually get a court. We came the other day in the afternoon and there were eight people in abundance or something waiting. In a way, I stayed here for three hours playing tennis. “
Just down the road, Old College, a private club near the Dulwich Picture Gallery, recently stopped accepting new members – the first time it did so in living memory.
“We reopened in mid-May and practically all camps have been booked since then,” says club president Alyson Fox. “Coaches have been overwhelmed by requests for lessons.”
Sarah Walsh, a member of the Old College committee, agrees that it has been much more difficult than normal to get to court. Fortunately, she and her husband Phil are members of two other tennis clubs – one in Dulwich and one in Rye, East Sussex. By being “reasonably organized” with reservations, he says, they managed to sustain a four game per week regime.
British tennis, of course, traditionally experiences an increase in popularity at this time of year, largely due to Wimbledon, which would have started on Monday under normal circumstances. So it’s kind of irony that in the first summer without Wimbledon since 1945, the sport is enjoying a boom – one so dramatic, some claim, like no other in its history.
Sunny weather, combined with the social impact of the pandemic (millions of people working at home or working from home; most leisure activities are suspended), has brought unprecedented numbers to clubs and public courts throughout the country.
“When you stop to think about it, it’s really an extraordinary thing,” says historian David Berry, author of the just published A popular history of tennis. “The perception in recent times has been that tennis is a sport that is gradually dying. For the past 20 or 30 years, I don’t know of any clubs other than Queen’s and Hurlingham who have even had a waiting list. Now even fairly modest clubs have to start them. “
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the elite reputation of tennis, the boom is most evident in middle-class neighborhoods – and especially in the capital. Regular customers of Waterlow Park in North London report that the courts were booked weeks earlier. At the nearby Highgate tennis club, director Lucy Dean says 200 new members have joined in the past month. “We now have over 700 members, the most in club history.”
But the effects are also seen in areas where tennis is traditionally not an important part of life. Last week Sports Direct in Gravesend, Kent ran out of tennis balls – which a staff member admits “normally doesn’t happen”.
Michel Suleau, head coach of the local Gravesham club, reports all fields regularly filled, despite a significant drop in members when registrations were renewed in April. “People around here don’t have much money,” he says. “The club has really suffered financially from coronavirus. But now the sun is out, people are going down. With everyone at home all day, it’s one of the few things they can do. “
Those involved in the administration of tennis agree that it will be a shame if the surge lasts only until the blockade. “It would be nice if tennis didn’t just go back to being a middle class sport,” says Fox.
Nigel Billen, the co-founder of Local Tennis Leagues, a body that organizes leagues of parks across the country, suggests that now is a good time for a boom, given the significant investments in public courts in recent years. “There have always been more people playing tennis on public courts in Britain than in private clubs,” he says.
But only recently have administrators woken up. Huge sums have been paid in many public structures over the past decade – not only in London but also in Newcastle, Manchester and elsewhere – and many of these were thriving before the blockade. “There is a real opportunity to bring tennis to places it has never been before,” says Billen. “Hopefully it’s not wasted.”
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