Six months on from the name change to Cheltenham Tennis Club, Joe Chadwick believes it’s helping build the club up after the setbacks of COVID-19, positively affecting the surrounding community of Cheltenham.
“We were the Cheltenham Civil Service Tennis Club but we rebranded because people generally thought you had to be part of the Civil Service or part of a family of civil servants but they never had to. Since changing to Cheltenham Tennis Club, we’ve now had lots more enquiries, we’re really a community tennis club.”
When discussing the COVID-19 Pandemic, the main conversation of the long-term effects has been mental health, but participating in sports can have huge benefits, Chadwick said: “Having somewhere where anyone can come regardless of their level to come and play tennis and be active is great, especially for mental health. A lot of juniors have had tough lockdowns, they have struggled socially, and had a lot of difficulties so being a part of a group, being outdoors off of their screens and interacting is beneficial.”
It’s not only Juniors who can feel the benefits of the court, elderly players can be very common in tennis doubles where mobility is no concern: “You can feel the community, often with older people they have set patterns where they meet their friends on a certain day to come down and get competitive, they want to win. It’s great for combating loneliness.
“I played on the Masters Tour which is for the older players, starts at 35 years old and the categories go up to 80+. They all love it, the men and women dressed in their whites at Eastbourne on the grass and it feels good, and you get a few people watching the matches as well. (…) They love it, they’re out there now playing, and they’re all ages. Brian is in his 70s and they’re all mixing so it’s good for social interaction.”
Chadwick believes the social side can be more important than the actual skills side, especially when it assists in building confidence: “It’s very important especially when you have parents saying their child is more confident, saying ‘Thank you, Cameron has grown in confidence’, which for me is a bigger thing than ‘Cameron can now hit a rally of ten when he could only hit a rally of one’.”
“It improves self-esteem and it’s a very sociable sport. I’ve met many friends through tennis since I started playing before the age of 10, that I’m still friends with. You meet lifelong friends, some people even meet their partners, my grandparents met in a tennis club in South East London.”
On the big screen, British tennis is making big strides in the post-Andy Murray era, but it’s slowly feeding down to the community clubs. Chadwick says: “You have different players, playing for different reasons, some do want to play points and get competitive. That’s the evolution of this club to get to the point where we have junior teams, but that takes a long time to build up the junior memberships. Hopefully, they’ll be playing tennis into their adult years and can play competitively. The future’s looking good.”
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