Tennis clubs face dwindling numbers

Lynda Johnson has been playing tennis for 45 years at Marks Park Tennis Club and volunteered to be the secretary soon after.

Over the years, she has seen tennis club membership numbers rise and fall, and said when she started playing tennis at the club, membership was significantly higher than it is today.

This is true at tennis clubs across Joburg.

Wayne Kets, coach at Boskruin Tennis Club, agreed with Johnson, and was thankful that the Boskruin Tennis Club membership had grown in recent years and attributed this to dedicated committee members and coaches.

“Clubs also need to have the infrastructure for new people to join,” he said.

Miel van Loggerenberg, chairperson and coach at Darrenwood Tennis Club, said his club had lost members to other clubs and even to other sports in the past five years.

“There is a lot of competition out there. People do not have the time to come to the club or existing club members do not come as often,” he said.

Van Loggerenberg believes that focusing on a club’s juniors is the only way to grow it.

“You find that most of the members playing at the club are members who joined years ago,” he said.

Ellaine Wells, captain of tennis at the Ruimsig Country Club, believes that the decline of club tennis is related to young people not having enough time in their day to allocate a whole morning, afternoon or evening for tennis on a regular basis. She said because older people have more time on their hands, you find them on the courts more often.

“To reverse the decline in tennis over the past decade is to make it fashionable again to the young as they are future of everything,” she said.

Johnson believes that financial problems are the reason people do not pay membership fees anymore, but thinks there is a push for South Africans to follow healthier lifestyles and is hopeful that tennis club membership numbers could once again climb.