If you’re ever driving through country NSW, make sure you have a look for the abandoned tennis courts. Almost every small town has one.
They’re all the same; a fenced area, covered in weeds with two poles sticking out of the ground.
Some used to be beautiful grass courts, others sand based with plastic line markings bolted down.
The cost of maintenance and the increasing drought led to their demise and Australian tennis has never recovered.
It was, after all, these courts that our former greats grew up on.
Rod Laver played his tennis on a Queensland farm, 100km from Rockhampton. Margaret Court snuck onto the courts in Albury and practiced volleys, not because she liked hitting tennis balls on the full, but because it was the only way she could play and not be seen from the clubhouse.
Then there’s Evonne Goolagong from the tiny town of Barellan, who practiced on a court surrounded by wheat silos.
These days in the small towns there are simply no tennis courts, while in the larger areas, tennis complexes have been built.
The sand and grass courts that used to occupy country areas have met a modern day compromise – synthetic.
Synthetic courts, fake play?
Clubs are using synthetic courts for two reasons.
First, they are easy to maintain, and second, they provide a consistent level of play, fantastic for a social afternoon of tennis, but not necessarily great for juniors wanting to learn how to construct points and develop their techniques.
The choice of these courts is perplexing considering no professional tournament in the world is played on synthetic grass, especially ones covered in more sand then Bondi Beach. Playing tennis on synthetic is like trying to play golf on concrete. It’s just a completely different game.
To Tennis Australia’s credit, they realised the problem and introduced a National Court Rebate Scheme. Tennis clubs around Australia are encouraged to apply for the rebate to replace their courts with the new Plexicushion surface used at the Australian Open.
Tennis Australia’s motives are simple. They want juniors to be growing up on the same surface our grand slam is played on so Australians can once again dominate tennis. At least, the Australian Open anyway.
Realising that Plexicushion is not the answer to all the sport’s problems, Tennis Australia (TA) has also included grass and clay courts into the rebate scheme.
While the rebate makes it slightly more affordable for clubs, it is hard to see the rebate being used in small country towns. Tennis Australia will only supply a maximum of 50 per cent of the cost of building the facilities, and there is a rigorous selection process that turns down clubs with less than four courts.
The ironic state of play.
Of course, all this talk of building new courts has come about because of the state of Australian tennis at the elite level. You only have to look at the stats.
In the last 20 years, only two Australians have won any grand slam tennis tournament: Pat Rafter (’97 and ’98 US Open) and Lleyton Hewitt (2001 US Open and 2002 Wimbledon). Only two men. No women.
Since Pat Cash won Wimbledon in 1987, there’s been 82 grand slam tournaments and Australians have only won the four mentioned.
No Australian male has won our own grand slam tournament since Mark Edmunson in 1976 (1978 for women with Chris O’Neil). Evonne Goolagong was the last Australian woman to win a grand slam, a staggering 28 years ago at Wimbledon.
With women’s tennis at an all time low in Australia it was not surprising that Tennis Australia tried to claim Anastasia Rodionova as one of our own.
Rodionova applied for Australian citizenship and then played in the Australian Open. With her application still up for review, she was surprised to see an honour board had already placed her among the top five Australian women, despite the fact the International Tennis Federation had refused to change her nationality from Russian to Australian.
Australia has gone from winning the Davis Cup against France to being asked to qualify for the event against Thailand (a match-up even Channel Seven didn’t bother broadcasting).
Currently, Lleyton Hewitt is the only Australian in the top 30.
Perhaps these stats reflect that most Australians are only exposed to tennis once-a-year through the Australian Open.
We are bombarded with ‘the summer of tennis’ message every January that lasts for around a month. Then it is all forgotten as the cricket finals entice us and the footy season draws closer.
Yet people love watching tennis in Australia. Its popularity as a spectator sport has never been in question.
In 2005, the Lleyton Hewitt-Marat Safin final was one of Australia’s most watched television events of all time, close to the figures for Princess Diana’s funeral.
More than four million people tuned in that year, and people have turned up to Melbourne Park in record numbers since.
The way forward
Watching tennis and playing tennis appear to be poles apart for Australians.
In NSW in 2003 there were more than 60,000 registered players. By 2005, that dropped to around 56,000. Numbers also dropped in Victoria between 2004 and 2005.
It is estimated that 1.3 million Australians play tennis annually and tennis is the fifth most popular form of recreation.
These numbers have remained constant for several years without action from Tennis Australia. That was until Eastern European countries emerged with a staggering tennis revolution, most notably Serbia and Russia.
Look at the top of the tennis rankings and you will see the results, simply from the plethora of surnames ending in ‘ova’ or ‘vic’: Sharapova, Kuznetsova, Hantuchova, Petrova, Vaidisova, Safarova, Djokovic, Ivanovic, Ljubicic, Jankovic, Karlovic and Tipsaravic.
Their rise to the top of tennis surprised us, but it was no fluke. They had been training for years in the top tennis academies, their talent identified in early childhood.
It was a simple method for success involving bringing the best juniors together with professional coaches, in an environment that facilitated development.
While Australia had done this with the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), there were no major academies focused on tennis until Tennis Australia introduced five National High Performance Academies in the major capital cities in early 2007.
It’s a significant step in bringing Australian tennis back from the dead, but there are still those who criticise the implementation.
Jason Stoltenberg quit as coach at one of the academies after he said Tennis Australia reneged on its national policy by splitting up players into their respective states.
While the program will take time to yield significant results there are already signs of an Australian tennis revival.
The importance of juniors
Bernard Tomic wasn’t even born when Pat Cash took the Wimbledon title in 1987. The 15-year-old German-born Australian is currently ranked number three in the world in the junior rankings.
Remarkably, he won an under 18s tournament as a 13-year-old and this year won the junior Australian Open title. He has lofty ambitions to win all four grand slam tournaments before his teenage years are out, and it appears as though the people that matter share this ambition.
The highly respected sports marketing agency IMG has already signed Tomic up, having successfully managed the likes of Roger Federer, Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova.
But while Australia has a glimmer of hope with Tomic, more juniors are needed to take on the world.
Introducing juniors to tennis is important as the figures show that tennis is most popular with those in the 25-34 age group in Australia.
For tennis to really take off again Tennis Australia is hoping to make tennis as popular for juniors as the various football codes and cricket.
To do this they are attempting to introduce 50,000 juniors to tennis with the hot-shots program, using Pat Rafter as an ambassador. There is also a push to increase the number of coaches in the country after Australia lost 400 coaches between 2004 and 2005.
Then there is the court debate as mentioned. While Tomic’s amazing performances have seen him train overseas on clay courts, most promising juniors have to make do with synthethic or hard courts.
Only those offered scholarships will have the opportunity of playing on clay courts in Australia, unless more clubs are willing to take up the court rebate.
We need to send more juniors overseas to get experience, playing Europeans on clay.
Australians naturally play well on grass because our coaching emphasises the serve and volley game. But playing on clay is completely different. It relies a lot on experience, dealing with the different bounces, sliding and being patient in rallies which comes naturally to European players.
In 20 years time when you’re driving through country NSW, hopefully you’ll see a different picture.
Tennis Australia’s vision is that Plexicushion, will replace the eye sores of abandoned courts. They want kids to run down to the courts and have a hit before dinner, trying to serve aces and hitting backhands and forehands down-the-line like their Australian heroes.
In 2028 Bernard Tomic will be one of many heroes having just retired with 13 grand slam tournaments to his name.
There will be 12 Australian women in the top 50 and we will be going for our third straight Davis Cup final.
It may just be a fanciful dream, but it is far better than the current nightmare Australian tennis is yet to wake up from.
Tennis Australia’s vision statement on their website follows the dream, but it must be remembered that it was once a reality in the golden-age of Australian tennis. It simply says: “To produce grand slam champions.”
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