As part of its Advantage All gender equality initiative, the ITF is profiling female leaders and role models from within the sport. It follows a 2020 ITF Female Leadership Survey that identified the lack of female role models as one of the greatest challenges women face in their careers.

While 47% of all tennis participants globally are women, there is still a large gender gap in coaching, officiating and sport decision-making, all the way from club level to the top of the sport. By raising the profile and sharing the experiences of female leaders from around the world, the Advantage All Ambassadors series aims to encourage women to pursue opportunities in tennis and fulfill their potential within the sport. To find out more about Advantage All, click or tap here.

As Director of Tennis for Hawk-Eye Innovations, Hannah Behan is among the most important figures behind the scenes of the tennis world. Having worked in elite-level sport for nearly two decades, she has built up a wealth of experience in the field of sports science and performance analysis. 

“I was very driven and knew early on that I was more interested in the science side [of sport] – the physiology, the biomechanics, coaching science side of things,” she explains.

A Sports Science graduate from Brunel University, Behan went on to work with the British Olympic badminton team for seven years, encompassing both the Athens and Beijing Olympic Games. She moved on to a new role with the LTA’s performance analysis team in 2011, where her sports science background helped provide complete performance data analysis for Great Britain’s high-performance players.

“I started working with a lot of the top British players as well as the Davis and Fed Cup teams, and that trickled down to a lot of their junior talent programmes as well, and educating the coaches and the players on reviewing their own performance data and linking in with other sports science services,” she says.

“So, if a player was coming back from injury, we’d look at their testing data, their previous performance data and making sure that they were meeting markers. If they were at an event, they would get match analysis so they would review their own performance on court and do opponent analysis as well.” 

Behan’s LTA work would also overlap with her current role at Hawk-Eye: “Whilst working at the LTA I was a client of Hawk-Eye, so we used the Hawk-Eye data to work with our top British players to provide analysis.”

'When I started working in high performance sport it was very difficult to find female role models that I'd look up and say, "That is where I want to be"'

Since joining Hawk-Eye last year, Behan has continued her work in elite tennis, leading the company’s team at the Australian Open just two months after starting with the firm. She is effusive in her praise of the work that her colleagues at the company do.

“It’s very easy to see a Hawk-Eye challenge go out [on TV],” she explains. “But the work that it takes to get to that point is huge – that’s not my credit, that’s the credit of the team.”

As a woman in one tennis’ most senior behind-the-scenes roles, and as an ITF Advantage All Ambassador, Behan is also an advocate for more female role models in the world of sport.

“When I started working in high performance sport in 2004, I would go to seminars or training days or sports events and I would always be the only female there,” she says. “It was very difficult to find those female role models that I'd look up and say, ‘That is where I want to be.’

“But the athletes that I worked with always provided inspiration. It’s not always the training that they did day-in and day-out in the group sessions, it’s the stuff that they were doing at weekends behind the scenes.”

She is quick to recognise that despite some progress in recent years, there are still many barriers to bring down when it comes to gender equality.

“Casual sexism is probably one of the biggest problems, because it just happens and it’s expected as part of banter, and I think you get a lot of that in the world of sport,” she reflects. “[You have to] just to start questioning people on things like that.

“I think the best example of that is when Andy Murray took down the journalists at Wimbledon [in 2017] when they said Sam Querrey was the first American semi-finalist in however many years, and he just said, ‘Except for Serena, because I’m pretty sure that she’s done quite well over the past few years.’ It’s being able to question and challenge and feel OK about that, and make people think about language and how that’s being used.”

'Some females hold other females back because they see that there’s a finite opportunity to sit at the table. Just make more seats'

As well as the language that people use, there are other, perhaps more nuanced, ways in which sexist or misogynist environments prevent some women from having similar opportunities to their male colleagues.

“I know that there’s this challenge as well that some females hold other females back because they see that there’s a finite opportunity to sit at the table,” she says.

Her answer to that particular challenge? “Just make more seats, so that it’s not you or the other female, but actually you can both get there. If you work as a team you create a stronger environment, and you create more opportunities for other people as well.”

By sharing her experiences, Behan hopes that others can see a pathway to the top. And she has a message for young women and girls who may currently be considering how best to forge a career in world of sport.

“Take every opportunity, you never know what’s around the corner and I think that’s really important,” she says. “Make sure you make a name for yourself for all of the right reasons, stay focused, and enjoy it as well – enjoy the journey.”