An audience from across the ITF’s 210 member nations, ITF Coaches Commission, certified ITF Tutors, National Junior Tennis Initiative (JTI) Coordinators and members of the ITF Participation Group were recently given an update by the ITF Development department on the latest participation focused activities to help drive participation through new digital tools provided by the ITF.

The ITF Digitalisation Grant launched in 2018 has so far awarded in excess of $400,000 to over 45 nations to support them in digital improvement projects, facilitate the adoption of the ITF World Tennis Number, and ultimately aid progress towards the ITF’s objective of increasing the number of tennis players from 87 million to 120 million by 2030.

While the global game has been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, a number of nations are beginning to evaluate its effect, with several large and medium size national associations reporting signs of an increase in participation numbers since recreational tennis has been permitted again.

Ways of working had to be adapted quickly during 2020 and the ITF Academy provided a valuable platform of resources to many tennis professionals as they faced restrictions on their normal activities. The ITF Academy now has a healthy user base of over 175,000 users, offering more than 150 online courses available in 5 languages, and more than 1300 resources in the online library.

Further updates were given including:

Participation Pathway:

Miguel Crespo, Head of Participation and Education provided an update on the development of the ITF Participation Pathway which has been created to combine the ITF programmes and initiatives of the ITF Participation Strategy, incorporating the latest research and input from national associations. The pathway is inclusive in nature rather than focusing on performance, and aims to incorporate all players regardless of gender, level, physical ability and condition facilitating lifetime participation and enjoyment. The pathway has been developed with resources and education programmes for players, coaches, parents and administrators at every stage of the pathway.

ITF Junior Tennis Initiative

A key part of the ITF Participation Pathway is the ITF JTI which now has 140 nations actively involved. The reporting process which allows the ITF to monitor the impact of the support is being digitalised with the development of an online reporting hub. Despite the restrictions in place around the world for much of 2020, reporting from the JTI suggests encouraging signs that many JTI programmes were able to continue in some form with players still able to participate and develop their game in 2020.

Tennis Festivals Toolkits

Tennis Festivals provide a welcoming, affordable and inclusive first time introduction to tennis and the ITF have created an online toolkit to facilitate the organisation and promotion of tennis festival events.  All nations have access to customise and download assets for their promotional needs. A focused Tennis Festivals course will shortly be added to the ITF Academy to further support and educate those wishing to host an event in their nation.

Net height for 10-and-under:

Research funded by the ITF, in conjunction with Tennis Australia and Victoria University has sought to address ‘how the net heights affects children’s ability to play tennis’. The results suggest that children’s match play performance within 10-and-under competition would be improved, and they would achieve greater success, if the height of nets were lowered and aligned to the body-scaling concept. The ITF will be conducting an official ITF Rules of Tennis trial to test the feasibility of the recommended net heights, and will be encouraging National Associations to share their feedback from nationally organised 10-and-under competitions.

Female Coaches

The ITF has published resources for female tennis coaches in the ITF Academy, and offered scholarships for female coaches to attend ITF Regional and World Coaches Conferences to all ITF member nations.

The ITF is planning a Global Female Coaches Network Workshop to share and identify actions that could raise the number of female coaches in tennis at all levels of the game. Only by understanding the landscape around women’s coaching will we be able to identify issues and bring change where it is needed. 

Parents

Parent Education on the ITF Academy was launched in September 2020 through the first ever Tennis Parents webinar with over 600 registrations from more than 100 nations, held in October 2020. Since then, we have published seven dedicated and 10 courses of interest to Parents in the Parent Education area on the ITF Academy. 

In May the first ‘Junior Tennis: Introduction for Parents’ online workshop was delivered in Colombia and will be followed by other national associations in the remainder of the year.  In the last quarter of the year, we plan to launch the follow-up workshop ‘Optimal Competition Parenting’ aimed at parents with children playing competitive tennis. The workshops are delivered through the ITF Academy and include a series of short online courses to complete before attending, as well as free resources available to download from the Academy and ITF eBooks app. 

For more information about the ITF Academy, click here

For more information about Participation, click here