Let’s begin this month’s column with a simple yet highly effective idea from senior USPTA and USPTR professional and Director of Tennis at Boca Pointe in Boca Raton, Florida, Fernando Velasco. To promote more junior player activity at your facility, just produce an on-going junior tennis newsletter. Of course, we are all familiar with having a regular junior tennis column in our normal club newsletter, but the effect of a separate junior tennis newsletter is powerful. It doesn’t require that much effort to put out a two-sided flyer of information, quotes, up-dates, and maybe some photos with a masthead identifying it as a junior newsletter. We all know that recognizing individual junior efforts along with reporting on events, both past and future, can have a motivating effect on the juniors. But, in actuality, it goes well beyond the kids. The most positive impact is on the parents. Doesn’t it make sense that a parent will get more involved when they know how involved you are in that child’s life?
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Our second idea comes from Sally Eichorn, the tennis coach at Ithica High School in Michigan. Every school or facility has a showcase where trophies, plaques, and items of recognition are displayed. This is a standard which is not new at all. But Sally’s unique and highly effective slant is to additionally recognize players according to specific performance issues, such as matches without any double faults. At a country club or public facility, just expand this unique recognition concept to recognize either adults or juniors and set your program apart from the rest. It will increase player focus on specific issues as well as serve to recognize players who accomplish those goals, although they may never have a chance of winning the club championship.
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Next let’s move to a great marketing tip from Larry Karageanes. He recommends that tennis directors at clubs draft the adults to sponsor a junior player. In this program the adult member is required to play with the junior once a month, plus occasionally go to local tournaments with the junior or to their school team matches. The impact that this can have on the social environment in a club is tremendous, in addition to the obvious benefits that the junior would receive from that kind of adult support. What would the adult receive? Chances are that they will learn a lot from playing with this junior, plus get a great workout at the same time.
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After nearly two years of interviewing hundreds of professionals in the tennis industry I would like to share three promotional ideas related to growing the game which are not frequently written or spoken about:
1. Promote tennis as the best first sport - industry analysts agree that tennis is challenged by other competitive sports such as soccer and baseball. However, when tennis is properly analyzed, it offers multiple benefits not found in other sports. First on the list are the eye-hand coordination benefits of using a racquet and a ball, alongside tennis’ inherent movement and conditioning benefits. Plus, our sport’s social and team orientation alongside its promotion of individuality also make it arguably unique as the best first sport.
2. Tennis also needs to be promoted for its health benefits. All-too-often we see a healthy lifestyle being promoted through aerobics classes, working out in a gym, jogging, or through fitness equipment like treadmills or stationary bicycles. However, rarely do we see tennis promoted as a way for people to stay fit and healthy. After all, the main downside of going to the gym or jogging or working out on the treadmill is that it is typically incredibly boring. Tennis adds the benefit of having fun while one gets in shape. It’s just up to us as tennis coaches to combine and inject fitness training from moderate to challenging degrees into our practice sessions and tennis classes, and then to promote it.
3. Another challenge that tennis faces which I feel is easy to overcome is the perception that it is difficult to learn. It seems very clear that the main challenge in this regard is not getting a beginning tennis player to hit a ball, but rather to get a beginning tennis player to transition to a rally situation where they can hit balls with their friends. It is this transition that players find frustrating since all of a sudden they are not able to keep the ball in play very easily and when they make a mistake they must move either up to the net or back to the back fence to pick up the ball. This allows them to dwell on their errors and quickly takes away the fun of playing. After all, we all know that adults who haven't been involved in sports for some time are quite fearful of making embarrassing mistakes in front of their peers. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens when the beginning tennis player gets out to play with their friends before mastering control and consistency. My recommendation is for players to try one of the tools which allow players to "load" up with more than 1-2 balls. Options include the Hip Hopper ball pouch which holds about 20 balls in a comfortable pouch, getting and using several of those ball clips, or simply wearing very baggy shorts with big pockets. The main idea is to have enough balls to allow for a quick reload to take away that time of walking to a hopper or to the net to retrieve balls. Simply put: eliminate the time they have to dwell on their mistakes and give them the chance to continuously make instantaneous corrections. Wouldn't it be terrific if in real life this were the case: make a mistake and "poof," immediately you get the chance to do it over again the right way, almost before your friends notice.
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Finally, for this issue, lets cover a promotional idea which several different pros have shared with me recently -- a tennis lesson package. Here’s a summary of their ideas:
Since individual tennis lessons appear to cost too much for many people, how about packaging more than just a lesson for a set fee. This set fee could include a half-hour private lesson, a group lesson for 90 minutes, and a round robin social tournament. If you are working with a group of 8, the fee could easily be as low as $30.00 for the entire package. The eight people would be in the group lesson and the tournament together, and each individual would be scheduled to receive a half-hour private lesson. If the tournament lasted two hours, then the total playing time including the lesson would be four hours for a very modest fee of $30.00. The gross income for the pro would be $240 or $60 per hour and half of the time they would be running a social tournament. This type of win-win situation is what will keep players coming back for more.