Free tennis for all young people
Help make this a non privilege sport and fight childhood obesity in the process

Many people will have enjoyed watching Andy Murray win Wimbledon this year and Dan Evans, Laura Robson and Heather Watson competing on the big stage.
Their talents have been a joy to watch. But aside from these successes there has been little else. The reality of training and playing tennis is that it is expensive and unrewarded unless you break into the top 100. Playing and competing in tennis in the UK is really tough. It is expensive and many talented players are prevented from coming through due to the cost of playing the sport.

We would like to see tennis be free and open to as many young people as possible.
Currently for a 10year old child to play in competitions, train, be coached, practice, equipment and travel costs around £500 per month. If they were to double coaching and training that figure would rise to £750 per month.
This amount of money for a 10 year old child to play and compete at tennis just doesn't make sense.

There are many children at schools that would love to play tennis but can't afford to do it.
To enter one competition it can cost between £10-20. Often people don't enter as it's just too expensive. This means there are less people to play and compete against and therefore limits the amount of better players to progress and come through to play professionally.
If we want to see more Olympic success and British players in the top 100 ranked in the world we must help kids play the game.
The aim of this petition is simple, we are asking the LTA to fund under 21year old people to play tennis for free. The LTA have limited funding so if possible we recommend the following:-
- All competitions entries fees should be free for under 21yrs old.
- At least one free group coaching session (squads) a week
- Players that play 20+ competitions per year get one free private coaching session per week
- School options and time to play tennis after school or in early mornings
- All tennis clubs to offer free court time to young people.

There should be a reward system where kids that stick with it and train hard get rewarded with more coaching sessions. With a childhood obesity epidemic looming, getting our kids exercising and active has got to be a priority and getting these healthy habits in place early on. Obviously it would be great to apply this principle to all sports but our focus is tennis and to make this wonderful social sport that can be played from the ages of 2 - 85+ years of your life a national treasure again.

Please sign this petition to support free tennis for young people and share this with your friends and family to help get all kids fit and healthy.