Having one of the most numerous young populations in the UK, with over 30,000 students, Canterbury could be the place that will produce some stars for the London Olympics 2012, especially for the tennis tournament.
Since Britain’s new tennis talent Andy Murray came to the scene, the “white sport” in this country entered in a new era. Maybe sooner than everybody thinks we will see the first British winner at Wimbledon in the last seventy years. Now youngsters from all over the country want to be like Andy Murray, the kid who has learned tennis in the highlands of Scotland.
Taking part in this “tennis revolution”, Canterbury has one of the best tennis clubs in the South East, where many kids are learning the secrets of this sport, hoping that one day they will reach the top of the ATP rankings. John Gotke is the coach of Canterbury Lawn Tennis and his main job is to discover and prepare young tennis players in all over Kent to win Grand Slam events and-why not: the Davis Cup. He said:
“I am here to teach tennis for everyone who wants to, but my main job is to find young talents who could represent the next generation of this sport”.
Canterbury Lawn Tennis has a modern infrastructure with six floot-lit astro courts, two grass courts and a brand new indoor centre. In July 2006 the three-court indoor centre was officially opened.
The tennis centre is a part of Polo Farm Sports Club. Besides tennis teams, there are hockey clubs (men, women and junior), football, lacrosse, cricket and croquet. Polofarm is also the venue of several sports teams of Christ Church University: hockey, lacrosse and tennis. In order to sustain the youngsters who play tennis, Canterbury Tennis Club is the home of a junior open tournament that takes place every year, at the beginning of August. This year’s open has taken place between 4-8 Augusts. This is a LTA Grade 4 tournament and it is an event of East Kent Tour 2008.
The club has its origins back in 1948, when a bunch of people created a place where they could spend their spare time doing what they like, to play tennis. Now there are more then 20 teams: men’s, women’s, mixed, vets, juniors. These teams that have about 200 senior and 80 junior members are competing in the Kent, East Kent and Dover leagues.
This is a club like many others in the UK that one day perhaps will put forward some great names for the British tennis, possibly even greater than our day’s champions Tim Henman and Andy Murray.
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