East Kilbride Tennis Club have launched a Mixed Winter Singles League in a bid to get more people playing the sport again.
Head coach Luke Quigley has launched the programme, which started on Thursday of last week and runs until March 14, giving players time to play between four and seven matches.
The hope is that this becomes an annual competition, with new trophies, and can be staged in up to three divisions, depending on how many entries the club gets.
All players start in groups with similar ability or experience.
Luke says he hopes this makes it more flexible for people to continue playing tennis.
He said: “If the singles thing is successful I’m going to try and make that an annual thing, get trophies and things made up for it, like a Shield that has a new name on it, much like the Club Championship.
“That’s the plan anyway, so we’ll see how that takes off.
“We had plenty of people signed up for the singles programme, everybody who initially expressed an interest in it, so that goes all the way through to mid-March.
“It ties up nicely, because it’s all singles play, and it finishes off in the same week as the West of Scotland Spring Singles League starts. It will be good practice for our players who don’t otherwise get too much singles play.
“For years we had the older generation which just wasn’t interested in playing singles, and we’ve got younger people now who are really up for it.
“Some of the older, more mobile players are also interested in playing singles as well, so hopefully that goes well.”
Luke says the tennis club hasn’t been massively affected by the Covid Tier system that is in place, but is happy to help other clubs and organisations which are experiencing problems.
He said: “We fortunately didn’t have to change anything, going from Tier 3 to 4, just due to it being outdoors and it being a non-contact sport.
“With the surface we have we’ve been trying to help out the other sections as well, lending a couple of courts to the cricket section, for example, who can’t hire school halls .
“We’ve had Boys’ Brigade up to use the courts as well.”
Visit https://clubspark.lta.org.uk/eastkilbridetennisclub for more details of find them on Facebook.
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