Emma Raducanu has led to a boom in British girls playing tennis

WIMBLEDON — When Emma Raducanu burst onto the scene at Wimbledon three years ago, no one could have predicted what followed.

After reaching the fourth round at SW19 in 2021, she made history when winning the US Open, becoming the first qualifier to win a grand slam.

At just 18, a star was born, and immediately the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) realised they had an opportunity to capitalise on her ground-breaking success.

And so, not only did Raducanu’s victory present the LTA with a chance to boost participation across the UK, but the US Open final also helped fund a project that could help make that a reality.

Sharing the broadcast rights for the final with Channel 4 led to a “seven-figure” investment from Prime Video, who partnered with the LTA for a scheme that would focus on encouraging girls and young women to play tennis.

Fast forward to 2024 and the numbers speak for themselves. There has been a 17 per cent increase in girls aged four to 15 playing tennis weekly on the back of Raducanu’s US Open triumph, while in two years – from December 2021 to December 2023 – annual participation figures are up nine per cent to 1,701,708.

Female participation for adults has also risen, from 1.48m in 2021 to 2.35m in 2023, which is quite the jump given it had previously dipped from 1.57m in 2019.

Those figures for females make up 42 per cent of the total annual adult participation, a gender gap the LTA are proud of and are continually looking to improve.

And in Raducanu, as well as the re-emergence of British No 1 Katie Boulter, the LTA have role models competing on the biggest of stages for girls to look up to.

“Billie Jean King famously said ‘if you can see it, you can be it.’ We need those visible role models, and we need them to be there consistently,” Jo-Anne Downing, who manages the Prime Video LTA Youth Girls project, tells i.

“Emma has kind of transcended tennis now, but that’s great for us because it means she’s more constantly there in the public psyche.

“Having people like that to look up to helps girls believe ‘If they can do it, I can do it,’ and that’s really important. Not just at the elite level, but in venues where you can see a female coach or female players, and see what they’ve achieved.”

Beyond Raducanu, the Prime Video LTA Youth Girls scheme also wants female coaches to be role models, trying to engage new girls into tennis in a relaxed and social way.

For £35, girls are given six sessions with a coach in a girl-only group, plus a racket, balls and a t-shirt. “Everything they need to dip their toe and get started,” says Downing.

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On the ground, the results of the girls-only groups have been “overwhelming”. Emily James is a coach at Beverley Park Lawn Tennis Club in Whitley Bay, near Newcastle upon Tyne, and she has seen surge in interest since taking part in the LTA project.

“We are looking at how we can fit in more sessions and appoint extra coaches to cope with the demand,” James says.

“We filled all of our sessions with the aim of integrating the girls into our mixed programme at the end of the course. However, so many of them wanted to stay as girls only that we not only have our original girls from last Easter still playing, but we are now running more new introductory courses for new girls.

“We are only a small town in the North East but because of our recruitment and retention numbers and the impact we have made on girls tennis, we were chosen as one of only a handful of coaches from across the UK to attend the prestigious WTA Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart at Easter as a thank you for all of our hard work.

“It was amazing. I got to interview Emma Radacanu, Coco Gauff and speak to top female coaches and women in the industry about their own tennis journey as well as watching the top female tennis players in the world play tennis. I’m still pinching myself.”

Getting girls to play tennis is one thing, but getting them to stay on is another challenge. And so in order to create the best possible environment, a key aim of this project is to break down barriers and dispel the early stereotypes that typically lead to more boys taking up sport than girls.

“If you’re going to have a girl-only programme, you need to address some of the stuff that’s going on for girls before they even step onto a tennis court,” adds Downing.

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“From a previous project with Judy Murray, ‘She Rallies’, we understood the value of girl-only coaching and knew we wanted to kind of continue with that.

“The important bit was training the coaches to try and tackle some of the barriers that girls face. Basically, before a girl even turns up onto a tennis court – and this is not specific to tennis, it’s across everything – they have already been bombarded by negative gender stereotyping.

“The reason that’s bad is because boys are learning what’s acceptable in terms of masculinity, and girls are learning what’s acceptable in terms of femininity, and what girls are learning is at odds with what it means to be sporty.

“So boys are learning like ‘be brave, be strong, be fast, be competitive’. Girls are learning ‘be friendly, be nice, be polite, be helpful’. So then we expect them to turn up on a tennis court and then be competitive and aggressive and fierce, those things aren’t lining up.

“The reason I’m saying this is because of gender stereotyping, girls aren’t getting enough exposure from a young age of sport and physical activity.

“They come to sport and there’s a skills deficit, when you compare them to boys. If girls are turning up and they can’t kick, run, throw, catch, bounce a ball, coaches have got a really challenging job on their hands to close that skill gap down.

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“If girls don’t think they can do something, they’re mistaking that lack of experience with a lack of ability and it’s not that boys are born more skilful than girls, they just get more exposure and more opportunities.”

The LTA have therefore trained 500 coaches – both online and in person – encouraging them not to “add to the baggage” of gender stereotypes.

“The coaches are front-line deliverers of our sport, they play such a powerful role in terms of how girls experience tennis, and we need them to be doing the right thing,” Downing says.

“We need more female coaches, but also to educate male coaches as well to get this right. The coaches on this programme have been brilliant, and they’ve been saying off the back of Emma’s win, we’ve got 40, 50… up to 70 new girls in their programmes.

“The retention rate is also over 50 per cent, which is pretty good, and they’re telling us girls – when compared to mixed groups – have much better sense of belonging and are developing more confidence.”