Last month the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) announced a rise in people taking up the game, via membership of its registered places to play. According to the Roehampton based organisation, participation at these venues has grown by over 60,000 people.

The LTA says there are now 576,608 tennis members at clubs and other places to play which is up from 516,324 in the previous year and represents a 12 per cent increase.

Significantly, the LTA is highlighting that the greatest percentage growth has come at the 931 Clubmark accredited tennis clubs, with membership at these increasing by 12.5 per cent compared to average growth of 8.5 per cent at non accredited clubs.

Development Director, Tom Harlow said:

"Clubmark has really helped us to drive improvements across places to play, with a higher quality programme offered that is attracting more people to play tennis.

Achieving Clubmark underlines a club's commitment to continuously improving the benefits it provides to its local community".

He added on the LTA's official website:

"It's very encouraging to see such growth across our 2,700 registered clubs and places to play.
We still have plenty to do to encourage more adults to play tennis, and we're working with our partners at the Tennis Foundation and Sport England in order to achieve this, but this is an encouraging sign that in a key part of our sport, we are seeing an increase in the number of people who want to play tennis regularly".

This good news for Clubmark comes as the LTA have also revealed more positive stats about tennis participation trends. It says that Adult membership has grown by 23,000, and junior and mini tennis membership has grown by 37,000.

Another reason for the rise has been an increase in the number of registered places to play, up from 2,464 in 2010 to 2,684 in 2012.

To find a Clubmark accredited tennis club check the Clubmark database which can be found in the Resources section of this website.