Sustaining and developing Tennis in Sri Lanka
View(s):A century of ITF affiliation
Sri Lanka’s Tennis Association, the SLTA seems obvious to us now. None of us would give a second thought about its existence. In reality, it has been a long and tedious road to achieve this milestone. If not for effort of some women and men and their dedication, we would have not reached one hundred years of ITF affiliation which confirms the existence of Tennis in the island. The history of Tennis in Sri Lanka goes back to 1870s or even earlier. The survival of Tennis in Sri Lanka has taken the toil of five generations who fostered and built the needs of the game and the SLTA, stone by stone.
International Tennis Federation
The first Davis Cup took place in 1900 and saw USA take on Great Britain. The idea of Davis Cup came a year before from the members of the Harvard University tennis team, who wished to set up a match between USA and Great Britain. Once the two respective national associations agreed, Dwight Davis designed a tournament format and ordered a trophy, buying it with his own money. This is the DAVIS-CUP. This trophy propelled the popularity of Tennis worldwide more than any other event at the time.
The idea to form an international body of nations for Lawn Tennis came from Duane Williams, (who sadly died on board the Titanic), Charles Barde and Henry Wallet. 12 nations attended a conference in Paris on 1 March 1913 at which the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) was founded, with 15 countries joining the Federation. Sri Lanka’s membership was accepted as early as in 1915. Our Association was called the Ceylon Lawn tennis Association.
Introduction of Tennis in Sri Lanka
The British introduced Tennis to the dominion Ceylon in the late nineteenth century. At that time Tennis was gathering momentum replacing Archery and Croquet in England. The British interest in Ceylon created the Kandy Garden Club, Pettah Tennis club, the Garden Club inside the present Vihare Maha Devi Park, the Fort Tennis club and others between 1856 and 1900. They were the oldest Tennis clubs in Sri Lanka. Sadly, most of these clubs do not exist today. In fact these clubs went out within one generation after independence. Many would remember playing at the Fort Tennis Club which was located where the Cinnamon Lake hotel is now located. Some of the clubs in Ceylon were older than the first Wimbledon championships.
Independent Ceylon in 1948, with a population of approximately five million people, had close to 120 Tennis clubs island-wide with more than 400 courts. The favored sport of Government servants (as they were called in those days), professionals and mercantile executives was Tennis. The whole island had tennis courts through this influence. It is their influence that has made Tennis stay this long in Sri Lanka. The first Sports Minister in the late 1960s, the late V.A. Sugathadasa is supposed to have said that he conceived the idea of a ‘Sports Ministry’ after a game of Tennis with his friends at CLTA under the Mhara tree. He was also a president of the CLTA.
Decisive factor – Tennis courts
The central aspect to popularise Tennis was the existence and availability of Tennis courts. This is the deciding factor even now. Tennis clubs provided this critical need. Clubs and Tennis courts received the full attention of the CLTA officials then and also had the support of the local governments. The ground secretary of the SLTA was for all the courts in the island and was not only for the courts of SLTA premises. This practice has fallen on the way side and long forgotten. The number of courts has dwindled from 400 to less than 100 now.
In those early days, I have seen ground secretaries take keen interest to maintain Tennis courts in Colombo. Their visiting time was 6 am! They would go to every court in the club with the “Kanghani” [grounds man] very regularly and make sure that the courts are in the best condition. There were many like them in the island. ‘Inviting’ court surfaces were the catalyst for the growth of Tennis in the twentieth century. This effort to make an ‘inviting’ court with a good ambiance has suffered since of late.
Provincial Clubs and tournaments
After the independence many families took keen interest to promote Tennis courts and club events. All worked very hard to popularize Tennis Island-wide. Their efforts made the presence of SLTA felt in the provinces. The SLTA’s Open-Tennis tournaments were the other factor that made game popular to all. These were annual events in the provinces and in Colombo. The main clubs conducted their championships sanctioned by the SLTA. These promoted the elevation in the standard of Tennis. Additionally many overseas players came to Sri Lanka to play in them and our players visited other nations for their championships. Sri Lanka was such a Tennis country in the sixties and seventies.
Davis Cup and Grand Slam grants
Davis-Cup became the flag ship of ITF from the very beginning. Even today ITF holds all rights to the event. Along with the Grand Slam fund ITF promotes Tennis in over 200 countries. 210 countries attended the centennial celebration of ITF in 2013. In terms of the standard of Tennis, Sri Lanka was in the top five of Asia until the 80s’. India was number one; Japan was two; and the Philippines being third. This kept us in the limelight of Davis cup Tennis. Unfortunately we are not an elite Tennis nation in Asia anymore. The Davis Cup format has changed to accommodate 200 countries and we play at present in the Asia Oceania group two.
ITF loses out to ATP and WTA
Since professionalism came into Tennis ITF has lost much grounds to the two professional bodies of the world the WTA and ATP. These two bodies offer excess of 250 Million dollars as prize money annually in their events. ITF has a professional circuit called the ‘Futures’ and it is on in Colombo at the moment after ten long years. One cannot be certain whether this would be a regular feature. The ITF purse for professional players is very limited. The ITF Futures in Colombo at present is a US$10,000 prize money event which could be out of our reach on a regular basis.
SLTA’s missing link
Best sponsors of Tennis in Sri Lanka are the members who have paid Tennis club subscription for over 50 years. Clubs maintained Tennis courts with this financing system. In the recent past membership numbers have dwindled with the number of Tennis clubs. If Clubs revert back to make membership service the priority, membership will appear again. I strongly feel that this has the best potential to turn things around. Why neglect a system that has done well for over 100 years? Other challenges to Tennis are natural conditions of heat, light and rain. There are working models to overcome these too.
One hundred years of affiliation to the ITF is a certificate for our survival instincts. It is good to use this encouraging fact and venture into taking the standard of the game up. Luckily at the right time we have the opportunity to witness the standard of Tennis among the top 1000 of the world at the Colombo ITF-Futures. None of our players were able to enter the event on merit. For SLTA it is an ‘eye opener’ to target global Open–men’s standard of Tennis and not juniors in numbers, who only beat their neighbours, for a by-line in the press. SLTA has the choice. I wonder which will be chosen for the next 100 years.
-George Paldano, former international player; Accredited Coach of Germany, ITF and USPTR; National, Davis Cup and Federation Cup Coach–gptennis.ceylon@gmail.com-