We have great facilities and want to make sure we develop and share them.
"This is an exciting time for the club,” says chairman Peter Newman. “We are looking back with pride over the past 100 years and looking forward to the next. Our current plans will keep us at the forefront of club tennis in Berkshire.”
The club recently applied for planning permission to instal floodlights on two courts to allow us more playing time in the evenings, but this was turned down by Reading Borough Council.
However, we are considering other options.
In the meantime, we have installed state-of-the-art, on-court video technology as an aid to coaching and are also stepping up our outreach coaching programme in the local community.
CLTC has become the first outdoor tennis club in the country to instal PlaySight, a smart system of cameras capable of tracking and recording every stroke played on court. Like Hawk-Eye, used at professional tennis tournaments, it can settle contentious line-calls and measure the speed of the ball, but more importantly, allows players to analyse their strengths and weaknesses.
PlaySight, which has had financial backing from current tennis World No.2 Novak Djokovic, is being operated at Caversham as a pilot programme with the help of the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA).
Reaching out to the community
Building on the success of previous years, CLTC will again be working with the LTA to introduce tennis to more local children by providing free coaching. The outreach programme capitalises on the high profile Grand Slam victories of Andy and Jamie Murray by inspiring children to pick up a racquet and get involved. Two of the Caversham club's coaches are to provide free coaching to dozens of boys and girls from the local area this summer.
