A nationwide event centred around introducing and bringing players back to the court is set to be celebrated in Timaru this weekend.
Held this Sunday, Love Tennis Day is an annual event that serves as a nationwide open day and aims to encourage newcomers or those thinking about making a comeback to head down to their local clubs for a day full of fun and free tennis action.
In South Canterbury — the Wai-Iti and Highfield tennis clubs will be running events between 10am-2pm and Tennis South Canterbury will be running one at the Trust Aoraki Tennis Centre from 3pm-7pm.
Tennis South Canterbury administrator Anna Telfer said the day would feature activities, lessons, competitions and prizes.
‘‘It’s just a free, fun, friendly and relaxed day to try and get people who wouldn’t normally play tennis to come down and see what it is all about. You can stay as long as you want, feel free to just even pop in for five minutes to see what is happening.
‘‘Connor [Brosnahan], the coach will have a wee hit with the kids, do a demo lesson with the adults and hold a Cardio Xpress session at 5pm.
‘‘He’s going to try and focus more on the adults, and getting them back into tennis or starting tennis because it’s easy to get kids involved but adults drift or stay away from sport. It’s open to all ages but we’d love to draw up some more adult interests.’’
She said with winter sports drawing to an end it was the perfect time to get people enthused for the upcoming tennis season.
‘‘It’s just in time with the tennis season about to kick-off. So hopefully we can catch some people looking for new things to do as the weather starts to get nicer.
‘‘We have the junior spring open on the third and fourth of October and then the Saturday morning club things will start up in October as well. We’re sort of just easing into it and then it’ll be boom.’’
