Lawn Tennis Association investing £250m in bid to make the sport more accessible

The Lawn Tennis Association is ploughing £250m into grassroots facilities in an effort to make tennis more accessible.

The initiative, called Transforming British Tennis Together, aims to increase the number of covered and floodlit courts across the country by 50 per cent, refurbish facilities and make courts easier to book online.

The LTA will invest £125m to improve existing community facilities, with the same amount earmarked in partnership with community networks looking to grow the game in their areas.

Currently only seven per cent of Britain's 23,000 tennis courts are covered while only one in seven park courts have floodlights.

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The LTA hopes to increase the number of covered courts by 750 and the number of floodlit courts by more than 4,000.

The governing body has pioneered the community scheme in Sheffield, investing £1.5m and boosting the number of people playing tennis by 54 per cent.

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Alastair Marks, participation director at the LTA, said: "At a time when more and more people are enjoying the resurgence of British tennis, we're focused on getting the next generation of players on court and having fun.

"Transforming British Tennis Together has been designed to tackle some of the most obvious challenges to doing that, and we're excited about supporting communities across the country who we know are just as passionate about giving more people the chance to play tennis as we are.

"There's never been a better time to invest in making our tennis courts the social hubs of communities once again."

Under chief executive Michael Downey, who leaves his post this week to head back to his native Canada, the LTA has focused predominantly on grassroots.

The Tennis for Kids initiative, launched in the wake of Britain's Davis Cup triumph in 2015, has delivered free tennis courses and rackets to 35,000 children over the past two years.

For those on the move, we will have Wimbledon covered via our website skysports.com/tennis, our app for mobile devices and iPad, or follow our Twitter account @SkySportsTennis to join in the conversation. Who will win the All England Club titles this summer? Have your say...

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