Thank you to everyone for participating in the league this season. Ideally, we would have preferred to play a full season, however the only safe way that included everyone that wanted to play, was to run a half season instead. Thank you to all clubs for supporting this approach 100%.

As it turned out this was just as well as emerging from lockdown took us straight into Easter. Even at this stage we were still facing restrictions accessing indoor facilities which were not released until mid-April. This meant staggering the fixture schedule to accommodate this plus the usual intra club matches as close to the beginning of the season as practical.

            A lot of our usual activity felt different to normal. The Cups competitions were held as planned, but the North Devon Tournament had to be deferred from March to September, so unusually, activity that would not normally overlap has.

There were a few occasions where matches had to be postponed & rearranged due to covid. Thankfully the number was small. Thank you to the affected teams for being understanding and dealing with the date changes.

            92% of results are in with 311 participating players. This compares to 94% and 436 players in 2019. This drop in participation, we believe, generally reflects the wariness of players not wanting to return to tennis or competitive competition straight away. We obviously hope that the players we have not seen will gradually feel comfortable in returning to play during 2022 as we also hope it will be possible to run a full program of events in the order, they normally occur. Indeed, all tournaments that were postponed or cancelled over the period will be welcomed back to the calendar.

            From an LTA perspective the return to play and competitive competition did not quite align with the furlough scheme. At times it meant that the LTA appeared to lag behind the requests for leagues and tournaments setup. Since the furlough scheme has been wound down the service appears to be back to usual response times. The LTA continue to work on changes to their computers systems. The next major change is the release of the ITF World Tennis Number (WTN). Essentially this replaces the old ratings system with one that provides a separate measure of player ability for singles and doubles players. Players WTN number will be updated weekly and will accept results as short as a single set. Particularly useful when playing a match that is stopped due to bad light. Up to four years of results will contribute to your WTN. Another major difference is that 132 countries are adopting this system, so if you take your racket with you on business or holiday there is a chance, you’ll be able to play someone with the same WTN as yourself. I hope this can be a catalyst to persuade more players to join the LTA Advantage scheme as only the free version is needed to participate.