Breakfast Tennis : Genesis

I have been playing tennis, on and off now, for around 15 years, since I stopped playing as much golf and scratched around looking for a replacement. However, it wasn't until around 8 years ago, when I joined David Lloyd at West Bridgford that it became a regular obsession.

I started having a regular hit on a friday morning, early, with Tim, a friend I had known for some time. We were joined by various characters over the years, none of whom lasted the course until we finally added Duncan and Martin to the playing roster.

Martin freely admitted that he was not a morning person and, very often, he was as likely to get out of bed as a teenager with a slight hangover and did not show up on a friday morning. This left the three of us to make up some new rules for playing just between us. At that time, Powerplay™ tennis was born!

Whilst we had an enjoyable game when there were only three of us, we wanted to encourage attendance as often as possible so we developed on ongoing tournament structure. The year is divided into 4 quarters and we play a tournament in each quater, The Australian Open, The French Open, Wimbledon and The US Open. Each of the 13 weeks of the tournament you earn points based on how you perform that week and, at the end of the tournament, the winner is crowned and is treated to a night out by the other three. The genius part, and the real motivator for attendance, is the loser of the tournament has to wear a themed hat for the entirety of the night out! Suddenly attendance was almost 100% and has remained so ever since. Holidays are even booked around missing as little breakfast tennis as possible. The humiliation of the hat needs to be avoided.

Just shows, when you get the motivation right, results can be achieved!

For those interested, I will post a series of entries which will explain further and give you updates on the tournaments and the anecdotes that come out of them. Be prepared.