Annual Cost of Training for Some Junior Tennis Players Is $10,000

Nearly one-third of the nation’s junior tennis players spend more than $10,000 annually for training, a survey reveals.

Yet the survey, commissioned by the Easter Bowl, a junior tournament limited to Americans, discloses that more than 60% of the entrants in the Easter Bowl come from families whose annual income falls below $80,000.

“Supporting a junior tennis star is a hardship for most American families,” Seena Hamilton, the Easter Bowl Junior Tennis Championships’ founder and organizer, said. “Our survey suggests that the costs are prohibitive for the middle class as more and more of their kids are being barred economically from training and competition.

“There are few scholarships, travel support money is minimal and tennis academies are traditionally playgrounds for the rich.”

A vast majority--87.4%--of the players said they felt their families were making financial sacrifices in order to support their tennis.

The survey was conducted by Omega among the 384 junior tennis players, aged 11 to 18 years old, who are participating in this week’s Easter Bowl in Miami.

In all, 31.3% said their annual training expenses cost more than $10,000 and 40.3% said their families spent between $5,000 and $10,000. Only 4.3% of the youngsters said their costs were under $2,500.

Nearly half of the junior players--44.9%--said they took up the sport between the ages of 8 and 10. Twenty-six percent said they first began playing between the ages of 6 and 8, while the remainder were evenly split between beginning under the age of 5 and over the age of 10.

While nearly 60% of the youngsters practice more than four hours a day, 92.7% carry a B average or better in school, including 19.4% who have straight A grades.

Despite the costs, only 8% of the junior players practice on their school’s or public courts, with 69% saying they practice most often at a club. And 78.6% said they had a private coach.

With few exceptions--John McEnroe being one of the most prominent--most of America’s top tennis players come from tennis backgrounds. Both Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors, for example, were taught the game by their parents, who played and taught tennis.

Almost all of the survey participants--99.4%--said they planned to go to college, but only 58.4% said they felt they would be playing professional tennis in 1997--10 years from now.