As Thunder Bay’s tennis community fights to be included in the indoor turf facility, it’s looking to Sudbury’s success in having covered tennis courts.
President of the local tennis centre David McCallum points out Sudbury made it happen with a much smaller number of people playing.
“Sudbury has a healthy indoor centre, but they’ve got about 100, between 100 and 200 members, but I don’t have the exact numbers. And they have 4 indoors courts.”
The local tennis president adds about 1,000 people could play year round in Thunder Bay in an indoor turf facility.
He adds the arrival of Tennis Canada in a few months to Thunder Bay could help.
“They’ve just launched this year, a strategy for covered courts across Canada. They’ve been working hard on that, as with the boom of tennis in Canada.”
The tennis President adds the national group is promoting more nationwide covered courts, something Canada lacks.
“Right now comparatively, we have indoor facilities, municipal hockey rinks there are 34%, municipal swimming pools 37% are indoor, whereas tennis courts it’s 2%.”
McCallum adds Canada has great coaches, along with stars such as Bianca Andreescu and Dennis Shapovalov doing very well on the international stage.
