Do you think tennis is a ' posh ' sport?

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When you hear someone saying they play tennis, do you assume they're a bit well off / posh ? Whatever you want to call it.

Yes I would think so its a very expensive sport. Dd went to school with a junior champion the family was well off the kid went abroad for training most holidays, I don't think they turned professional and I'm sure they work in tennis though.

It is if they play it on their own court

To get good it’s expensive, to play for fun it’s not at all.
When I look at football where I live, you join a club for about $100 for a term, training is about $20 a session, it’s very cheap.
Tennis though - we pay $700 a term for 2 squads, $100 per hour for a private lesson once a week and even competitions are $60 a go.
There are subsidised groups for good players at lower incomes from Tennis Australia but even then you have to get good enough in the first place to get picked.
So money definitely helps although in Aus we don’t really have “posh” so it’s more about wealth than class.

It's definitely more popular in 'posh' areas.

Yes, generally on the posher side. Tennis lessons aren't cheap and there aren't many municipal courts any more where you can just turn up and have a knock about. Plus you need a racket etc.

Basically, someone who occasionally has a game on a municipal court at the park now and again is probably not posh. Someone who belongs to a tennis club and has lessons probably is posh (or at least wealthy).

Obviously that's not always the case - just like it's not always the case that people who go horse-riding or do competitive rowing are posh. But if we're talking in generalisations that would be my view.

I think usually, the sports you can easily play anywhere with minimal equipment or where there are loads of cheap/free facilities are the less posh ones. One of the reasons football is such a massively popular participation sport is because all you need to play some version of it is a ball.

No

Posher than darts
Not as posh as lacrosse

Definitely. The demographic at our tennis club is in no way representative of the local population.

No (whatever the hell you mean by "posh", which in itself is quite a snobbish judgement). I personally know current pro tennis players who come from a very "ordinary" background, and have gone on to have great success. Even as a spectator, you only need to pay £30 for a Wimbledon grounds pass, which gives you approx 8 hours of entertainment - bargain!

Yes.

Yes it's a posh sport

It’s not “posh” but definitely middle class. The working class kids round here would never play tennis in the park - football and basketball only.

Yes but I don't know why really as its my favourite sport and I'm not a bit posh 😁

To be fair all you need for tennis is a court and some rackets/ball.

As kids we used to play in the streets or in someones back garden with boxes and blankets chucked over them for nets !

And as we got older there were courts in the schools and in the local parks. There are certainly municipal courts around where I am.

But once you start getting into clubs and coaching I can believe that is very pricey.

But I would say that it is an accessible sport. If you want to play you can normally find a way fairly cheaply and it doesn't require any really expensive equipment.

I doubt though whether anyone every got really good at playing tennis with sponge balls with their mates in back gardens.

Yes it's posh.

A lot of tennis clubs charge a lot to be a member which encourages the wealthier and snobbish to join.

No thank you.

In terms of cost, yes it's cheaper to just rent a court and turn up with balls and a second hand racket (I want to spell it racquet, where has that come from?), but in order to do that you have to be able to play.

I went to a pretty normal school and I think I might have done tennis for half a term one summer in my seven years there. The rest of the time it was netball or hockey, and a similarly brief foray into cricket.

So I would say that to be good enough to be able to make use of the cheap 'use a court in the park' side of tennis, you have to spend money on lessons etc.

Unless my school wasn't representative. Weirdly we did lacrosse more than tennis because we were local to a very sporty university and (almost exclusively American) students used to come and teach us.

I think it is perceived as posh because not all schools will have the number of courts to offer it to a whole class of pupils. At my Grammar school in 70s/80s we had about 6 courts so one class of girls could just about all play doubles if some were umpires /lines people. The dress rules also seemed to come into play as soon as you were playing above class lesson standard. Tennis clubs do seem to attract a particular social grouping although there are always exceptions. As others have said, at grass root standard it is not expensive racquet, balls, marked out court, some sort of net. But there are other sports that are cheaper and can involve more people at a time.

My DH is a member of a tennis club.
It's cheaper per month than most gyms but it is quite posh

British tennis tradionally always had this problem of tennis being accessible only to more well off and privately educated people.
That's why they used to make a big thing of someone like Dan Evans having a father who was an electrician. Or, in his day, James Ward having a father who was a taxi driver. Because they were seen as from coming a different demographic to the majority of players.
People like Judy Murray have done a tremendous job at grass roots level trying to make tennis available to all different types of young people. Going into schools and giving them a taste for the sport and trying to make coaching available to children from all backgrounds.

Yes. Slightly more so than cricket.

going off the point a bit I am always confused as to why running (my sport) is so middle class as at least to start off it costs nothing at all other than a pair of trainers

Yes it is posh. You need a minimum of one adult per match, and a match can go on for hours and have only two players - so yes, very posh. Tennis tournaments often have more umpires, line umpires, ball boys and girls, all these people available and serving just 2 or 4 players - very privileged and unnatural

It depends where they play it.

If someone mentions that they play tennis, the next question will be "Oh, where do you play?".

It is here as there’s no tennis courts in any of the parks and it’s £25 an hour to hire the tennis club court (not including equipment hire).

Where BIL lives it’s not as the park has loads of courts and kids can hire them for £5 including racquets and balls

Yes! And I say that as someone who is now part of a tennis club… it’s getting access to courts. Our city actually has a lot of courts in parks for anyone to use, pay as you go, but I think that’s unusual.

I learned to 'play' in the street with my sister as a child. Our crappy comp didn't offer tennis on any of its tarmac courts in the 1980s. And I never had lessons. When I was 35 I started playing properly at a club in London. It didn't insist on proper whites or anything like that although there was a membership of a few hundred pounds a year. I'm now 58 and live in Cornwall (back where I began!) and am a member of a lovely club that charges me around £300 a year. For that (if iI have time) I can play every day. It's lovely. And mostly not at all stuffy. The really good players had lessons as children, though I hold my own because I't fit and have a good long-limbed tennis body.
In summary, I started poor, and when I had money joined a club. I don't therefore view it as (too) posh!