UK mini tennis

[Knightsbridge]

Can anyone offer advice? My DD is 8 and has played tennis since she was 3. She loves playing and taking lessons, both group and private. We never have to ask her if she wants to go to a lesson or play in a local tournament, she seems quite passionate about it all on her own. My question is for parents that know the British LTA mini tennis program. My DD has played a few red ball tournaments and next season will be allowed to play orange balls (what she normally practices with today). My question is given she will only be allowed to play orange balls for one year, before moving up to green, how many tournaments does it typically take to get to the different ratings like orange 2, orange 1, and orange1? I've read the LTA website about the requirements of each, but what would it take to make it to 1 or 1? 40, 50 or more tournaments? Thanks for any advice.

Assuming she will move up to an orange 4 rating from 1st April?
She then needs to play 6 matches (won or lose) to get to an orange 3 and a further 20 matches (won or lose to get to an orange 2.
I would look at grade 6 match plays to achieve this where you can get 4-6 matches a time so you are looking at 5-7 tournaments or match plays to achieve this.
Then it gets complicated
To move from a two to a one you need to play a further 40 matches and win at least 20 but the wins need to be against orange 2s, orange 1s or stars. This could mean you end up having to play far more matches than 40. For example you might get 20 wins out of 40 matches but only ten of them were against players of the right rating so you need to keep playing.
The minimum tournaments you are looking at to move from a 2 to a 1 would be 9 but you could be looking at 15/20 even more.
Same with getting a star when you have to beat twenty orange one rated players. First you have to find them to play them and then you need to beat them. You could do a tournament with no players with that rating and so no wins would count. We had to travel around the country just to find orange ones for my DD to play when she was orange.

As far as moving up to green goes. You have to move up in the season when your 10th Birthday falls. However if you are an orange one or orange one star you can play green ball a season early but it’s for practice only

I thought an orange 1* could play green tournaments early ( not just practice) I certainly know orange age players with a green rating

Orange 1* in their last season of orange can definitely play up as green in LTA league club matches, results for those matches are recordable for ratings

To give you an idea my DDs progress was as follows:
Orange 4-3 achieved on one match play (6 matches)
3-2 achieved in 4 tournaments (1 with 6 matches, 1 with 4 and 2 with 5)
This took a month - one tournament every weekend.
Then it took 10 tournaments to get her to an orange one. Each tournament had 4-5 matches and we travelled around the country to tournaments that had 90% or more players entered with a 2 or above rating. She played 48 matches to get her 20 wins against the right level player.
This took 2 months - 1or 2 tournaments a week.
It took 4 months and a further 10 tournaments for her to get her star. This was an average of 2 tournaments a month but we literally had to travel 100s of miles to play the right level player.
So all in all it took 25 tournaments and 7 months to move from an orange 4 to a star.

Orange rated players can only play in green tournaments for practice and only if there is a space - is not enough green rated players. They can get ranking points in tournaments for green ball but the matches don’t count as rating matches. In order for a match to count as a rating match it has to be against a player of the same colour rating in the same colour tournament. Eg 2 orange players in an orange tournament or 2 green in a green etc

The only way an orange player can get a green rating is if they are awarded a player passport by the LTA performance team. This is based on exceptional tournament performance and potential. There are currently less than 10 orange aged girls in the entire UK who have been given green ratings

A lot of confusion comes with the cut off dates. For example a child who will be 10 in august will move up to green in the April of that year. They will be 9 years old when they are playing green ball but will be a green age player not orange. A child whose birthday is in early April will be playing green almost straight away as a 10 year old.
All depends when the birthday falls

I understand the age groups, all of the players I am thinking of are boys, I know of quite a few orange that have green ratings, but they are children that play & compete a lot and most have probably gone through talent id / attend county training

I’ve just looked at the LTA player search engine.
In order to be an orange player with a green rating they would have had to have been born after 1st April 2009 and their current rating would have to be a green one or one star as that’s the lowest level the LTA award passports at. I can find 8 girls and 2 boys in the whole UK that meet that criteria
I’m not saying it’s not possible, just that it’s very hard to get

If you go into the lta player search and tap their name in you can find out
If it shows as current season age 9, next season age 10 and it actually shows a green rating (as opposed to orange 1*) then they have been given a passport based on talent and have a green rating a season early.
If it shows current age 9, next season age 10 and the rating is still orange then they are an orange rated player who is probably playing green in their last season

That's very helpful. Thanks for letting me know how your DD progressed thru to Orange *1. I'm happy to travel most weekends, but really I want to stay in the M25 roughly. I'm not inclined to drive 2-3 hours each way just to get to a tournament. That being said, I'll see how my DD is enjoying it and maybe change my mind if she really enjoys the tournaments.

Just another point of reference. My DD went from her first match to Orange 1 in 3.3 months. She had a 65% win ratio. It required us playing every weekend, often Saturday and Sundays. It also meant playing even more frequently during school holidays. Make sure you focus on tournaments that have the most highly rated players, otherwise even with a high win ratio it will take a very long time to make it to Orange 1. Hope that helps.

Super helpful stuff everyone! Question, once a player gets to Green 1, how many tournaments does it typically take to make it to Green 1* ? It looks like kids only play 4 matches per Green tournament typically. Also, the draw sizes look smaller than Orange tournaments, so maybe it's more difficult to get accepted to Grade 3-4 tournaments? Thanks for the help!

sorry to revive an older thread and not even be on topic but what do young girls like to wear (age 7 just a few lessons but enjoying it). im in canada and due to taxes would prefer to buy uk but would love to know what the "in" brands are. i certainly see some cutsy stuff online, not sure how popular it is in london.