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What do you believe was the biggest factor that could have put you (or a similar person in your position) off joining TDLTC?

A) The size of the annual subscription + joining fee.
B) That the sum all had to be paid up front.
C) Unfamiliarity with playing standards at the club.
D) One or two of the members.
E) Other

E) Other

Not enough women

• lack of regular playing women members

Not enough is organised for Mid-week players.

• not much organized by the club during the week. You have to rely on you contacts to organized a game, especially during the day-time.

Treatment of juniors by some adults

• One or two of the members - the lack of respect shown to juniors and the over-enforcement of membership (i.e. adults coming onto our court in the middle of a match/point just to accuse us of not being members!)

Inadequate facilities

• standard of facilities not reflecting the subs cost

Not enough Coaching

• lack of ongoing lessons, encouragement of new members

Widely differing standards of play

• Nothing put me off joining years ago. However, as I am a full playing member, what is currently putting me off re-joining is having to play with intermediates (who are mostly women) a lot of the time, and very rarely getting a good game of tennis during social play. Likewise it would also be fairer if intermediates mixed in with other intermediates (this always used to be the case years ago and it worked well). This way intermediates would not feel out of their depth as they would be playing others of their own standard and they would not feel guilty about spoiling a full playing member's game of tennis.
• Difficulty of getting games with people your standard. The ladder system used at Colets for squash would be a great way to introduce new members to each other and help people arrange regular games.

Poor Play(?)

• Poor playing reputation
• Turning up at the club for the first time and feeling that the club would not be active or friendly or social enough—e.g. come down and the Club is dead, or come down and members don't seem to be the type of people I would want to spend time with—e.g. all old, standard poor etc!

Difficulty in getting members to mix in

• Difficulty in getting to know enough people to play tennis with. Although people are supposed to mix in at a tennis club, they certainly don't at Thames Ditton and sitting around waiting for a game can be a miserable experience.

Unfriendly members

• My biggest worry was 'would I be made to feel welcome or get blanked like my treatment at Surbiton?'.
• Partially upfront financial outlay, but also existing members do not generally make a welcoming atmosphere for newer members, particularly ones with juniors attached!
• Cliques/arrogant attitudes.
• There was a definite 'in crowd'. There is still some level of snootiness from a very small handful of members. Strange attitude from men who won't play with women on the weekend roll-up—why do they come along then? These are enough issues to put people off.

Not enough Social Tennis

• Lack of people attending Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons. It used to be very popular.
• Lack of casual social tennis

It's basically a Summer club.

• Limit of the grass court season.
• Lack of winter facilities, i.e. floodlights, covered courts.
• No flood lights.
• Lack of all-weather courts and floodlights
• Court surfaces/essentially a summer club