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New Year Message from the Chairman

17 January 2019 No Comment

First of all Happy New Year to you all from me, John Williams and the whole committee. Lets hope 2019 is a good year for us all and especially that it will be a great tennis year for you here at Cardiff Lawn Tennis Club.

I gave my annual address to members at our AGM back in November, and this is available on the noticeboard in full. However I thought it would be useful if I updated you on our priorities and gave a bit more detail on what you can expect over the coming months.

Before I begin though, just a quick thank you to John Williams, our Head Coach and General Manager for all the hard work he puts in, day in and day out to ensure our club maintains its high standards in everything we do. I also need to thank the committee for all the work they put in as well.

Our overarching priority is to give all members the maximum amount of tennis opportunities whatever your tennis aspirations and abilities allow. This includes, team tennis, social tennis, the box league, mix-in nights and group and private coaching sessions as well. Indeed we hope to boost our coaching capacity as soon as we can, to ensure we can meet the coaching needs of all of our members, but we need to ensure we get the right person, so more on this later.

All this is available on 11 high quality floodlit courts on different surfaces which enable play in almost all weather conditions throughout the year. As you know we try hard to ensure our all courts are in good condition. The still relatively new artificial clay courts have proved to be very popular and they really come into their own in winter conditions. We will also make sure all the other courts are kept in as good a condition as possible. Courts 8 and 9 have recently been deep cleaned and they will be repainted in the spring. Courts 10 and 11 will also have the same treatment in the spring. The blue acrylic courts (1-4) will be power washed at the end of the winter to ensure they are back to their best for the spring and summer. I am confident all of the courts will be in great condition for the spring/summer season.

I mentioned floodlights and we are embarking on a long term project to both assess the current floodlights and make plans to begin a multi year replacement programme as necessary. We are at the early stages and there are several challenges to overcome. These include understanding what life our current system has left, deciding exactly what to replace them with, obtaining planning consent and managing the high cost of any new replacement programme. I will ensure you are kept fully up to date as decisions are made.

Last year we introduced the dedicated role of membership secretary to the club (Lisa Harrison / Som Nehm) and during their first year they worked hard to ensure new members could more easily integrate into the club. Lisa and Som have done great work so far and we have had some good early feedback. However, we will continue to focus on this area of activity and continue to fine tune as necessary.

It is really important to attract new members as well as retain as many members as possible as this is the best way to secure the strong financial health of the club. We are currently in a good financial position and on target to meet this year’s budget, but there is always inflation and other financial pressures on us and we will never be complacent in this area.

I hope you feel we are managing the club with your interests at the heart of everything we do. I also hope you feel able to talk and feedback to John, me or any member of the committee at any time on any matter important to you. So once again happy new year and I wish you all a very successful tennis year ahead.

Best wishes

Graham Webster

Chairman