Wimbledon 2026: How not to be a tennis parent

At the age of nine, Ellie-Rose Griffiths left school to pursue full-time education. That’s when tennis stopped being just a game and became his life.

The former top-ranked junior would go on to compete alongside some of the best in British tennis, including Katie Boulter, Emma Raducanu and Harriet Dart, before quitting playing at the age of 19 because she was burnt out and no longer enjoyed it.

When the 27-year-old looks back now, it’s not just tennis that he remembers. It stems from the pressure around him and he believes that a group of people in particular can handle it better.

Parents.

Aggressive parents are nothing new in a sport that offers the potential for multi-million pound prize money at the top level; At the elite level, there are well-documented incidents involving the fathers of Jelena Dokic, Mary Pierce and Bernard Tomic, to name a few.

It all starts at the youth level.

“In tennis you see parents shouting at their kids all the time,” Griffiths told BBC Sport. “There is a lack of understanding about how they should act…how they can help their children develop into the athletes they are supposed to be.”

And it can get out of control.

“We’ve had situations here before where, unfortunately, we’ve had to call the police because parents’ behavior got out of control,” says Chris Johnson, head coach at Sutton Coldfield Tennis Club, where he has worked for 36 years.

“They don’t listen, they think they can get away with anything, they don’t respect the referees, things can get a little ugly.”

They both know that this type of behavior does not happen in isolation and that it is the environment created by tennis that causes parents to act this way.

So why is this and what needs to change?

Tennis can be intense for parents.

There’s transportation to organize, coaching to finance, and a complex player path to navigate. In some cases, private lessons can even be arranged if their child drops out of regular school to focus on sports.

“You get on a bit of a hamster wheel,” says John, from Derbyshire, whose 11-year-old son Harrison is an aspiring actor. “12 months of the year, indoor courts and outdoor courts.”

Children can start playing tennis on a modified court from the age of four. The Lawn Tennis Association’s (LTA) most promising junior performance pathway supports players from the age of seven on their journey to potentially becoming Grand Slam champions.

Competitions are grouped by age and start at ages eight and under.

And the ratings and rankings you get from doing these things are one way to get noticed.

So when does the situation start to get serious?

“The moment they started playing their first competition,” according to Johnson.

Does he think this is true?

“Absolutely not.

“Many adults cannot handle the pressure of playing an individual sport and expect young children to be able to do it too.”

St Albans coach Steve Whelan, who has almost three decades of experience, agrees that the system places too much emphasis on winning at a young age.

“This drags the race to the bottom because parents are looking for ratings and rankings,” he says.

He tells parents: “These are not tennis players. They are kids playing tennis, and there’s a big difference.”

The LTA said it carried out a “comprehensive review” of the rating and ranking system in 2018, “addressing the issue of too much pressure being placed on very young children in particular”.

Players will no longer be able to be ranked against their peers at national level until they reach the under-11 group; Younger children aged eight and above will be held competitively based on the latest format (one rating).

When it comes to parental behaviour, the LTA says that, as in any sport, “there are occasions when a small minority of parents do not meet the expected standards of behaviour”. The governing body will soon launch a new initiative called Fair Play to encourage positive parental behavior and support coaches.