Surrey.Tennis 2017/2018

coaching
Interview
Grant Fellows, head coach at a club in southwest London, has
more than doubled membership since he arrived in 2013, and
has won coaching awards for his efforts. What’s his secret?
He’s a jolly
good Fellows
e has earned himself the
nickname, ‘The Pied Piper of
H
Merton’. Grant Fellows, the
award-winning coach at Cranleigh
Tennis & Social Club in southwest London,
has doubled the number of his junior
members, and created a thriving club
scene that’s the envy of other sports
facilities in the area. When he first took
over the club coaching in 2013, there
were just 70-odd junior members and
50-odd adults. In four short years he has
increased those numbers to 140 and 130
respectively. Quite a feat.
So what’s the secret to his success?
This 34-year-old, originally from
Wolverhampton, attributes it to a
combination of hard work, customer
service, and great coaching at
affordable prices.
Fellows, who used to play
county tennis for Staffordshire and
has completed a tennis coaching
management degree, runs Cranleigh’s
coaching programme through his own
company, Limitless Tennis. The business
model he uses is unusual in that he pays
the club a licence to run the programme,
and then charges the members directly
for coaching sessions. It’s a system that
continually incentivises him, he says. “The
more players I get, the more revenue I
earn.” Currently, junior coaching starts at
£8.40 an hour, with a maximum of eight
kids per session.
Fellows believes, right now, he has
his strongest ever team of coaches in
place. There are five altogether, including
himself. “We’ve got the personalities, the
energy, we always think about how
things can be done better,” he says.
“We have regular coaches’ meetings to
discuss standards. We ask ourselves:
‘If we had our own children or family
members being coached, what would
we want them to receive?’”
And he places a strong emphasis on
that crucial combination of learning and
having fun. “It sounds quite simple but
it’s hard to get the balance between the
two.”
There are five courts at Cranleigh
Tennis & Social Club, all artificial clay. They
were installed thanks to a combination
of LTA money and club fundraising.
“Members took part in a 24-hour tennis
marathon,” Fellows remembers. “There
were club quizzes and beer evenings.”
Fellows himself even did a parachute
jump to raise money.
None of these artificial clay courts
are indoor, but that’s not such a
disadvantage. As Fellows explains, the
grippy surface of the carpet means they
12 surrey tennis magazine