LTA Local Tour Explained: First Steps Into Competition

Nine courts at a club somewhere in the West Midlands, a Saturday morning in February, and roughly forty children who have never played a match that counted for anything. Some of them have been having a lesson a week for two years. Most have no idea what happens next. A referee with a clipboard reads out four names, points at court six, and that is the whole ceremony.

That is the Local Tour. It is the bottom rung of the Lawn Tennis Association's junior competition structure in Britain, it is run by ordinary venues rather than by the LTA itself, and it exists because the thing it replaced was quietly putting children off the sport. What follows is how the entry system works, what the formats look like, where the results go, and what a parent is and is not supposed to do while it is happening.

What the Local Tour was designed to fix

For years the first competitive match a British child played was a graded tournament, and graded tournaments are open. A nine-year-old in their first event could be drawn against a nine-year-old in their fortieth. The result was a 4-0 4-0 defeat inside twenty-five minutes, a long drive home, and a child who had learned that competition is something that happens to you.

The Local Tour breaks that chain in two places. The first is the draw format. Almost everything at this level is a round robin — small boxes of three, four or five players, everyone plays everyone, nobody goes home after one match. A child who loses their opening match still has two more to play, and the second is against somebody who has also just lost. That single structural choice does more for retention than any amount of encouragement from the sideline.

The second is the standard of the field. Local Tour events are pitched at players new to competition, and venues can restrict entry by ball colour and, in some cases, by rating band. The aim is that the four names in a box are close enough together that any of them could win it.

There is a third thing, less often stated. Local Tour events are meant to be local. Not a two-hour drive to a regional centre, but the club three miles away, on a Saturday morning, finished by lunch. Junior tennis in England has an access problem that has very little to do with talent and a great deal to do with whose parents can spend a weekend in the car, and pushing the first rung of the ladder down to venue level is a serious attempt at it.

Whether it fully works is a fair question. Provision is uneven — some counties run events most weekends, others manage one a month, and a family in a rural part of Lincolnshire is still travelling further than a family in south London. The design intent is sound. The coverage is patchy, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

Age bands, ball colours and how an event is graded

Two things decide which event a child is eligible for, and they are not the same thing.

The first is age band. Junior competition in Britain runs in single-year bands at the youngest end and then widens as children get older, so the mini-tennis stages have their own narrow groups and the full-court stages move to two-year bands. Eligibility is worked out from a fixed cut-off date in the competition year rather than from the child's birthday on the day of the event. A child born in late December therefore spends the whole year as one of the youngest in their band, which is a real and well-documented disadvantage in junior sport and one that the structure does not attempt to correct. The exact cut-off date sits in the LTA's competition regulations and has been adjusted before, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.

The second is ball colour. Red, orange and green balls travel and bounce differently, and events are run for a specific stage rather than for an age. Most eight-year-olds play red and most eleven-year-olds play green, but the mapping is a guide rather than a rule, and a child can be entered at the stage their coach thinks fits. The full explanation of what each stage changes is in our guide to the junior tennis pathway in England.

Where the two systems meet

In practice an entry page reads something like "9U Orange" or "11U Green", and both halves matter. Enter a child into the right age but the wrong ball and they will spend the morning either overpowered or bored. This is the most common error at a first event, and it is almost always fixable by asking the coach one question before entering rather than after.

Some venues add a third filter and cap entry by World Tennis Number band, so that a box does not contain one player two years ahead of the rest. Not every event does this. It is more common at busy venues, where the referee has enough entries to sort them meaningfully.

Boys, girls and mixed events

Junior competition is normally split by gender, and a venue will advertise a boys' event and a girls' event in the same age band on the same morning. At the youngest ages, and at quieter venues, entries are often too thin to fill both, so mixed boxes are common at red and orange. Nobody makes much of it and nor should they — at seven, the physical differences that justify separate categories later are not there yet.

Where it becomes a live question is around the transition to green and full-court tennis, because girls' entries in England thin out through the early teens while boys' entries hold up better. That is a participation problem the LTA has acknowledged and worked at rather than solved, and its practical effect on a family is that a twelve-year-old girl may have to travel further to find an event in her band than her brother does. Some counties respond by running combined age bands for girls, which keeps events viable at the cost of a wider spread of ability in the draw.

Finding an event and getting the entry in

Everything runs through the LTA's online competitions system. The search filters are the useful part: county, date range, age group, ball colour, gender category. A parent in Devon looking for a green-ball event for a ten-year-old in the next six weeks can get to a shortlist in about a minute.

1. 1Get an LTA numberRegister the child through the LTA's free membership tier. The number is what every entry is made against and it stays with them for life.
2. 2Ask the coachConfirm which ball colour and age band to enter. This is the question that prevents a wasted Saturday.
3. 3Search the competitions siteFilter by county, date, age group and ball colour. Shortlist two or three events within a sensible drive.
4. 4Enter and payEntries go in online and are paid to the venue. Entry closes days before play, and popular events fill early.
5. 5Read the acceptance emailIt carries the session time, the format the referee intends to run, and the venue's arrival instructions.
6. 6Turn up earlyThirty minutes before the session start is normal. Check in with the referee rather than the front desk.

The sequence a first entry follows. Deadlines and fees are set by the host venue, not centrally.

Entries close in advance rather than on the day, and the closing date is genuinely a closing date — a referee building boxes on the Thursday cannot add a fifth name on the Saturday morning without rebuilding the whole schedule. If an event is full, the site will usually take a reserve entry, and reserves do get in, because withdrawals at this level are frequent.

Withdrawal works the other way and is worth understanding before you need it. Pull out before the closing date and the venue will normally refund. Pull out after it and you may not, because the referee has already committed court time. Illness on the morning is handled sympathetically nearly everywhere, but a message to the venue is the difference between a withdrawal and a no-show, and no-shows are recorded.

What has to be in place before you can enter at all

A child needs an LTA number. That is the whole of the formal requirement, and it comes from registering with the LTA's free membership tier, which costs nothing and takes a few minutes. The number is the identifier that every entry, every result and eventually every rating attaches to, so it is worth writing down somewhere other than an email inbox. Membership tiers, including the paid ones and what they add, are covered in the guide to LTA Advantage membership.

Beyond that, there is no ranking threshold, no qualification, no coach's nomination and no club membership requirement. A child who has never held a racket could, in principle, be entered into an event tomorrow. Whether that is a good idea is a separate matter — the honest answer is that a term or two of group coaching first makes the day far more enjoyable — but the door is genuinely open.

Parents set up and hold the account for under-18s, which is a safeguarding decision rather than an administrative one. The LTA publishes a safeguarding policy that binds venues running sanctioned competition, and the practical consequences a parent notices are that the account sits with an adult, that photography at events is restricted, and that the referee is a named accountable person rather than whoever happens to be on court.

One thing that is not required: a specific racket length or brand. Rackets are sized to the stage rather than regulated at this level, and any coach will tell you which length a child should be on.

Match formats and how long a session actually runs

Round robin, short scoring, several matches in one block. That is the shape of nearly every Local Tour event, and the variations sit inside it.

At red and orange, matches are often played to a fixed number of points or games, or against the clock, with a whole box completed inside ninety minutes. At green and at the full-court stages the most common format is a best-of-three set match in which the deciding set is replaced by a ten-point match tie-break, or a pair of short sets played first to four games. The referee sets the format based on how many courts are available and how many entries came in, and publishes it in advance.

Box of three2matches

Box of four3matches

Box of five4matches

Box of six5matches

Arithmetic of a single round robin, not a count of what any particular event offers.

Show the numbers

Matches guaranteed by round-robin box size

Item	Value
Box of three	2matches
Box of four	3matches
Box of five	4matches
Box of six	5matches

That arithmetic is worth internalising before you complain about a box of three. Everyone plays everyone once, so a box of four gives three matches and a box of six gives five — but a box of six with short matches takes considerably longer than a box of four, and referees balance the two against the court time they have bought. If an event guarantees a number of matches in its description, that number is a promise about box size.

Timings are the thing parents get wrong. A session usually runs two to four hours rather than a full day, and a venue running several age groups will schedule them in separate blocks. Arrive for your block, not for the start of the event.

Standings tie-breaks are the other detail nobody mentions until it matters. If two players in a box finish level on matches won, the placing is normally decided on head-to-head first, then on games or points difference. Referees publish the method they are using, and a child who has just won two matches out of three and finished second will want to know why.

The shortened scoring a child will meet first

Three abbreviations account for most of what is played below the full-court stages, and none of them are explained on the entry page.

A match tie-break is a tie-break played to ten points instead of seven, still requiring a margin of two, used in place of a deciding set. It compresses a set into roughly ten minutes and it is now standard in doubles across large parts of the professional game as well as in junior events, so a child who learns it at eight will still be playing it at eighteen.

Short sets are sets played first to four games rather than six, usually with a tie-break at three-all. Two short sets and a match tie-break is a complete match that fits inside forty minutes, which is what makes a five-player box possible on two courts.

No-advantage scoring, sometimes called sudden-death deuce, removes the advantage point: at deuce the next point wins the game, and the receiver chooses which side to take it from. Adults tend to dislike it. Referees like it because it makes match length predictable, and predictable match length is the only way a session finishes when the schedule says it will.

Timed play is the fourth variant and appears mainly at red. Everybody starts together, everybody stops on a whistle, and the score is whatever it is. It looks chaotic from the balcony. It works remarkably well for six-year-olds.

Where the results go, and what they actually change

Every result played in an LTA-sanctioned competition is submitted, and the main thing it feeds is the player's World Tennis Number. The WTN is a rating on a single scale, calculated from match results and from the standard of the opponent, and it increasingly determines which events a player is eligible for. It moves on the quality of the performance rather than simply on wins, so a close loss to a stronger player can help a rating and a comfortable win over a much weaker one can do almost nothing. The mechanics are set out in our guide to the World Tennis Number in the UK.

National junior rankings are a separate system, and here honesty is more useful than confidence. The LTA has restructured its junior competition tiers and its ranking arrangements more than once in recent years, and which tiers carry ranking points has changed with them. The design principle has been that the entry level is about match experience and rating rather than accumulating points, with points attaching further up the ladder. Anyone who needs a definitive answer for a specific event should read the current competition regulations rather than a guide, including this one.

There is a second thing results do, quieter and more useful. A run of recorded matches is a record of how a child copes with a lead, a deficit, a bad call and a long morning. Coaches read that. Two boxes' worth of results tells a coach more than a term of group sessions, because sessions never produce a moment where a child is 3-1 down and has to decide something on their own.

What a parent is there to do, and what they are not

Coaching during play is not allowed. That is the rule, it is enforced with varying firmness at this level, and it exists because a child who is told what to do on every point learns nothing about deciding. A parent who cannot resist should stand where they cannot be heard.

Beyond that the job is small and mostly logistical. Get there early. Know which court. Have water and food. Keep out of the way of the referee, who is running four courts and a schedule and does not need a conversation about the draw between matches.

Line calls are the flashpoint. In an unofficiated match each player calls the balls on their own side of the net, and the principle running through the Rules of Tennis and every code of conduct built on them is that a player who is not certain a ball was out must play it as good. Children are not naturally good at this, and eight-year-olds get it wrong in both directions constantly. If there is a genuine dispute the answer is to raise a hand and ask for the referee, who will come out and either make a ruling or watch the next few games. The answer is not for a parent to call the score from the sideline.

Safeguarding sits over the whole thing. Photography and filming at sanctioned competitions are restricted, venues can require registration before you take pictures, and the reason is not squeamishness — it is policy with a documented history behind it. A parent who wants a photograph of their child's first match should ask the referee first.

The other part of the job is what happens in the car afterwards. A child who has just lost three matches does not want a technical debrief. "Did you enjoy it" and "what do you want for lunch" is, genuinely, better coaching than anything you could say about their second serve.

The bag for a first competition

Two rackets if you have two, because a string breaks at the worst possible moment and a borrowed racket of the wrong length is miserable. One is fine if that is what you have; nobody has ever been turned away for it.

Water, more than you think, and something to eat between matches that is not entirely sugar. Sessions run for hours and venues do not always have a café open on a Saturday morning. Spare socks and a spare shirt — indoor centres in January are warmer than the walk in suggests, outdoor courts in April are not.

Shoes matter more than parents expect. An indoor acrylic or carpet surface wants a non-marking sole, and some venues will refuse entry to court in shoes that have been worn outside. If the event is on artificial clay, the sole pattern is different again. The venue's own page usually says; if it does not, ask.

Then the small things that save a morning: sun cream between March and September, a waterproof for outdoor events because play continues in drizzle, a written note of the child's LTA number, and a pen. Referees hand out scorecards and expect them back completed.

What you do not need: your own balls, which the event supplies at the correct stage, or any particular kit. There is no dress code at this level beyond something you can play in.

Nerves, first losses, and why the second event matters more

A child who is sick with nerves in the car park before their first competition is having an ordinary reaction to an unfamiliar situation, and the useful response is to name it rather than argue them out of it. Everybody on those courts feels roughly the same. Most of them are hiding it.

The most reliable practical intervention is a proper warm-up, because a body that has been moving for ten minutes reports back less alarm than one that has been sitting in a car for forty. Five minutes of rallying against a wall does more than any amount of reassurance.

Expect a bad first match. The pattern is extremely common: the first match is a blur, the child plays nothing like they do in a lesson, and it is over quickly. The round robin then does its work, because there is another one twenty minutes later, and by the third the tennis usually looks recognisable again.

The result of the first event is close to meaningless. The second is the one that tells you something, because by then the child knows what the room looks like, where the toilets are, how the scorecards work and what a match feels like. A great many children who lose everything at their first Local Tour event win a match at their second, and the difference is almost entirely familiarity.

If a child comes away saying they never want to do it again, take that seriously without treating it as final. Ask what specifically was bad. "I lost" is survivable. "I didn't know where to stand and nobody told me" is a venue problem, and a different venue fixes it. A coach who knows the local circuit will know which events are gently run, and finding one is covered in the guide to finding a tennis coach in England.

What sits above the Local Tour

The rungs above are where competition starts to look like the thing adults recognise: knockout draws, ranking consequences, travel.

1. 1Local TourVenue-run, one session, round robin, no qualification needed. Built for a first competitive match.
2. 2County TourRun across a county, stronger fields, knockout or knockout-with-consolation draws. The first level where losing early means going home.
3. 3Regional and national eventsLarger fields drawn from a wider area, entry controlled by rating or ranking, travel measured in hours rather than miles.
4. 4National championshipsThe top of the junior structure, with age-group titles and selection consequences attached to them.

The shape of the junior competition ladder. The LTA has renamed and restructured these tiers before, so names and entry conditions should be checked against current regulations.

	Local Tour	County Tour
Who runs it	The host venue	The county association, across several venues
Draw format	Round robin boxes	Knockout, often with a consolation draw
Matches if you lose first	Two more, usually	One in the consolation, or none
Field	Players new to competition	Players with a competitive record
Travel	Within a county, often within a town	Across the county, sometimes beyond
Entry control	Age band and ball colour	Age band, and rating or ranking

The move most families make is from Local Tour to County Tour, and the honest advice is not to make it too early. County Tour events are graded, the fields are stronger and the draws are often straight knockout, so a child who is not ready gets exactly the experience the Local Tour was invented to prevent. Two or three Local Tour events with some matches won is a reasonable signal. One event with three defeats is not.

County structures are worth understanding in their own right, because the county association is the body that runs the tour, selects county squads and organises team tennis in the area. Our guide to county tennis leagues covers how those associations are put together and what they run.

There is no rule against playing both. Plenty of children spend a season entering County Tour events for the challenge and Local Tour events for the volume of matches, and that is a sensible use of the structure rather than a step backwards.

Entry fees, travel, and what the money actually buys

The venue sets the entry fee, not the LTA, which is why the same age group can cost different amounts at two clubs twenty miles apart. The fee covers court time, balls at the correct stage, and the referee's day. At an indoor centre in winter it will be higher than at a park venue in June, for the obvious reason that indoor court time costs more to buy.

What the fee does not cover is the part that adds up. Travel is the real expense in junior tennis, and it scales with ambition — a Local Tour season played inside a twenty-mile radius costs very little in petrol, and a County Tour season across a large county costs considerably more. Families who plan for entry fees and not for driving are the ones who get a nasty surprise in year two.

Registration itself is free. The LTA's basic membership tier carries no charge, and no Local Tour event requires a paid tier. Anyone who tells you a child must hold a paid membership to enter an entry-level competition is mistaken.

A note on refunds, since it catches people. The withdrawal deadline is usually the entry closing date, and after that the venue is within its rights to keep the fee, because it has already bought the courts. Most venues are reasonable about illness. None of them are obliged to be.

Set against a term of group coaching, or against replacing rackets as a child grows, competition entry is the cheapest part of the sport. It is also the part that decides whether a child stays in it, which is an odd allocation of money and worth remembering when the fixture list looks daunting. Adults who fancy the same thing for themselves will find the equivalent structures in the guide to adult tennis leagues in England, and a wider view of the British game at tennis.