The Tennis Family

With great things happening at the Madrid Open this week, with the UK's Kyle Edmund powering past both Novak Djokovic and David Goffin, we thought we'd catch up with a couple of sensational Spanish coach to find out what you can do to gain an on-court advantage.

Mario Robledo and Jorge Santos are our partners here at Local Tennis Leagues and run TenniscomeTrue, a great coaching service based on East London's West Ham Park.

Mario and Jorge both grew up in Madrid, and their capability on court is undeniable:

Hi I'm Mario, I started playing tennis at the age of 7, competing at National level and I joined the Madrid National Tennis Centre to become a professional tennis player at the age of 12. As a junior, I performed for the Sanchez-Casal Tennis Academy, TennisVal, Juan Carlos Ferrero Tennis Academy and Madrid City in national tournaments and competitions.

The pair are an inspiring story of hard work and love for tennis. Mario came to the UK having studied for two degrees (at the same time!) but missed tennis so much he decided he had to get back into the sport. Jorge, who also had an illustrious tennis upbringing, arrived in London in 2011 with a single goal in mind - to teach the sport that he loves! 

My firm purpose coming to the UK was always to coach tennis. After a few years of working at different tennis clubs while studying for my LTA coaching qualifications, I became head coach at a local tennis company. In 2012, I moved to West Ham and after a long time working with Mario, we decided to take one step forward, creating TenniscomeTrue in July 2016. We wanted to give Newham residents access to high-quality tennis coaching, regardless of age or social background. Not least we wanted to help children to get more involved in the sport, and give them the chance to choose tennis as their main sport - and, why not, develop a tennis career.

Mario and Jorge created a real buzz in West Ham Park, with more than 1000 people enjoying tennis there. So how can we become the next Kyle Edmund as LTLers!?

At TenniscomeTrue we believe the sport has many different components; vision, footwork and technique. You need at least a bit of all them to play a tennis match. All our players are coached in all three skills. Joining all the components together is the secret of creating a complete tennis player ready to play matches and to understand where any mistakes might come from.

Often court position and footwork are the most common mistakes players make during matches. Our top 5 tips?

  • Know yourself well, what kind of player you are and how your pattern of game should be.
  • Keep your eyes open!
  • Go ahead with the shot that first came to your mind.
  • Keep your legs moving.
  • Trust your work.

From summer 2018, TenniscomeTrue will be running LTA tournaments for children and adults at the West Ham Park tennis courts.

We always had a lot of feedback from local players and parents from different venues and parks, they came to us to speak about the problems they found trying to play tennis in the borough. We were always happy to pay attention to them, after just a few weeks and months they become part of our family. I really feel that we are a tennis family here. 

Here at Local Tennis Leagues we really feel that sense of family. Mario and Jorge's aspiration to open up tennis to anyone and everyone is a shared vision of ours: we simply want to see more people on the UK's courts!

From the beginning we found Local Tennis Leagues to be the perfect motivation to encourage our players to keep themselves active and play tennis all the year around. We think that LTL offers the perfect environment to play tennis matches at any level, from your first tennis match to competitive matches between really experienced players, you always find people with your same skills.

In the last 2 years we have seen hundreds of Local Tennis Leagues matches on our courst. They are all different, from really close matches between Group 1 players, to the first competive matches the players have ever attempted, but what we consider most important is that all matches are finished the same way - happy players, long post-match chats and in most cases, matches finished in a friendship.

A huge thanks for talking to us Mario and Jorge, we wish you every success for the future!

If you live in Newham, why not try out some of Mario and Jorge's tennis coaching sessions or to get involved in their upcoming beginner, intermediate and advanced level tournaments. Contact them & find more at https://clubspark.lta.org.uk/WestHamPark/Coaching.