We all know 2020 was tough for everyone. But when I look back on the last 12 months, from a personal perspective, it wasn’t all doom and gloom.

So, in my first column for you all I’m going to give you an insight into some of the good things that happened in British tennis last year.

Lockdown and its impact

Like the rest of the world when the Coronavirus Pandemic hit, everyone’s lives in the tennis community ground to a halt. No international competitions for our elite pros, no coaching for our talented juniors, not even the chance to go to a court down the road!

We knew that we needed to act swiftly to ensure that once Lockdown eased we had a plan in place to prepare our players for a return to tennis. In the end we created a five-step plan with the end point being a return to international competition. During this time the National Tennis Centre (NTC) became a real focal point, as through holding training sessions – and then later in the summer competitions – it became the only option for our players to play tennis.

From that time together there’s a fantastic team spirit in British tennis. Relationships grew stronger this year. You get the sense, now more than ever, that people want each other to do really well. That in part has been due to everyone spending more time with each other at the NTC – no question.

The atmosphere we’ve created at the NTC is really special and has brought lots of people together – and I think that’s really valuable going into the future.

A new home for events

With every event round the world getting cancelled, and once we had got everyone back training, we went about introducing more playing opportunities with events at the NTC. A lot of work went into that. We were only able to hold tournaments at the NTC because of the amazing work of our Operations Team to make our events run smoothly in-line with government guidelines. Bringing in new partners too was key. The UK Pro Series, the Progress Tour and Jamie Murray worked so well with us to hold more tennis tournaments as there is only so much that we, as the LTA, can do ourselves.

The Battle of the Brits in particular was fantastic. Men and women together. Our top players against rising talent. A new scoring system and – of course – all of the chat between the two teams was great. It was very competitive and, most of all, really good fun with the NTC providing a perfect back drop to it all.

It’s massive having our younger players training and playing against our leading pros. We’ve seen Andy Murray sparring with Emma Raducanu, Dan Evans training with Arthur Fery and then in the Battle of the Brits we saw Jack Draper beat Cam Norrie, too. The way I see it, there are two ways of getting better for young players. First, it’s through getting an opportunity to play against someone better than you – through a wildcard or qualifying for a tournament. Or it’s through regular training against players better than you. Any time you can play with one of the world’s best players you’re going to get information that is priceless – and that’s what we saw happening at the NTC this year. It speeds the learning up and it’s so important for the development of our next generation. We’re now seeing that more often through more domestic competitions, and through our younger players having more chances to train with the best.

Looking ahead to the future

What did work to our advantage last year was the fact we were able to prepare properly for the future. Over the first Lockdown we made a lot of essential changes to the NTC. We had the courts re-done, the gym is better, the accommodation is much better, the food served in the canteen for elite players is far better too. There’s been a big facelift and so far the feedback from the players has been fantastic.

We also improved our services too – for example we brought in a new coach to be permanently based at the NTC. A lot of our current team is back here for a while then they go out on the road, but we wanted to have someone who was back at base the whole time. That way they can get to know the players well and really get the most out of their practice sessions each time our players are back training in the UK.

Now we feel we’re in a position that once the world opens up again, the NTC will still be the place our elite players choose to come to train. Yes, full international schedules will mean more time on the road but by making it easy to book practice sessions, regularly re-surfacing our courts and ensuring our medical facilities are world-class we’ll be able to provide the top players with everything they need.

We also saw in 2020 that regular events are good for our players. When there’s something more meaningful than practice (whether it’s prize money, cameras, or even just a structure) players focus that little bit more and it brings a sharpness. That sharpness is invaluable for all players and I’d like to see more events, a few times a year, to bring our best players together and also give young talent a chance to shine.