Tennis blends profits and sport commitment
Tennis blends profits and sport commitment
JAKARTA (JP): There are tennis courts scattered across Jakarta, offering various facilities to benefit people who like hitting a furry ball across a net.
Playing time is arranged as easily as a quick meal at a warung (food stall). Weather is a minor hurdle.
A lack of skill is easily compensated for with an expensive and "forgiving" racket which allows the player to blast deadly shots.
Coaches, with various levels of expertise, are also available if one is determined to take tennis seriously.
"The great interest in tennis makes for a big market here," Red Summers, General Manager of Club Rasuna, says. Club Rasuna is a sports club in the heart of the capital's business district, the golden triangle, on Jl. Rasuna Said.
Managed by an international sports agent International Management Group, the club, to be opened in the middle of this year, will have tennis as its main drawing card. The club joins American and European equivalents to become the local setting for the Nick Bolletieri Tennis Academy, the tennis stable where Jim Courier, Boris Becker, Andre Agassi and Mary Pierce improve their tennis mastery.
Jakarta is the second Asian country after Bangkok to utilize Bolletieri's tennis training.
Rasuna Club's Marketing and Public Relations Manager, Nicky Amarullah, admits that the arrival of the Nick Bolletieri Tennis Academy will be the club's selling point. The club will be aimed at middle and upper class patrons.
"Indonesian coaching is not lacking anything, but it needs a bit of new discipline, organization and science," Stephen Miller, who will represent Bolletieri here, avoids criticizing Indonesian tennis. Miller, who has just completed his post at Kapalua, Hawaii, will be assisted by two local coaches.
Summers says the new system and teaching techniques, offered in various packages with fees ranging from US$12.50 to $768, are available to players of all ages and skill levels. "We are offering enjoyable tennis in which we can play a game and have fun with our family," he said.
Rasuna will have 13 courts, including two indoor ones and a 1,200-seat tennis stadium for exhibition matches. Top junior players will also be hired as drillers for members who want a more challenging game.
Recreational
The law of marketing suggests that clubs target members who prefer tennis as a recreational game rather than those who want to nurture a professional career.
"We expect 75 percent of our income to be derived from renting courts," August Ferry Raturandang, the manager of Kemayoran Tennis Center (KTC), said. Almost 170 amateur tennis leagues and groups from private companies and state offices play at 10 indoor and nine outdoor courts which were built on the site of the former Kemayoran airport. It also has a 2,000-seat outdoor stadium.
The four-hectare tennis complex cost the Indonesian Tennis Development Foundation Rp 8 billion ($3.8 million). It was inaugurated in June last year. A hospital, a three-star athletes' hotel and an indoor tennis stadium will be constructed, pending an agreement with new investors.
"When everything is completed, this place will be as grand as Rolland Garros in Paris or Flushing Meadows in New York," Sugeng Sarijadi, an executive of the center, said during the opening ceremony.
Each court costs between Rp 10,000 and Rp 22,000 (between $4.50 and $10) per hour to rent, depending on the time chosen. Ferry said the company has set the "prime time" at between 6 and 10 a.m.
KTC gives lessons to 17 selected teenage players under the tutelage of former national champion Tintus Arianto Wibowo. Ferry, a former official at the Indonesian Tennis Association, says KTC expects to produce future national athletes.
"We need to commit ourselves to the development of national tennis while also doing business," says Ferry. KTC is now grooming two leading junior players, Wukirasih Sawondari and Frans Wijaya.
Rasuna Club pledges to apply the same formula. Summers says Miller also has the job of scouting for talented junior players during his two-year posting in Indonesia. "We are trying to find them scholarships to learn tennis at Nick Bolletieri Tennis Academy's headquarter in Florida," Summers says.
Miller says Indonesians' enthusiasm towards tennis leads him to want to promote the sport outside Jakarta. "One club can't handle the fast growing interest," he says.
Ferry says grooming players won't mean much if the players lack experience in real matches. KTC has been organizing a weekend junior tournament every month as a testing ground for its young prodigies.
"A tournament is like a showroom where a factory stakes the quality of its products," says Ferry. The regular tournaments are expected to run twice a month next year.
The Kemayoran tennis complex was also the site of three international events highlighted by an exhibition match pitting Yayuk Basuki and Argentina's Gabriela Sabatini in September last year. (amd)