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Hire out your courts, manage group coaching and individual lessons, track player progress, and run everything from mini tennis red to adult programmes.
AMES gives coaches and administrators one view across your courts and coaching. Set up mini tennis stages and adult levels in your own words, hire out courts with member and casual rates and floodlight add-ons, and run coaching courses, camps and memberships, whether you are a two-court community club or a larger venue with indoor courts.
UK Governing Body
Lawn Tennis Association (LTA)
Typical Pricing
£8-£18 per lesson
Class Size
4-8 students
Coaching sessions, social play, match fixtures and private bookings all compete for court time, and preventing clashes across several courts is a daily struggle. Member social bookings overlap with coaching blocks in peak evening hours, and inter-club fixtures need dedicated courts that displace regular sessions. Floodlit courts are in short supply in autumn and winter, when demand for evening play far exceeds what is available. Surfaces add their own constraints: clay courts need rest and maintenance between heavy use, while hard courts and artificial grass wear differently. Without one system that knows which courts are free and who has priority, administrators spend hours each week resolving disputes that could have been prevented at the point of booking.
Keeping coaching programmes in step with the mini tennis stages (red, orange, green, yellow) and tracking which ball colour each child should be on adds admin to every session. Moving from red through orange and green to full yellow is not just about age: it depends on court coverage, rally consistency and tactical awareness at each level, so coaches need to assess players regularly and consistently. Clubs also run different programme types for different groups of players, each with its own funding and reporting. Coach accreditation needs to match the programmes each coach delivers. Without a clear record of which stage each player is on and why, coaching becomes inconsistent and parents are left guessing.
Outdoor sessions get rained off regularly, and rescheduling groups, telling parents and arranging make-up sessions burns hours in peak season. Surfaces behave differently in the wet: clay courts become unplayable sooner and take longer to dry, while artificial grass may stay playable in light drizzle. When outdoor courts close, covered courts become contested between coaching groups, league matches and social players. Demand shifts indoors through the winter months, creating a bottleneck that needs planning well ahead. A long spell of bad weather can mean cancelling many sessions across several coaching groups, each with different payment arrangements and make-up entitlements.
Membership surges in summer and drops in winter, so forecasting court demand, managing variable income and encouraging year-round play needs data many clubs do not have. Summer camps put pressure on court availability in the school holidays, when coaching, member play and camps all compete for the same courts. Winter coaching needs promoting to keep income steady, yet many clubs struggle to identify lapsed summer members before they drift away. Off-peak pricing can fill quiet midweek courts, but managing different rates across courts, times and membership types is a spreadsheet nightmare. Members moving from junior to adult or from summer-only to year-round need their billing and booking rights changed correctly.
British weather and outdoor tennis have an uneasy relationship. Rain, frost, and high winds can wipe out entire coaching sessions, and how your club handles cancellations and rescheduling has a direct impact on member satisfaction, coach income, and programme continuity. This guide covers surface-specific policies, decision-making protocols, and make-up session management.
Full coaching groups are a sign of success, but only if you handle the overflow well. A family turned away without a clear waitlist process is a family that goes to a competitor. A child who misses sessions without a make-up option is a family that questions the value of their coaching fees. This guide covers practical systems for waitlists, make-up sessions, and group rebalancing.
Court scheduling is the operational backbone of every tennis club. Get it right and your courts are full, your coaches are productive, your members are happy, and your surfaces last longer. Get it wrong and you waste capacity, damage courts, frustrate members, and lose revenue. This guide covers the principles and practicalities of smart court scheduling.
Tennis participation in Britain follows a sharp seasonal curve. Wimbledon drives a summer surge, darker evenings trigger a winter drop-off, and clubs that do not plan for these fluctuations end up with overcrowded courts in July and empty ones in January. This guide covers practical strategies for smoothing the curve and retaining members year-round.
Tracking player development is one of the most valuable services a tennis club can offer. Parents want to see their child progressing. Adult improvers want evidence they are getting better. Coaches need data to plan sessions and group players appropriately. Yet many clubs still rely on coaches' memories and informal assessments. This guide covers how to build a structured development tracking system.
A parent and player portal transforms the relationship between your tennis club and its members. Instead of relying on coaches to relay information at the end of sessions, paper notices pinned to a board, and WhatsApp groups that quickly become chaotic, a portal gives every family a single place to see everything that matters. This guide covers what to include and how to make it genuinely useful.
The LTA sets the framework for how tennis is taught and developed in Britain. Aligning your coaching programme with LTA standards is not just about compliance; it ensures your players progress through a proven pathway and your club can access LTA funding, resources, and recognition. This guide covers mini tennis stages, youth programme requirements, and quality audit preparation.
Court booking conflicts are one of the most common sources of friction in tennis clubs. When coaching programmes, social sessions, league matches, and court hire all compete for the same surfaces, disputes are inevitable unless you have clear systems in place. This guide covers priority frameworks, surface-specific rules, floodlight management, and dispute resolution.
A tennis club is only as good as its coaches and its courts. If your coaches' qualifications lapse, your insurance may be void. If your courts deteriorate, members leave. If your equipment goes missing, sessions suffer. Yet many clubs manage these critical assets with spreadsheets, memory, and good intentions. This guide covers structured approaches to coach and facility management.
Tennis clubs handle an unusually wide variety of payment types: annual memberships, coaching blocks, individual court bookings, tournament entry fees, guest fees, and floodlight surcharges. Managing these manually with spreadsheets, bank transfers, and envelope collections is a recipe for cash flow problems and administrative burnout. This guide covers how to automate every payment stream in your club.
Starting a tennis coaching business in the UK requires the right qualifications, access to courts, and a clear plan for building a programme that keeps players coming back. This guide covers everything from LTA accreditation to pricing your sessions profitably.
With AMES facility hire, members and visitors book courts online in AMES Connect, and every booking is checked against one court sheet, so the same court cannot be booked twice. Set member and casual rates, add-on charges such as floodlights, block bookings for regular groups, and closures for maintenance. Coaching sessions sit on the same timetable, so the office can see coaching and court hire together.
Set up mini tennis stages and adult levels as levels with the skills for each, in your club's own words. Coaches record skills and notes for each player in AMES Teach, and players and parents see the current stage, the next one and the badges earned in AMES Connect. The dashboard highlights players who may be due to move up a stage.
Collect term course and membership fees by GoCardless Direct Debit, and court hire, pay-and-play and camp payments by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay through AMES Pay. Members with an active membership get the member rate for court hire automatically, family and sibling discounts follow the rules you set, and failed payments are retried automatically with the payer told.
AMES Connect gives players and parents their coaching schedule, court bookings, payments, receipts, progress and messages in one app. When sessions are rained off, the cancellation wizard tells every affected family by email or SMS, and noticeboard posts keep members up to date on club news and events.
Each coaching group has a capacity, full groups offer the waiting list, and a freed place is offered to the next player automatically with a time limit to accept. When a player reports an absence, the session can return a credit under your rules, and the family books a make-up session with space in it themselves in AMES Connect.
Coaches take the register in AMES Teach with a tap for each player, and attendance lands on the player's record straight away. Record coaches' qualifications, DBS checks and first aid with expiry dates, require them for the sessions that need them, and let coaches clock in, see their shifts and pick up open shifts from their phone.
See how AMES can automate bookings, payments, and communication for your tennis business.
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