According to Gilles Vieille Marchiset (professor of the universities in Strasbourg), the democratization of tennis is relative because today the tennis schools present in majority of the members with the more favored social profiles. Today, despite actions such as the creation of the association "Fête le mur" in 1996 (designed to develop tennis for young people from neighborhoods and popular backgrounds) by Yannick Noah, the process of social protectionism seems to continue in clubs of tennis.

Today sport is presented as a vector of social integration, so tennis is a means of enabling young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods and the working class to integrate with young people from different social backgrounds. Yannick Noah created this association for this purpose and to break the "walls" that separate young people from different social backgrounds.

Unfortunately the link with the tennis clubs remains difficult to organize. In addition, there are still many obstacles to the integration of disadvantaged youth into tennis schools. For these young people tennis is represented by the common idea that it is an elitist sport and for those practicing in tennis schools, seeing newcomers come with different norms and values ​​is hard to accept. They see this experience as an evil eye. The only possible solution is that all these young people come together around their common passion that is tennis, but for that they would have to pass over their prejudices. To achieve this, new employees able to mediate between these two worlds seem necessary. But at the moment nothing of the kind has been put in place in tennis.

Today the social environment is less important than before because many sporting practices such as tennis have spread and are open to social classes formerly excluded.

However this democratization is relative, the social profiles represented in the tennis clubs prove it. Moreover, in club sport, there is still a significant divide between women of different social status.

Nicolas Zebbar

Graduated from a Masters in sports management and passionate about tennis, I carried out a study on the development of women's tennis. Practicing this sport for twenty years and today manager of my club (TC Morlaàs in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques), I am always on the lookout for new ideas aimed at improving the practice environment for members. I am therefore delighted to be able to share this work.

On the same subject