Tennis Industry News

When Cardio Tennis was created in 2005, one of the first sites to sign on  was the Four Seasons Racquet Club in Wilton, CT. “It’s a great program,” says Tennis Director Greg Moran, who also is a member of the Cardio Tennis National Speakers Team. “People love it. With a good, enthusiastic person running the program, it really does well.”

Four Seasons, which has 11 indoor and 13 outdoor Har-Tru courts, offers at least two Cardio Tennis classes a week, and they’re all well-attended. Moran says the club will likely start a Cardio Tennis Kids program in the future.

“Cardio Tennis has gotten people more pumped up about tennis, and many start taking lessons in addition to doing Cardio,” he says. “Quite a few of our CT participants are avid players—they do Cardio Tennis rather than going to a gym because they say it’s a much more enjoyable way to work out. But there are also quite a few new faces in the classes. It definitely gives people the tennis bug.”

Moran says a lot of the Cardio success at Four Seasons is due to the enthusiasm and planning put into the program by pros Ritush Venugopal and Kelley Moran. “Kelley spends an hour or so putting together the lesson plan, downloading the music,” he says. “She’ll do a different music theme each week. For instance, one week it was the Beatles music, another was Michael Jackson songs. Recently she did movie themes for the Academy Awards. You know it’s a good thing when people doing Cardio are singing the songs.”

Cardio also is great for the pros, says Moran, because it encourages them to try to start new programs. “Pros can get in their comfort zone and then get into a rut, but once they get involved in Cardio Tennis, it seems to re-energize them,” he says.

For players, adds Moran, they seem to respond because CT has helped them improve their games. “The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that it’s given people the confidence to be able to run for shots,” he says. “You start to see the second and third efforts that weren’t there before. So they get fit and they play better. It’s a great way to get people on the court and not have them feel self-conscious.”