LTA launch ITF World Tennis Number in Great Britain

The ITF World Tennis Number has today been launched in Great Britain as the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), a key strategic partner in the development of the World Tennis Number, introduced the global rating for singles and doubles as the official rating system for all tennis players in Britain.

The new, inclusive, innovative and modern rating system has been designed to provide a significant boost to grassroots participation and recreational competition.

Tennis players with an existing rating will now receive their ITF World Tennis number with players of all levels across Great Britain having the opportunity to sign up to receive a Number and access a personalised Game zONe to identify evenly-matched opponents.

The ITF World Tennis Number provides a single global tennis rating for players of all ages, genders and abilities, creating a global community of tennis players and enabling more people at all levels to play and enjoy the sport. 135 national associations, from across six continents, are now signed up and sharing their match data as the first stage of the process towards launching to their players.

This means currently up to 75 million tennis players (86% of the global playing population) will have the opportunity to gain an ITF World Tennis Number as more nations join Great Britain, Singapore, Ireland, Lithuania and Mexico in launching the platform to their players.

ITF President, David Haggerty said: “The ITF is delighted to reach this important milestone with the ITF World Tennis Number now operating in such a key tennis market, Great Britain. We will continue to work closely with our member nations to unlock the game-changing potential of this innovative platform, creating the world’s largest community of tennis players and collectively working towards our goal of 120 million players by 2030.”

LTA CEO, Scott Lloyd said: “It is great for the LTA to have played a leading role in the development of the ITF World Tennis Number and to see so many national associations around the world signing up to be part of it. For us, introducing the World Tennis Number is key part of what we are doing to grow the sport in Britain and open tennis up to more people. We know that one of the barriers to more people playing tennis is finding someone of a similar ability to play and compete against, which will now become easier to do. This forms part of a series of improvements we are implementing to make competitions more relevant, accessible, welcoming and enjoyable for all players – something that is crucial to retaining players of all ages and abilities in our sport.”