Many were the jibes when Boris Johnson announced that he was ‘thrilled’ to be back on the tennis court in 2021 as lockdown restrictions eased. ‘Bloody posho poncing about on a tennis court’ or ‘how typical’ were probably some of them. Sir Keir, naturally, made sure that he was photographed on a football pitch on the same day. But here’s the thing: these days, playing tennis isn’t posh. Yes, chins love to watch it and play it – helped by tennis courts of their own – but the playing of tennis has become democratised. Reports of next-gen community tennis clubs springing up all over the country have become widespread, according to the Financial Times.

And yet tennis has always had a class problem. Long viewed as a pastime solely for the aristocracy and middle classes, tennis has good reason to be associated with the elite: think ice cubes rattling away in the clubhouse, membership at vast prices, immaculate tennis whites, lots of free time during the day. It’s hardly surprising that as a sport it produces feelings of revolutionary ire in some people.

To add to this, the major tennis tournaments played in this country – Queen’s and Wimbledon – are profitable because they play........

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