ERSA Pro Stringer Issue 5 - 2018 prostringer5-18 web | Page 18

www.ersa-stringers.com INDUSTRY NEWS Patrick Mouratoglou to headline Tennis Europe Coaches Conference Photo: Patrick Mouratoglou & Serena Williams at the Mouratoglou Academy Tennis Europe has announced that the French Tennis Federation will host the 2018 Tennis Europe Coaches Conference at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy in Biot during the weekend of 18-21 October. The theme of this year’s conference will be ‘Women’s Tennis’. The keynote speaker will be one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject; Patrick Mouratoglou, coach of the former world #1 and 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams. Mouratoglou is the founder of the eponymous academy, which has served as a training base for players including Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Grigor Dimitrov, as well as many of the Tennis Europe Junior Tour’s leading players. Both recently- crowned Roland Garros junior champions – Cori Gauff and Chun Hsin Cheng – are current students of the academy. Further speakers, and the full programme will be announced in the near future. The Tennis Europe Coaches Conference is targeted to technical direc- tors and Fed Cup coaches from Tennis Europe’s 50 constituent nation- al tennis associations. This year’s event will also accept 100 additional entries on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to the approval of their national association of the coaches concerned. Ideally, coaches should be working with elite girls and women, and/or national teams. Some fast facts on Wimbledon for the Industry Each Championship, the AELTC commission an official Equipment Census of equipment, apparel and shoes used by all players at the tournament including all singles, doubles, wheelchair, boys, girls and veterans. This is the only tournament in the calendar year where this is completed officially in full. In 2017 Wilson with 175 racquets in play regained the Number 1 racquet in play from Babolat who was the leading racquet in 2016. There was the first ‘draw’ between the brands with the equal number of racquets in use in 2015. In 2017, Head also grew with over 6% more racquets in play, and Yonex was the fastest growing brand with 17 additional racquets and also had the most Champions using its brand with 7. With many players changing to specialist grass shoes for the UK based grass-court season, Nike continues to win the count at Wimbledon and in 2017 had just over 25% of players choosing their shoes, with Adidas and Lotto in second and third place – but the fastest growing shoe brand at The Championships in 2017 was Mizuno who have grown from no shoes in play in 2014 to having 57 players in 2017. What 2018 will reveal will be analysed by SPORTS MARKETING SURVEYS INC. who will be undertaking the thirty–third official Wimbledon Equipment Census.