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Originally Posted by demonrail666
It's true that tennis in the uk is an overwhelmingly middle class sport.
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It isn't, at all. I used to play at county level (girls and booze put paid to that) and it's only true that tennis is a middle-class sport in middle-class areas. I'm not from a middle-class area so joining a tennis club wasn't a problem, or exorbitantly expensive. The better clubs are more expensive, but there's always been grants and so on available to those from poorer backgrounds.
Having said that, you're in London, where tennis clubs are largely the domain of the middle-class (and often the toffier side of that). But that's far from the case across the country.
What is true is that there's a perception that tennis is middle-class, but that's like the perception of classical music, which is overwhelmingly cheaper than the more 'prole-friendly' rock concert.
I think the reason we're shit at tennis is because there isn't really the room in the curriculum to support it as one of our national sports. The US funds plenty of academies to pick up and support people from poorer backgrounds. The finances of this don't really concern me, but it does mean that as a sporting culture they do better than us in a great many sports. I used to know some semi-professional gymnasts, and they've all kicked it on the head because it's just impossible to finance in this country. There's a total of about £3.50 to support gymnasts in this country, and it's just not tenable for the majority of people. This is pretty much true of tennis as well, but there's a world of (financial) difference between the average person joining a tennis club and the average person getting support to become professional.