What it means to Win an LTA Award – Clive Pickering

Clive Pickering, Tennis Development Co-ordinator at Imperial College London, and joint winner of University of the Year at the Middlesex LTA Awards, talks to us about the effect the Award has on the work he is involved with.

Clive had only been in post six months when Imperial won the Award so it’s been a busy year for him as we found out.

Q. Six months on, what does winning the award mean to you now?

Clive: Immense pride. I’ve been at Imperial a year now, but when I won the award, it was around March, so I was only seven months into a new role for both me and Imperial. So I was chuffed because it shows that all the hard work that my boss Nick and I have been doing is paying off. All part of that master plan to help put Imperial on the tennis map!

Q. Has winning the award opened up any new opportunities or experiences for you?

Clive: No real opportunities or experiences. As you know, it was a joint award with King’s. Imperial, King’s and UCL are all top London tennis universities and it’s all about working together, networking and sharing best practice.

Q. Has it opened any big doors?

Clive: Probably not BIG doors. But it has opened up my network, and it was a proud evening to go along to the Presidents Suite at Queens and meet Roger Taylor, get a signed copy of his book and meet Marcus Butland. Plus,the chance to meet different people from the County, like I do when I attend any Middlesex County meeting.

Personally, it’s quite nice because the award went on my end of year work review and also added to my CV. Any award of this type is prestigious. I’m looking to winning it again, so this is just the beginning!

Q. What has been your proudest moment since receiving the award?

Clive: It’s my job to get as students and staff into tennis as possible. Obviously, winning the award is good. But, for me, I’ve got bigger aspirations. It’d be nice to win the National LTA University of the Year. But I appreciate there’s a of a lot of competition there. It’s tough because Imperial is not a sports college/ university. However, I want to get as many people into tennis as possible, which covers BUCS competition players down to complete beginners. But also includes disability tennis and tennis for wellbeing and mental health.

We do have challenges like we don’t have any tennis courts on campus, unlike some of the other universities that are outside of London, but I like the challenge!

Yeah. Okay. So, where do you, where do you guys play then?

Clive: A number of different venues. BUCS matches are at Westway, where there’s indoor courts and is also used for first team training. Other sites include Queen’s indoor courts, Ravenscourt Park, Gunnersbury and the new courts at the Linford Christie Stadium. We also have a sports site at Harlington, which is Heathrow.

Q. Have you noticed any changes in how people view or support your work since winning?

Clive: I like to the throw it into conversations when the time is right! My sports department and leadership team were fairly impressed.

Q. What advice would you give to someone thinking about putting themselves forward for an award?

Clive: So, I’d say, and this is a quote from my time in banking “Do the HOW and the WHAT will come”

And what I mean by that is keep putting it out there, keep working hard, keep rolling the dice, seeing what works, what doesn’t work. And the more stuff you do, the more you’ll get your name out there and your tennis programmes/ work will grow.

Q. And Clive, what kind of proportion have you got, male, female?

Clive: Oh, that’s a good question.

Q. Do you think it’s like half and half or more kind of 70-80 towards the guys?

Clive: We have more Male BUCS Tems than we do Ladies, so I’d say the split is around 60/40.

However, to address imbalances, I’ve helped put on Imperial events like “Girls’ Night In” which is basically women only, The format is Red Ball Tennis in conjunction with Badminton, Pickleball and Table Tennis. So, a taste of everything plus the gym and other classes are open.

Q. Looking ahead, what’s next for you and what are you hoping to achieve?

Clive: I’ve pretty much mapped out my Calendar of activities for the next year. A big focus is Red Ball Tennis and the recruitment of LTA activators to run Free Park Tennis. The LTA are looking at the student workforce to then help run the Free Park Tennis sessions. I’m trained to train up activators, and I’ve run a few courses already for the LTA externally.

Hopefully, after the Freshers Fairs, I’ll get a lot of interested students sign up, so I can run an in-house course. Then I can deploy those students, probably in Q1 2027, to places like the Linford Christie Stadium, in conjunction with Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Also, the Royal Parks as well. They run facilities at Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, and beyond.

So, that’s one of my big focusses. In addition to helping to support Imperial Padel. It’s very much a growing sport and the Imperial Padel Society had c200 people in attendance at their recent open/ trials day!

Clive, are they interested in it because it’s kind of a short form of tennis? It doesn’t take a whole heap of time or it’s easy to drop in and drop out?

Clive: I think just that. When I’ve taught my friends how to play recently, within 10 minutes they were hooked. You don’t have to worry about the technicality of the serve plus you’ve got the back and side walls to help. It’s easy to learn but hard to master!

Another focus is working with tennis charities. So, the Queen’s Club Foundation (QCF) and Bright Ideas for Tennis.

When I can get activators trained up, I can then supply them to the QCF for helping with community events.

Once successful quaified as an Activator level, that can potentially lead to a level one qualification. I hope to put on level one courses with our course provider WimX, at Ethos, which is my sports centre on Campus.

Bright Ideas for Tennis are also always looking for help, especially with their 24-hour tennis marathon in February.