As tennis clubs throughout Ireland opened their doors for the first time in months, relief was tempered with an air of uncertainty over the future today.
Tennis, golf and athletics clubs were all able to reopen on Monday as part of the Phase One of the government roadmap to ease Covid-19 restrictions.
Operating under new strict criteria, members living within 5km of their clubs were able to return to the tennis courts on a recreational basis.
With new court booking systems, staggered times put in place, and many clubs operating a one-way system around their facilities, this was not a return to normality.
While coaches could return to work on a restricted basis, all indoor courts, shops, clubhouses and locker rooms remained closed, with players arriving ready to go with their tennis gear.
Nevertheless there was a real sense of joy among members to get back on court, even with all the changes, as Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club manager Maria Kilkelly explained.
"Somebody described it as kind of like Christmas Day and they couldn't sleep last night with the thoughts of coming down, but today has been very normal and very relaxed with everyone delighted to be here.
"We've got very direct protocols from our governing body and every club is doing it. We've just set up online bookings which we didn’t have before so that allows for tracking and tracing so we know who has been in the club.
"We’ve closed our clubhouse, so we’ve had to open up a new access point for people in and out and set-up a one-way traffic system where it wouldn’t really have been designed for that."
It was a similar situation in Shankill Tennis club, with all available slots for members booked from the moment the doors opened to closing time.
"I was there myself at 9am and it was great just to get the club open and the courts in use again," club chairperson Derek Adams told RTÉ Sport.
"The courts are fully booked over the course of the day from 9am this morning to 9pm this evening.
"We’ve had a lot of guidelines and protocols which were brought about in discussion with government and we’ve had to follow and implement those.
"All gates are open, we’ve introduced a one-way system so people arrive and depart from the club at different entrances and exits, all designed to minimise potential crossover and maintain social distancing."
However, while the reopening went smoothly, clubs remain without some vital revenue streams, and after two months of enforced closure, that impact is being felt.
"We have three indoor tennis courts which are going to remain closed until Phase 3 of the reopening plan, we hope," Adams said.
"Members pay to play indoors, so that source of income has stopped and any income from group coaching has stopped."
Normal tennis club operations, such as summer camps and membership recruitment drives have been put on hold and much of the social aspect remains absent as bars and clubhouses are closed, with the bare basics of the clubs functioning.
"This would be a peak recruitment time for us in terms of attracting new members," Lansdowne manager Kilkelly said.
"We’d normally have summer camps, we’ve missed Easter camps and would have camps booked out for the summer.
"There’s no coaching, we have a full-time coach and we just don’t have jobs for some people which would have been here before because the clubhouse is closed.
"It’s a very different facility we’re running here now, it’s tennis courts and it’s not the club as the members would have usually known it."
In one of Dublin's biggest clubs, Templeogue Tennis club, it was all hands to the pump with members and volunteers stepping in to ensure that the reopening ran smoothly.
Club president Paul Bennett was pleased with how well the return went, but admitted that while it is a boon to have tennis back, it will be some time before the social aspect of the club returns to normal.
"People came in this morning and they were finding their feet along with us," he said.
"We were doing dry runs over the weekend but there’s nothing better than the real thing to show you what needs to be done.
"We have a membership of about 1,200 and our playing membership would be quite high too. Whereas usually we would have had retirees and ladies and men’s groups on Monday and Tuesday mornings, there was a group mix of people there this morning. People who weren’t in work or working from home and cut a bit of time to come out and play tennis, but we’re fully booked.
"We have a very successful social side here, so from bar revenue we’d miss that and it’s very difficult for any club to survive with just their subs. Our bar would have subsidised a lot of what we’re doing but our outlay during the lockdown, well there was no outlay such.
"I think our club is in a good position, even our bar when it’s up and running, it’s totally volunteer. We’ve 60 volunteers who do one shift a month, so we have a huge ethos that it is our club and we all get stuck in.
"The people of the executive committee are second to none and the work they’ve done is just Trojan. The attention to detail they’ve put in to try and keep people safe is just excellent."
