The Tennis Hampshire Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Sound the disappointment klaxon, all 12 Apsley league fixtures were binned off again this week as Rule 6ii was invoked again by the league. We’re not even half way through the season, and already there are 32 fixtures to reschedule and hotter weeks ahead.  With the league making it clear that there will be no opportunity to revise the rule, get ready for more disappointments to co...

Send us Fan Mail The Apsley League administrators called in their new rule on super heat for the first time on June 27th, leaving plenty of tennis players fuming as 18 fixtures were cancelled. Hundreds of players up and down the county were left adrift.  The weather on the day wasn’t even that bad, so we ask… do the rules need an emergency change? We make the case for and against change, and then...

Send us Fan Mail Week 12 of the summer season delivered rebirths and meltdowns among Hampshire’s tennis clubs.  Winchester are a new club under the leadership of a refreshed captaining structure. No longer the butt of our jokes on the pod, Winchester A showed what they can do when they visited Twyford A.  Winchester Captain Kevin Harris joins us to talk about how the new captains have turned thing...

Send us Fan Mail It’s a full weekend ahead for clubs in the Southampton LTA’s Apsley League, with 15 fixtures across all four divisions.  Robin Ellison and Dave Ernsberger explore the top four fixtures from either side of the Solent this weekend. It’s Winchester’s Super Day, including a visit to Dave’s Twyford, can they keep up their blistering form? And a rare David Lloyd Apsley derby is in store...

Send us Fan Mail Milford Tennis made a big splash at the 2026 Hampshire & Isle of Wight tennis awards, leading us to wonder if they are on the ride in Hampshire. Better known for playing in the East Dorset leagues, can we encourage one of Hampshire’s finest clubs to give our own leagues a proper go? A hat trick of awards, their own seniors tourney and plum position in the New Forest makes us t...

Send us Fan Mail Summer has only just started but one of the biggest showdowns hits in the Apsley League’s Premier Division, as Warsash head to Thornden to find out if THIS is the year that they take back the biggest prize in county inter-club tennis.  Robin Ellison has reinvented himself since our Solent Cup episodes, and returns to the show as a tent pole of the podcast's growing coverage....

Send us Fan Mail Only five weeks into the season, a summer-defining moment has arrived for two teams in the Apsley League’s Group of Death. Newbies Wellow B take on surprise package David Lloyd West End B, and this fixture gets the questions flying. Who will show up for David Lloyd? Is this the time to regulate squad selections? And what would Tom do if he was Captain Alexandra Dukes? Tom spent qu...

Send us Fan Mail This week we take a closer look at the National Tennis League, thanks to listener feedback from Riverside that we’ve been missing a trick there. Tom has been getting quite expert on how the higher levels of tennis work in NCL, and he shares his insights on the national, regional and county levels of the NCL.  Warsash and Thornden are clashing in the Hampshire NCL county level, jus...

Send us Fan Mail The Apsley fixtures are flowing now!  Guest host and Twyford B team captain Rob Ernsberger helps Dave dissect the best of the weekend action to come across all five divisions. Along the way Rob shares his goals for Twyford B this season, and the three teams in Division Two that he fears the most this summer.  Before that, we discuss listener feedback from another Apsley captain, A...

Send us Fan Mail Week Two of the Apsley League brought the first weekend of fixtures with all five divisions involved for the first time this summer. So far Dave and Tom’s top picks for the summer are all off to winning starts - with some very big wins for some of them.  Two 8-0 shellackings in Premier show us that it will very likely be a season of “haves” and “have nots” at the elite level of pl...

Send us Fan Mail Summer is here. At last! We know because the Apsley tennis season is now underway. A well-endowed Division Four has already started playing its fixtures. With a ponderous ten teams - including three new entrants and two teams relegated from last summer’s Division Three,  Div Four is shaping up as Hampshire tennis’ Group of Death. As Dave’s natural hunting ground, it looks like the...

Send us Fan Mail We close our winter coverage with a courtside interview with Michael Isaacs, the chair of the Portsmouth & District LTA. Michael has led a rejuvenation of inter-club tennis in the Portsmouth area for more than 15 years, helping re-establisb a league that is now fully competitive with every district in Hampshire.  We talk about Michael’s journey to become chair, why it is that...

Send us Fan Mail The battle for the 2026 Solent Cup left honours split between Southampton and Portsmouth. Gate-crashers Riverside and winter-warriors Warsash took home the top winter prize in south coast inter-club tennis.  Dave Ernsberger & Robin Ellison were on site for six hours of top class tennis. Even furious wind and a biting chill couldn’t stop some top tennis being played.  In this e...

Send us Fan Mail Winter is SO over! That leaves us with just one question to be answered for the season: are the very best teams on the South Coast from the Southampton LTA or the Portsmouth & District LTA? Dave Ernsberger & Robin Ellison preview Winchester v Warsash and Court X v Salisbury, as the titans of Hampshire winter tennis get ready to meet at Thornden on April 11th. We also discu...

Send us Fan Mail We're back with another Quick Hit, this time looking at the five fixtures that will shape the Southampton LTA's winter leagues.  Some of the men's divisions (we're looking at you, five and six!) are in a bit of a shambolic state, so instead we focus on the divisions that got their acts together, and where relegations, promotions and championships will be decide...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Episode 2.40, where we revisit the Portsmouth & District LTA — with a proper guide this time! Robin Ellison cut his teeth with Southsea and moved on to take on captaining roles with Court X. Along the way, he started a weekly news report on tennis in Portsmouth & District, which makes him an ideal addition to the show.  Who are the big dogs in Portsmouth tennis?...

Send us Fan Mail It's a Quick Hit with Dave this week as we look at the results from the past two weeks across the Southampton LTA's Mixed Doubles, Ladies Doubles and Men's Doubles divisions.  First though we check in on some Hampshire tennis news. The Apsley League dates are beginning to appear online, which means all you captains out there need to start dusting off your tennis rol...

Send us Fan Mail Kingsgate and Wellow are clubs on the march across the winter and summer leagues, and it turns out that they are both on the cusp of promotion to Hampshire’s elite first division in the Southampton LTA’s Winter Ladies Doubles league.  They are two of only four teams that still have perfect winning records as we head into the business end of the winter, but that can’t last for long...

Send us Fan Mail Riverside and Thornden are slugging it out in the Winter Mens Doubles leagues, taking half of all the top spots across the Southampton LTA’s seven divisions.  Riverside hold the edge on ultimate honours right now, but how will things end? It’s still too close to call.  Before we get to that, Tom offers his defence for rough & smooth racquet calls, and we cover the latest news...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the show we take a look at how the Southampton LTA's Winter Mixed Doubles leagues are stacking up as players get ready to restart all the action after the Christmas & New Year break.  Rob Ernsberger, captain of Twyford Mixed, joins us to talk about life in Division Two for the team that has secured back-to-back-to-back promotions.  But first, Rob & Dave c...

Send us Fan Mail This week we welcome to the show Mat Johnstone, Hampshire tennis native and the UK’s Number One PST3 Para-Standing Tennis player. Mat shares his journey from an up-and-coming tennis junior at Warsash to top Para-Standing Tennis player with an eye on the World Top Ten rankings for 2026. Mat shares his early experiences in tennis, the life-changing impact of meningitis at 17, and hi...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the show Richard Cutler, Charity Director and Councillor at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Tennis, the county authority for tennis that brings rhyme and reason to the way tennis functions across the county. Have we had a better opportunity so far to better understand how tennis works in Hampshire than this interview? I don’t think so! Richard was well prepared for this o...

Send us Fan Mail We’re back from travels just in time to do our final Southampton LTA winter leagues check in before the end of the year.  This time we take a look through ladies doubles where 33 teams representing 21 clubs are midway through the season across five divisions. There are a few surprises up and down the divisions, with the biggest of them all being the relative performance of last ye...

Send us Fan Mail We recreate the magic (or the tedium, if you’re of that persuasion) of the big end of year league AGMs, not least for Tom’s benefit since family duty called him away. Would things have ended differently if he'd been there?  Before the AGM reviews, we discuss the emergence of a Hampshire tennis player in the professional world tour - will 2026 be the year that Ringwood’s Toby...

Send us Fan Mail We’re back in Hampshire this week, where Annual General Meetings are in full swing at clubs around the county. We’re excited for the Southampton LTA and Apsley AGMs set for December 3rd. Will anyone run against the incumbents for leadership positions? And what happened to Tom’s committee position, which he was voted into last year? He’s not a happy chappy.  Before that, there’s a...