Tennis in Ireland is rich with history and stories waiting to be shared. For over 150 years, the sport has woven its way through Irish society, becoming a vibrant part of many communities across the island. Finding the time to tell the stories has certainly been a challenge, and we’re keen to rise to that challenge over the coming months and years.
At Tennis Ireland, we are fortunate to be guided and inspired by individuals who have devoted their lives to the sport. Among them is our President, Letty Lucas of Downshire Tennis Club, a true embodiment of tennis. Letty champions the sport at every level, from grassroots to high-performance, understanding the profound impact it can have on a person’s life. Her mission is to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, has the opportunity to experience the benefits of tennis.
Letty’s passion is shared by her husband, George Lucas (not that one!), and together, they have helped to build an extraordinary tennis community in their hometown of Hillsborough, Co. Down. Their work and dedication as volunteers has left an indelible mark on Irish tennis. Equally tennis continues to be a uniquely positive and enjoyable lifelong pursuit for the Lucas’.
It was no surprise, then, when George Lucas was awarded an MBE on New Year’s Eve 2024 for his outstanding contributions to tennis, as well as to sports administration and management. We had the privilege of sitting down with George and Letty to discuss this incredible honour and their unwavering commitment to the growth and development of tennis in Ireland.
Could you tell us about the moment you found out that you were being awarded the MBE, and what it means to you, personally, but also what it means to tennis in Ireland and Northern Ireland?
GL: We received notification about four weeks before the year end that I had been nominated for the MBE. You’re then required to keep it confidential until the announcement is made by the King on the 31st of December. It was a surprise and a really nice acknowledgment for me, for Letty and our family for the work we’ve all done together for many years in tennis, and other sports too. It’s also an acknowledgement of the work that has been done by Sport NI over the last eight years and an endorsement of what has been achieved.
LL: Keeping it quiet for a month was very exciting. We couldn’t tell our family, so it was nice for the two of us to just enjoy it. However, we’re both very aware that these things don’t come to individuals – the MBE is an acknowledgment to teamwork, because neither of us could have achieved what we have for tennis without the teams we work with. You do what do for the love of your sport, but you can’t do it alone, you have to have a good team around you. So, it’s not an individual award, it’s recognition of the sport and how an individual has led a team of people. Particularly for volunteers – no volunteer can work on their own, whether that’s in the club or a branch, it has to be a group of people working towards an agreed strategy that comes together as a team.
Keeping a secret like that for a month is tough! How did your family react to the news?
GL: Lots of banter, as you can imagine. I received hundreds of notes of goodwill and congratulations; people I worked with over the years have reached out. I’ve been hearing from people from various tennis clubs throughout Ulster and the rest of Ireland, so that’s been very nice, just to hear from people again.
LL: He’s underestimating the impact and the amount of people who reached out. We have three boys and three daughters-in-law, and all of them were so happy. One daughter-in-law runs a Pilates business, and she wrote a lovely accolade about him being a real representative of sport and also how fantastic he is a grandfather and father-in-law. It was just lovely, and that’s the sort of thing that matters. You hope people appreciate what you’re doing, but to have your daughter-in-law write something so lovely is a real joy.
Throughout your careers in tennis, what unique challenges or barriers have you come across for Irish tennis?
GL: I grew up beside the tennis club in Hillsborough and my father rented half the site form the club. There were two small courts, so I started playing when I was five, but I was always working on the land next door, helping with the pigs and turkeys and weeding. In those days, in the 50s, Ireland would have very much been a middle-class game, so my siblings and I would have been one of the first village children to get into the club. They eventually opened to the club up so that all children in the village could join, but I was very aware from an early age of the need to be inclusive. Inclusivity has been a theme in my career; I’ve always encouraged the community side of clubs and the development of tennis as a side project. Of course, if there is a player with high-performance potential, that is marvellous, and we need to keep developing those pathways. However, a large percentage of club members are not going on that pathway but can still enjoy a lifetime of fun in their club.
I always encouraged our own club, and then clubs across Ulster, to run programmes to integrate people at all levels. This means if you join a club and you have the potential to get picked for an Ulster or Irish team, you can do so, but there are also leagues in place for people who just want to play in their club. At Downshire Tennis Club (the Lucas’ Club) there are about 70 or 80 people who play leagues twice a year and at the end of the leagues we have a dinner to celebrate. This encourages people to keep coming and encourages others to sign up. It keeps the courts full.
We’ve also looked at developing Parks Tennis across Ulster. We worked on getting grants from Sport NI, started small, and after five years we had 3000 Parks’ participants.
LL: Looking at the skills of your members, outside of tennis, is also important. It’s very important that clubs develop their committees based on peoples’ skills. We encourage clubs to figure out what they need and develop their committee, one-by-one, on those needs. You don’t need to have a committee of ten for a club to be successful. If you have a large committee, but you don’t have a specific role for everyone on it, you’re going to start losing people. You can’t build a club based on one person’s interests; you can have someone incredibly passionate about Junior Tennis, but tennis is a game for life, so it’s important to have someone on the committee who’s passionate about Masters Tennis, too.
We’ve put emphasis, in Downshire, at building social groups around each level and this keeps people interested. There are several players in Ulster who are in their 90s and still playing weekly.
GL: It’s also worth noting that Letty and I met playing tennis 60 years ago! Back then we were heavily involved in a variety of different roles in our own club, but we knew we wanted it to grow. It went from 70 members to 700 members and became the largest tennis club in Ulster over a 20-year period. That worked because we moved away from the conventional committee structure and focused on a development plan. This is what helped us grow and maintain growth.
It’s important to break down barriers, and we can see that with how progressive Tennis Ireland has been regarding various disability programmes and the work being done for girls and women in the sport. Parks Tennis is then another model which has the ability to introduce people from all socio-economic backgrounds to tennis.
How does tennis play a role in fostering community in your experience?
LL: If you look at a potential community outreach programme, tennis starts in the schools. From there, you start to get the parents involved, and look at organising family days on court to allow people who either have never played or have put their rackets down in their adult years, to get to know the sport. It’s always important to remember that it’s not just people who travel 15 miles to the court that will build your club, it’s the families who live within walking distance, who may never have stepped onto a court before, who will help develop it. The more welcoming you are, the more of a community you can build.
GL: Building on what Letty said, one of our big developments in Hillsborough happened when Letty taught in the school. She would give an assembly on tennis encouraging people to come, and it grew from there.
We’ve also learned a lot from the GAA model. They actively encourage parents to volunteer from the moment they sign their child up. You go to drop your child off and suddenly find yourself picking up cones, or making the tea, and I think that’s an important community model to work from. This obviously stands to the GAA when it comes to things like fundraising, too. We’ve modelled it in Hillsborough in the sense that tennis is part of the school culture there, so it becomes part of the social fabric.
But it’s not just about schools, tennis is a sport that can be played well into your latter years. 120 members of our club are over 65, and you have to create a community that encourages people to stay on. I recently met Henry Young, a 101-year-old tennis player, and Leonard Staniska a 100-year-old tennis player. Leonard wanted to stay and fight in the war in Ukraine, but his granddaughter persuaded him to evacuate. She drove him 800 miles to the Polish border where they met a BBC producer, and this producer takes him to play at Masters tournaments around the world. The Irish Masters Team met Henry and Leonard at a tournament in Turkey last year where they both played. It’s truly remarkable.
If you could inspire one person today to take up a racket, what would you say to them?
GL: Tennis, in particular, is all about the people you meet and the friendships you make. There’s a physical and emotional benefit to playing tennis. There was a scientific study recently which stated that playing tennis can add 10 years to your life expectancy. The lovely thing about tennis is that each point is a contest, so you could lose three points on the trot but you have the ability to pick yourself up mentally and win that fourth point. You will ultimately find a level that suits you, whether you’re 14 or 44, and you’ll make amazing friendships along the way. I think of Dick McCarthy (St. Anne’s TC Waterford) and John O’Rourke (Fitzwilliam LTC, Dublin) as friends I made late into my career. We met on Irish Masters teams and have never lost touch. It’s the characters you meet at every level that makes tennis so important.
Tennis in Ireland is in a good place today thanks to the work of John Foley (Former CEO) and Kevin Quinn (Tennis Ireland CEO) and the platforms they’ve created to really drive the sport forward.
Finally, tell us a little more about the incredible work you have done with Sport NI over the last number of years.
GL: In October the UK Cultural Media and Sports Department released a paper which stated that for every £1 invested in sport, there’s a £3.91 return in health benefits. From the Sport NI perspective, we refined our investments to encourage the governing bodies to get their clubs to increase participation. At the time we started there were 295,000 participants across 80-odd governing bodies of sport. We have an aspiration of getting that number to 500,000 by 2027, and by the end of 2024 we were up to 434,000. So, we’ve increased almost 50% since we started eight years ago.
The other thing to highlight is that we are required to have available pathways to both GB and Ireland, or indeed Northern Ireland in some sports. Last year was the most successful year Sport NI has had in terms of Olympians with four gold medals for Northern Ireland athletes representing both Team Ireland and Team GB.
We also had incredible success at the Commonwealth Games in 2022 where we had 88 athletes across 16 sports. Ulster GAA has also had its most successful year in 2024, winning at all levels and Armagh bringing home Sam Maguire. Finally, in the Berlin Special Olympics, one third of the Irish athletes were from Northern Ireland. The investments we put in eight years ago, we are seeing the fruits of the labour now. I hope that gives you a flavour of the work that Sport NI does.