JBTA - JAPAN BEACH TENNIS ASSOCIATION Official Site

Comment by President

I have been giving my life to tennis and tennis business by following the national project "Sports for All," that aims nation's health, sports as a lifetime, and sports development.

As you know, tennis is played all over the world. It also has a long history in Japan, and is played by most of the popularity. Thus, I have believed that tennis is our national sport.
However, in reality, despite the majority population, the media has been paying less attention to tennis players.

It was 15 years ago, my friend and I were having fun playing volley-volley, just like playing catch. We went to the beach to play on the sand. That's how I reached the idea of beach tennis.
Years have passed since I came up with beach tennis, but finally I produced the first beach tennis tournament at Atami Sun Beach on September 14, 15, 2008. This was the first tournament in Asia with prize money 1,000,000 yen.
Beforehand, I heard about Beach Tennis USA (BTUSA) that has been producing beach tennis events in the States. President Jim Lorenzo of BTUSA helped us with our first event in Atami. Since then, we established a partnership. Our goal is to unify beach tennis organization in the world as one, in order to make beach tennis an official sport in the Olympics.
As a result, playing tennis casually on the sand with music became a hot topic to the media. Beach tennis was introduced on magazines/articles, newspapers, and broadcasted by TV networks such as NHK as a "Tennis Revolution" or as a "Revolutionary Sport ."

10 tournaments are held this year, 2009. At the same time, I decided to have the players and staffs all together to to clean the beach before the game. I call it " Beach Clean" to maintain the beautiful beach. Finally, going back to the National project "Sports for All," I strongly hope that beach tennis would contribute as a lifetime sport, health, and especially grow as a major entertainment sport like tennis.