About Annabel Croft Tennis

The Annabel Croft Tennis Academy was founded in 2009 at the National Tennis Centre (NTC) in Roehampton. This programme is now in its 9^th year and offers coaching services to over 350 players on a weekly basis. These classes form a large part of what is also on offer at our academy resorts overseas, with ACTA coaching professionals using a number of drills and exercises both at home in the UK and for holiday guests in each resort.

Players coming to an Annabel Croft Tennis Academy can expect the following unique tennis features that will make their time on court both inspiring and valuable.

Smaller Groups, Accelerated Learning…

One of the key ingredients to the academy coaching programme is our emphasis on group coaching. ACTA offers a range of daily groups for children to participate in with the aim to keep the ratio of players to coach to a maximum of 4 players to 1 coach and for our camps, 6 players to 1 coach.

Juniors are encouraged to work around our coaching philosophy of “Movement & Repetition” which teaches player development through improving the relationship between footwork, ball striking and tactical decision making.

Smaller groups means more time hitting balls and more opportunity for feedback from the coach, something which really helps players improve quickly over a short space of time. Our coaches come armed with large baskets of balls too! – there is no shortage of opportunities to keep trying to perfect each footwork position or stroke.

Key Staff at ACTA...

Annabel Croft (Founder & Partner)

Former British No.1 and Junior Wimbledon Champion, Annabel is now perhaps best known for her regular appearances on Sky and Eurosport or for BBC Radio commentating on the ATP and WTA tour. Her constant presence at all the major tennis events make her a recognisable and knowledgeable figure in British tennis to both players and the public. Annabel founded ACTA in 2009 to try and plug a gap in coaching in SW London and raise the bar of what children could participate in on court by giving players a chance to sample in a range of drills that she enjoyed whilst on tour and has seen first hand from her many tennis engagements.

Mel Coleman (Founder & Partner)

Mel is Annabel's husband and a former Americas Cup sailor. Mel has enjoyed a successful career in the city before lending his support to set up and now run the operations for ACTA. Mel now controls a lot of the back office operations of the academy but has always had a passion for the game of tennis and views on tennis coaching having put his 3 children through various coaching programmes.