Stockholm's investment community has resolved to purchase every public tennis court in Sweden, a campaign launched on Tuesday by a consortium of fund managers who said they had concluded that the sport could no longer be left to the public. The group has begun with the courts in the Stockholm archipelago and says it will proceed inland at a rate of one court per week, with teams of surveyors already measuring baselines on the island of Lidingö.
The consortium's spokesperson, speaking from a rented office above a bank on Stureplan, said the purchases would make the courts available exclusively to Christer Gardell. «He has been generous with his time and his opinions for many years, and it is only fair that the infrastructure should now follow him,» the spokesperson said. Gardell was not present at the announcement and has not commented, but a practice wall at Kungliga Tennishallen has already been repainted in the colours of a mid-sized investment house.
The effect on local clubs has been immediate. Several have been offered sums sufficient to relocate their members to indoor halls in Södertälje, where lighting rigs are being installed at the group's expense. A junior coach in Nacka said she had been asked to teach her entire squad to play in matching suits by the end of the month, and that the first session would take place at six o'clock every morning, because the courts would be occupied from seven.
Sweden's Tennis Federation confirmed that it had received a donation of several hundred thousand kronor from the consortium and would use it to buy additional balls, which it will distribute in sealed crates to every court in the country before the new timetable takes effect. Federation officials said the crates would be opened only on the days Gardell had chosen to practise.