Tennis for Body & Mind - 3 Benefits for Young Women

Ask anyone who plays tennis regularly and they'll tell you the same thing: it's about far more than hitting a ball over a net. For girls and young women, recreational tennis is one of the most complete activities out there good for the body, good for the mind, and great for building real connections. And this isn't just something players like to say about their sport; a growing body of research backs it up, from a Danish study that followed thousands of people for a quarter of a century to an analysis of 1.2 million adults published in one of the world's leading psychiatry journals. At Tennis4Women 2.0, this evidence is exactly why we do what we do. Our project, running across Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, exists to bring more girls and young women aged 13-27 onto the tennis court and to give clubs, coaches and volunteers the tools to keep them there. So here are the three biggest benefits of tennis for young women, what the science actually says about each one, and how our project turns them into real opportunities.

First, the uncomfortable truth: girls are being left behind

Before we get to the benefits, it's worth understanding why projects like ours exist at all. A global study led by World Health Organization researchers and published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (Guthold et al., 2019), based on data from 1.6 million adolescents across 146 countries, found that 85% of girls worldwide do not meet the recommendation of at least one hour of physical activity per day, compared to 78% of boys. Girls were less active than boys in nearly every country studied, and while boys' activity levels have slowly improved over the years, girls' have barely moved at all. A follow-up analysis by WHO/Europe (2022) looked specifically at why, and the barriers it identified sound painfully familiar: lack of time, a perceived lack of competence in sport, and too few opportunities designed around girls' actual needs and interests. Participation, the report notes, declines steadily throughout adolescence — which means girls lose the habit of being active at exactly the age when it matters most for lifelong health. In other words, the problem isn't girls. It's access, confidence and environment — and that's precisely where tennis, done right, can make a difference.

1. A stronger, healthier body - possibly for decades longer

Tennis is a full-body workout in disguise. Every rally combines sprinting, lateral movement, jumping and swinging, which means you're training strength, speed, coordination, balance and endurance all at once — usually without noticing, because you're too busy chasing the next ball. But the most remarkable finding about tennis and physical health goes well beyond fitness. The Copenhagen City Heart Study, a landmark Danish research project that followed more than 8,500 adults for up to 25 years, compared how different sports relate to life expectancy, and its results, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Schnohr et al., 2018), put tennis at the very top of the list. Tennis players gained an estimated 9.7 additional years of life expectancy compared to sedentary people — well ahead of badminton (6.2 years), football (4.7), cycling (3.7), swimming (3.4) and jogging (3.2). The study is observational, so it demonstrates a strong association rather than direct proof of cause, but the pattern is striking, and the researchers point to tennis's unique combination of aerobic endurance, short explosive bursts and constant coordination demands as a plausible explanation. For young women, the takeaway is simple and quite hopeful: tennis is a genuinely lifelong sport, and the habits and skills you build at 15 or 25 can keep paying off at 65

Where you'll see this in Tennis4Women 2.0: Our partners are developing a gender-sensitive training methodology built around how girls and young women actually experience sport addressing exactly the barriers the WHO research identifies, from confidence to welcoming environments. Through pilot tennis courses and free workshops in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, participants get hands-on court time with coaches trained in this approach, no experience required. We're also producing a series of how-to video tutorials covering the basics forehand, backhand, serve, volley and rally play so you can start learning even before your first session on court.

2. A calmer, more focused mind

Here's something tennis players know instinctively: it's almost impossible to worry about anything else while you're in a rally. Tennis demands your full attention — reading the ball, choosing your shot, moving your feet — and that intense focus works like a reset button for a busy mind. Science, once again, agrees with the players. One of the largest studies ever conducted on exercise and mental health, published in The Lancet Psychiatry and covering 1.2 million adults (Chekroud et al., 2018), found that people who exercise regularly report about 1.5 fewer days of poor mental health per month than those who don't, with the strongest benefits observed at around 45 minutes of activity, three to five times per week. Translated into tennis terms, that's roughly two club sessions and a hitting practice — an entirely realistic weekly rhythm for a student or a young professional.

The mental benefits run deeper than stress relief, though. Tennis delivers constant small wins — every clean shot, every improved serve, every longer rally builds a quiet, durable kind of confidence, and you learn along the way that progress comes from practice and that mistakes are simply information. Even the world's best players treat the mind as part of the game: world No. 1 Iga Świątek, one of tennis's most vocal mental health advocates, has worked with a sport psychologist since her teenage years and has repeatedly donated prize money to mental health charities. As she told Time, she realised "how easier our lives could be if we work a little bit on ourselves." If working on your mind is good enough for a Grand Slam champion, it's a lesson worth learning on any court — and for young women navigating school, studies and social pressure, it's a lesson that carries far beyond the baseline.

Where you'll see this in Tennis4Women 2.0: Mental well-being and confidence-building are woven directly into our project's educational materials. We're collecting best practices from across Europe on what actually works to attract and keep girls in sport, and turning that research into a Best Practice Handbook and an open-access e-learning toolkit for coaches, practitioners and volunteers. The goal is a generation of coaches who understand that a good training session builds the player's mind as much as her game.

3. Real connections and a community that lasts

Tennis has a reputation as an individual sport, but the research tells a different story. When the Copenhagen study's authors examined why racket sports and team sports topped the longevity rankings, they highlighted a common thread: these sports require other people, and the social interaction itself appears to be a crucial part of the health benefit (Schnohr et al., 2018). The Lancet Psychiatry study points in the same direction — social and team-based activities were associated with the lowest mental health burden of all exercise types, likely because they counter isolation and build a sense of belonging (Chekroud et al., 2018). Anyone who has spent an afternoon at a grassroots club will recognise this immediately: doubles partners, hitting buddies, club events, post-match conversations. For young women especially, a welcoming club can become a second community — a place to belong, be active and be yourself — and feeling welcome is very often the deciding factor in whether girls stay in sport at all. Nobody has put it better than Billie Jean King, the legend who spent her career fighting for women in tennis: "tennis was what gave me confidence when I felt like I didn't fit in," she has said of her childhood, and decades later her message to girls remains that "sports teach us resilience. We bounce back."

Where you'll see this in Tennis4Women 2.0: Community is at the heart of everything we do. Our free workshops and Tennis4Women events are designed as welcoming, pressure-free spaces where girls and young women can try tennis together, regardless of experience or ability. And through transnational cooperation between our four partner organisations — ŠK Virtus and Institute iMPACT in Slovenia, TK Lošinj-Jadranka in Croatia and Player Zone Tennis Academy in Serbia — we're connecting communities across borders and showing that the tennis movement for women is a truly European one.

Your tennis journey can start today

The science is clear: tennis strengthens the body, supports the mind and builds community, and it can keep doing all three for a lifetime. What the research also makes clear, however, is that girls and young women still lack real opportunities to get started - and that is the gap Tennis4Women 2.0 exists to close, through free workshops, beginner-friendly video tutorials and clubs across Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia that are ready to welcome you. You don't need experience, expensive equipment or a perfect forehand. You just need to show up. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook to catch upcoming events, tutorials and stories from the court. Stronger body, calmer mind, new friends — the court is waiting.

Sources

1. Guthold, R., Stevens, G. A., Riley, L. M., & Bull, F. C. (2019). Global trends in insufficient physical activity among adolescents: a pooled analysis of 298 population-based surveys with 1.6 million participants. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 4(1), 23–35. Summary: WHO news release

2. WHO/Europe (2022). Barriers and Facilitators of Physical Activity Participation in Adolescent Girls (factsheet). WHO Europe

3. Schnohr, P., O'Keefe, J. H., Holtermann, A., Lavie, C. J., Lange, P., Jensen, G. B., & Marott, J. L. (2018). Various Leisure-Time Physical Activities Associated With Widely Divergent Life Expectancies: The Copenhagen City Heart Study. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 93(12), 1775–1785. PubMed

4. Chekroud, S. R., Gueorguieva, R., Zheutlin, A. B., Paulus, M., Krumholz, H. M., Krystal, J. H., & Chekroud, A. M. (2018). Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1.2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: a cross-sectional study. The Lancet Psychiatry, 5(9), 736–746. The Lancet Psychiatry