Last Saturday morning, BBC Radio were asked to broadcast a message from their Wimbledon headquarters: “Please Stay Away — you won’t get in!”

Even people joining the queue at 8 a.m. would have had no chance of gaining admittance to the grounds until 5 p.m. — and even that would have depended on how many people had left, handing in their tickets as they went.
 With the sunny weather, increased capacity on Centre Court and the new 4,000 seat No. 2 in action for the first time, the first week of this year’s Championships produced an increase on 2008 of 24,002 with daily records being broken every day. The first week attendance hit 266,264 and that is on the basis of just one session per day, unlike the US Open and Australian Open where daily and evening sessions are separate ticket sellers.

 So is this just a Wimbledon phenomenon? No. One day the world’s sports media — and especially sports editors in the US — will pick up on the fact that we have entered a new boom time for tennis.

Let’s a tick a few boxes here:

PARTICIPATION: The figures published recently by the Wall Street Journal are staggering. Over the past eight years tennis is the only sport in the US that has seen a participation increase. And not by a small margin. Since 2001, tennis is 43 percent up and every other sport is down apart from basketball which is flat. Golf, which is often considered a competitor of tennis, is 13 percent down. That makes a swing of 56 percent in favor of the sport which takes less time to play and burns off so many more calories. Should the media reflect this, perhaps? One searches for examples of them doing so.

 TOURNAMENT ATTENDANCE: Both Charlie Pasarell and Butch Buchholz were delighted to see that their ATP Masters Series 1000 events at Indian Wells and Miami were only fractionally down on the previous year despite the ravages of the recession. In Europe, crowds have ignored any financial downturn. Monte Carlo, with an increased Center Court capacity, was 8,000 up on 2008 with every ticket sold from first day to last. And, unlike the Formula One Grand Prix which followed, the tennis in Monte Carlo suffered no downturn in corporate  hospitality. The French Open posted record numbers at Roland Garros; the Aegon Championships at the Queen’s Club was also up and we have seen what has been happening at Wimbledon.

UPCOMING EVENTS: Promoters of the ATP World Finals (formerly the ATP Tennis Masters Cup played in Shanghai last year) which has been transferred to the mammoth 02 Arena in London’s Docklands took a deep breath when they decided to go with two sessions per day for eight days — leaving them with the task of selling 250,000 tickets for a new event in November in one of the world’s entertainment centers. To their surprise, 150,000 had been sold or allocated even before the official launch in May. Now that the event has been advertised another 60,000 have been sold. “The response has been amazing,” says assistant tournament director Chris Kermode. “Way above our expectations. It just proves that Londoners want tennis in the winter.”

SPONSORSHIP: On the day that Lehmann Brothers collapsed last September , BNP Paribas nevertheless decided to go ahead with its sponsorship of Indian Wells, offering both more money and a longer contract than the outgoing sponsors Pacific Life. Last year, the LTA secured a massive deal with Aegon to sponsor all British tournaments outside of Wimbledon and Aegon were thrilled by the exposure they got at Queen’s. (Any criticism of the media must exclude the British press during the Wimbledon period where even the most trivial tennis trivia becomes news).

INVESTMENT: The Government of Victoria have agreed to come up with nearly $620 million over the next ten years to re-develop Melbourne Park which is already one of the most modern sports complexes in the world. New entertainment areas and a re-configuration of the courts to take the site of the Australian Open even closer to downtown Melbourne (even now it is only a 10 minute walk) will ensure that talk of the city losing its Grand Slam will be nothing more than hype on the part of Sydney and cities in Asia.

NEW STADIA: The Caja Majica in Madrid may not be everyone’s idea of a magic box but as a statement on the popularity of tennis in Spain it could hardly have been more dramatic. Three stadiums with roofs inside the one massive building as well as outside courts and sleeping quarters for juniors to use year round make it a testament to the vision of impresario Ion Tiriac and the city fathers of Madrid.  Tennis Australia were also in on the act last year with a brand new tennis stadium in Brisbane for the ATP event that was switched from Adelaide while here at Wimbledon the new sunken No. 2 court has created a welcome additional element to the All England Club grounds, quite apart from the roof.

THE STARS: Perhaps no other individual sport has so many stars who are instantly recognizable around the globe.  Venus and Serena do not even need a second name. Maria Sharapova has already burst beyond the confines of merely being known as a tennis player. And for all the promise of Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic and Juan Martin del Potro, it is the classic rivalry that Roger Federer has established with Rafael Nadal which has captured the imagination of sports fans the world over. Ask why tennis is recovering its popularity in Italy and the answer I get is “Federer and Nadal.”

Add another impressive stat — the 720,000 tickets that were sold for last year’s US Open — and it is very difficult to view tennis as anything other than a sport on the rise; a sport that is gaining popularity all over the globe, in major markets and small. That does not mean there is not room for improvements and all the game’s governing bodies need to work hard to create fresh, innovative ideas that will draw even more people to the game. But while the global economy struggles, tennis is riding a wave of renewed popularity that cannot, and should not, be ignored.