About the club

Smashing Pink is Europe’s first and the world’s largest LGBTI+ tennis club!
Smashing Pink was founded in 1996 as a follow-up on the participation in the 1994 Gay Games in New York by a group of gay and lesbian tennis enthusiasts. We are an official club of the Royal Dutch Lawn Tennis Association (KNLTB). We have approximately 275 club members covering all the different gender and sexual identities and nationalities from all over the world
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As of 2009, Smashing Pink permanently rents three clay courts from Tennis Club Amstelpark in the northern part of the Amsterdam Forest. Amstelpark has great facilities including outdoor clay courts, indoor hard courts, padel courts, a large outdoor terrace and a great bar/bistro/restaurant.

Approximately 40 members are active as a volunteer for the club in one of our many committees, organizing all kinds of tennis and social activities in order to facilitate a smooth integration into our club and to be able to meet many other members for a good time on and off the court!

Smashing Pink welcomes everybody regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, color, religion, age or disability. Our members consist of beginners up to very advanced players. We have around 27 members, including members from among others the Netherlands, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Spain, Surinam, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

Every week there’s a tennis toss event on both Monday evening and Friday evening between 6.00-9.45pm whereby every member is able to walk in whenever they want and all participants present will be matched up for doubles sessions of 45 minutes. The tennis toss event is a great way to get to know other club members in a relaxed way and to play tennis at the same time. The toss event is open to players of all levels! We also have tennis toss events in the morning between 9-12am on Monday (for beginners), Tuesday and Thursday (for a bit more experienced players). If you’d like to participate in an evening toss, send us an email.

Furthermore, there are a couple of other competitive activities that are being organized like an internal competition, the club championships and of course our annual Pinkster Tournament, which is one of the biggest GLTA tournaments on the yearly calendar... It even has the status of a Masters event on the GLTA tour. Smashing Pink also participates at regional level with a dozen of teams (men’s/women’s/mixed) in the KNLTB competition.

The full membership of Smashing Pinks enables members to play on our outdoor clay courts as often as they like during the outdoor season between April 1st through September 30th. Courts can be booked at the club through our digital reservation system or on beforehand through our website and mobile application (ClubApp). Full members can have 3 active reservations within a time period of 7 days. When a reservation is complete, another reservation can be made again. For the complete manual on reservering a court, go to [Digital reservation system/ClubApp].

Smashing Pink full members also have the possibility to continue playing during the winter period (October 1st through March 31st) on the courts of Amstelpark by buying a Winter Card for an additional €150,-. The Winter Card can be bought via Amstelpark.

Smashing Pink has several WhatsApp groups wherein tennis dates are made between members and there’s also an international WhatsApp group with English as main language for our non-Dutch speakers. If you’d like to be added to this group, send an email to kennismaken@smashing.pink, also if you’d like us to help you find some tennis buddies!

Our club is member of Pride and Sports, the foundation that acts like a platform for all LGBTI+ sports associations in the Netherlands and protects the interest of LGBTI+ members of the associations. Smashing Pink is also a member of EGLSF (the European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation), the federation of European sports association that also licences the Eurogames. Several Smashing Pink members participate in the Eurogames, as well as the Gay Games, World OutGames, and of course many GLTA Tournaments!

If you’ve become interested in us, just participate in a Monday- or Friday evening toss and/or send us an email!

 

 

 

 

Information in English Overzicht