Senior officials from both tennis and golf participated in an open panel discussion on the opening day of the London Golf & Tennis Show, answering questions from the media and members of the sporting public.

The chief executive of the Professional Golfers Association (PGA), Sandy Jones, hailed the new format of the show – with tennis included for the first time – as a “wonderful showcase”.

He added: “I hope everyone goes away from the show over the next three days understanding the two sports a bit better.”

The ‘new kid on the block’, the Lawn Tennis Association’s chief executive Roger Draper, was equally enthused.

He said: “We’d like to thank everybody for allowing tennis to ‘gatecrash’ the party. We’ve been working with the Tennis Industry Association for some time now to really pull together the industry and hopefully emulate some of the success that golf’s had.

“It was interesting for me last year that some research done by Liverpool University showed golf was the third biggest commercial sport in this country with an economic value of about £2.3bn and tennis was fourth at £1.3bn. So one of the challenges we had was to see how we could bridge that gap, and pulling together all the key partners is a major part of that as well.

“We share a lot of similarities in our aims to get people playing our sport: club memberships, the role of our coaches, competition; (with) a lot of the work we’re sharing ideas on in terms of getting more people to play sport in the schools and the local authority facilities as well.

“Hopefully we can grow the Golf & Tennis Show over the next few years.”