Very interesting interview with Paul Hutchins in this month's LTA British tennis interview.... Hutchins is the new head of mens tennis at the LTA.
He wants Peter Lundgren to link with Josh Goodall and Boggo on a close basis as they haven't got coaches at the moment. Lundgren will also be working with Richard Bloomfield and his coach. For the players who haven't got coaches, they'll be working more directly with Lundgren and Annacone. I guess this applies to Alan Mackin aswell.
He feels that at the LTA, they haven't proved that they're experts at taking players on particularly from 16 plus. "We haven't maximised the players' ability, too many of them haven't fulfilled their objectives."
Hutchins say "For some like Josh Goodall who rarely serve-volleys, if he's going to develop over the next couple of years, I'd like him to tap into Peter and Paul and look at his game and say "Where am I going to be in two or three years time with my game."
Hutchins wants to place more of an emphasis on doubles, especially as we've got quite a few very talented doubles players coming through the rankings. He thinks that James Auckland, Jamie Delgado, Jamie Murray and Ross Hutchins can all reach the top 50 soon. He plans to hold training camps for players with Louis Cayer (who's worked with pairs like Knowles and Nestor, Erlich and Ram) and is currently coaching Jamie Murray.
Hutchins says "There are certain players in British tennis who I would like to play more doubles in order to improve their singles. I would love Jamie Baker to play more doubles. Richard Bloomfield is a good doubles player and I would like players who in my opinion need need to come up the court more and serve-volley more in singles, to play doubles."
Hutchins also wants players to travel more and earn ranking points in less convenient places "We've got too many domestic futures tournament, too much in the comfort zone. They're not tough enough and not on the right surface. I would rather have less domestic events and encourage people to go out more onto the international circuit. If you look at Tim Henman and Andy Murray, where they got their points when they were young - Tim got his in Malaysia, India, USA and Andy won them in Spain and France. In Britain, we have a high percentage of the same players in each of the futures we hold. I want them to go to Belgium, France and Germany each week. I want them to go to Malaysia and India to make them tougher."
I'm surprised there haven't been more posts on this
Some interesting debating points here....
The most controversial of Hutchins' statements is that he wants British players to play more tournaments overseas, particularly in Europe. He says how Andy Murray and Tim Henman gained most of their points in Spain/France and in Malyasia, Africa, USA (in Henman's case).
However, does that mean he's going to provide more funding for the players in the 350-1500 range (the guys who are playing the GB futures at the moment) as travelling overseas is so expensive. Guys in that ranking range are basically breaking even each week at most and so affording to go abroad for several tournaments is pretty difficult so they have to play the British futures. Eg: Slabba is struggling funding-wise, he's looking for more sponsors as its becoming pretty difficult to afford to travel abroad to compete. The likes of Murray and Henman were able to do it as they were so talented that they'd be making the latter stages in the majority of the tournaments they played abroad and so they'd be winning enough to pay some of the expenses plus they were constantly moving upwards.
I agree with what he says about playing more doubles, that's a great idea. It's been the case with several talented British players in the past (most notably Arvind Parmar) that they became too one-dimensional as they didn't step up the court enough and attack the net to finish off points and so not only did they get stuck at the baseline in long rallies, they lacked the variety which serve-volleying occasionally and coming to the net more would have given them. With Parmar this definately hindered his progressed....I'm convinced (and lots of other coaches agree) that he would have made top 100, possibly top 50 if he'd developed a net game. I think that Boggo's progress stalled a bit as he didn't move up the court and attack the net enough. Mike got him doing that and you can see that from his results over the past 12 months.
