whilst I agree with the jist of what your saying Count the problem is simple: weather.

In order to train on clay British youngsters would have to move away from the UK to somewhere sunnier where clay courts can be maintained. And that takes money and commitment. Yes the obvious response to that is 'you need that commitment to make it in tennis anyway' but thats not quite true.

Look at Andy Murray, he left the country to train on clay at what? 14? and 3 years later when he came onto the scene he was still much less beefy than anyone on the tour. And still, whilst he isn't as bad on clay as say a Boggo, or Henman (who took most of his career before he could make any impression on clay) he isn't a claycourter. In fact, I think most would agree clay is his worst surface, for all he would say it was his favourite.

The reason the clay courters have such an advantage is that they LEARN on clay. so should we ship everyone who picks up a racket at the age of four out to spain or somewhere so they grow up on it? Thats simply not possible.

It needs to be somewhere in the middle. Yes Brits need to practise more on clay, and to BELIEVE more on clay, and to go for the clay tournaments. but that in and of itself is difficult again. Take a Bloomfield. He needs to go play tournaments on clay to get the clay experience/ability. BUT he needs to avoid clay so that he can get points, money and rise up the rankings a bit which he's not going to do on clay as quickly. He just can't afford it. It's like the the pros and cons of trying to qualify for the ATP tournaments over building your ranking on the challenger circuit. It's an uphill-tightrope-style balancing act and very few players get it right.

Imo i dont see why clay would not work as a court surface here. you can play on clay in the rain for longer than any of the other surfaces, which quickly become ice rinks in the wet. i dont know how long it takes to dry out tho.

i dont think our current players can beneift. i am talking bout taking this up at the lowest/youngest level, so the next generation will benefit, then there wont be this inbuilt fear of clay, it will be normal. Also i guess Andy started to train on clay at about 14, but he started tennis at what 4 or 5 most likely? boggo was a late one at 8 i think.

i dont nessecaitly agree with this, but if we wanty to compete on a world level then thats what i feel must be done.

imagine if everyone started to play football on artifical surafces like the russians use, how long till england/ the premiershop would be forced to adapt to compete. they wouldnt want to and would try to hold out, but eventually they would have to.

I don't know for sure, but most of the younger players (Baker and Murray onwards) are comfortable playing on surfaces that are slower. While it is true that there are very, very few people who are at their best on clay, almost all the younger players have a decent record on the surface. Now whether that'll be the case five years on from now remains to be seen.

A far bigger 'problem' is the fact that British players ignore clay from the time they are 18 or 19. What's really strange (and ridiculous) is that Boggo thrived on clay when he was young.

Guess that's true. But Boggo should have played a lot more on clay when he was 20 or so. I still think that he can be decent on the surface, though - 10 games against Acasuso is quite impressive.


Wouldn't it be better if Britain had a few more clay tournaments? We have two Futures only, and that too on green clay.

Arka wrote:

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Guess that's true. But Boggo should have played a lot more on clay when he was 20 or so. I still think that he can be decent on the surface, though - 10 games against Acasuso is quite impressive.


Wouldn't it be better if Britain had a few more clay tournaments? We have two Futures only, and that too on green clay.

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Arka, do you know the locations of those two green clay tournaments?

 

they're still in edinburgh and bournemouth.....junior nationals in bournemouth too

I'm not going to recount this year's Challengers for you, Count, but I can shed some light on the Futures in w/c 12/5 by looking at the equivalent events last year.

Along with the clay AMS that week and 3 clay Challengers that week, there are 7-8 clay court Futures (BIH, BUL, ITA, POL, ROM, ESP, USA - yes, even the US Future is on clay! - and possibly ECU, which didn't have a Future in the same week last year), with only 4-5 Futures on hard courts - BRA - surprising that's not on clay - GRE, UZB, KOR and possibly ECU.

I don't know much about the practicalities of increasing the number of clay courts in the UK (Bethan makes some very good arguments for it not being easy to do so, but those arguing the other way have made some good points too), but I've played on clay courts in north/central France (as well as down in the south) and the weather in north/central France is only a bit drier than it is here, so having a few more clay courts (why do I feel the need to wear a lot of garlic and wave a crucifix about while saying this?!) or shale courts seems like it could work here too.

Of course, the most important point about the courts in France though is that they seem to be everywhere and you can just turn up with a racket and ball and play.

We could turn this argument on its head and say that maybe the reason why a country like Argentina has SO many players in the top 100/200 is because lots of points are available in clay court tournaments in South America (particularly Challengers) that nobody outside South America can be bothered to turn up to - e.g. I remember seeing qualifying draws for Challengers in Brazil with nobody outside Brazil playing in them.

Apart from that, it's fairly obvious that having such an abundant supply of clay court tournaments (as the Count's figures show) is going to weaken the average entry for them, so if some of our players could become more competent on clay (and both Boggo and Jamie B showed signs that they are more than capable of doing so - I mean, Jamie beat a top 50 Argentine player on clay in Argentina - even if Calleri wasn't on top form, how stunning was that!!), they might find it easier to hoover up a few more points.