tennis is notoriously difficult to schdule, you have no idea how long match will last, someone wishing to televise Lu vs Somdev last week would ahve been quite disaptoined.

also tennis is really only a global sport, and is only played on a truely compettive scale as such (maybe bar the french league and the US college system) so there is no interest in it at a local level and would take a long time to build up, and in my opinion probably would never happen with the dominance of football. We'd need to dominate the global sport for a long time to get it to that level, a catch 22.

before even thinking about TV i think we need the press to cover it more. the BBC ran no arcitle on boggo winning a challenger recently (and its very rare that they do) but run one on a 1st rd atp loss the same week.
the times is about the best at the mo, but even then they dont really cover challenegrs unless there is a extra interest like chris eaton at the moment (but even that has died cause he hasnt won every match since!)

yes its annoying, but i have learnt to accept it.

i dont particalty want to see muzza or boggo splahsed all over the front pages of the sun either :)

talp wrote:

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but still dont u find it annoying that tennis dosent get as much "respect" has other sports does.

u never see a tennis star in the front page for late night drinking etc

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Which for Evans is quite fortunate... amazingly only 1 newspaper picked up on the story of his current LTA suspension, and that was buried in the middle of an article on Laura Robson

The problem in the UK is that tennis is seen as a middle/upper class sport, that for the majority of the country is at best a social activity.

Because of the huge cost of trying to play tennis in this country, it drives people off trying to make it as a career, unless they are either very talented, or rich enough to afford it, and so we get very few players coming through the system (the last LTA produced man to be a threat in the men's game would have been 20 years+ ago, as Murray, Henman and Rusedski didn't really come through the LTA).

Local leagues.... it some countries (USA, France, Germany) they do have tennis leagues, with the Bundesliga being very popular, although it's mainly popular with players because of the amount of money they get paid to play (yes... players have been known to tank matches in challengers so they can play in the Bundesliga at the weekend).

Trying to get it to work in the UK would be difficult.... Murray probably wouldn't be interested in playing as he's way above the level where it makes sense for him to play, so immediately there's no commercial appeal to anyone wanting to sponsor the event... Boggo would be our biggest name, and even as a huge fan of him, I'd be amazed if a tennis league where's he's the biggest draw could work, so it would have to include foreign players (who wouldn't play unless they were paid, and the Bundesliga would pay more, so it wouldn't work... and I don't want the LTA wasting money on players who are British).

And then there is the problem of when to play it? Bundesliga is played at weekends... so if this 'league' was the same, it means anyone who's playing qualifying or a final can't play, plus with this American hard court season at the moment, Boggo, Baker, Bloomers and Skupksi wouldn't come back for the weekend as they couldn't afford to, the other challenger boys are in India, so there would be no British players available, except the few in Futures main draws in GB, which isn't going to work as a league.

TV Coverage.... it's a pipedream unfortunately as there's no way I can see any GB challengers, let alone futures being covered on TV...

Let's take the last GB challenger in Manchester... which TV station is going to cover a semi final between Bjorn Rehnquist and Pavel Snobel, played indoors in a tennis centre with space for 10 people to watch? It's not going to happen is it, as it wouldn't get enough viewers to be worth it.

Live streaming though is something that is a lot more realistic, if the LTA ever pulled their heads out of their arses and did something, as there would be an interest in that, especially at challengers with people from other countries wanting to see their players (just look at MTF and how many people want updates from the challengers, so how many hits this site had when I was providing scores from Surbiton), and even with futures as I'm sure we'd all watch at least, as the Swedish Futures from last Autumn were heavily viewed by us.

All it needs is a webcam set up on the court, and away you go, but the LTA don't seem to be doing anything like that, at least in the near future.

Of course we'd love tennis to have a much higher profile than it does, but seeing as the BBC doesn't even put a brief report up on Boggo winning challengers, and no-one at the LTA works weekends, it isn't going to happen very soon...

If we had a quote of the month award ...

All very well explained though, FD.


-- Edited by steven at 17:35, 2008-08-07