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steven


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Interesting interviews about funding etc with British players from Tipton in April 2010
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While looking at George Morgan's interview from yesterday Youtube, I happened to see this video suggested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkZUcUuWdR4&NR=1

It's an interview with Bloomers in Tipton from April this year, though I'm not sure who by - not the LTA, I don't think! It seems very honest, though you have to bear with it a bit before he starts making sense.

I then found an interview by the same person with Josh Goodall, who is more lucid. Even the Count will be interested in this one wink because he talks about Boggo too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AHpyyL9wUU&feature=related

As you would expect, both players' views are coloured by missing out on places in Team AEGON, but they seem like thoughtful and honest interviews and where they criticise the system, much of it is reasonably constructive.

There is an interview with Mark Hilton too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dpz-ye9UZ4&feature=related, someone who perhaps has had a better relationship with the LTA over the years. He talks about why he retired from playing on the circuit and makes some good comments about players he has coached and realistic comments about what it would take for them to succeed.

One of the common themes from these 'older' players is one we have remarked on here before - the way lots of GB men who had been among the record (for recent years, anyway) 20 in the top 500 in late 2005 gave up (at least on singles) over the following couple of years - a problem that has left us still having very few mid-range (i.e. Challenger players and decent Futures players) today, and how the younger players have very little competition, as evidenced by how weak qualifying for GB Futures tends to be these days.

There is an interview with Dan Smethurst too http://www.youtube.com/user/gberkeley1#p/u/13/xzW1Dv9WrBE and a few more that can be found by clicking "see all" on the uploads section on that page.

I don't recall seeing anything about these clips at the time and none of these interviews seem to have had many hits but I think they are well worth a look.

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Osomec


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I have so many contradictory feelings listening to these interviews. The sense of entitlement is there in places, but it is also apparent that the LTA's system is designed largely to benefit the top people at the LTA, by providing the maximum opportunities to claim credit on the back of the minimal level of success achieved. The point about doubles is fair. I can't see any good reason to fund doubles, other than to allow Mark Draper to make misleading boasts about the number of players we have in the top hundred. It will always be easier to gain the benefit of the doubt for presenting a new batch of youngsters, than to win credit for a 26 year old who is ranked 150, but the stronger countries specialise in getting lots of pros to the limit of their potential at that sort of age. Being a Frenchman or a Spaniard at that ranking may well be fun, while being a Briton at that ranking would be miserable for all but the most sanguine of us. On the other hand, LTA can't operate simply by funding other people's enthusiasm for the sport when there is so little of that to be found in this country.

Being a touring tennis player seems to be hard and often thankless, and it is only going to get worse. How many touring players are there in the world now, between pros and full time globe-trotting juniors? Six, eight, ten thousand? And how many will there be in a few decades, when most of Asia, and perhaps parts of Africa, are full participants in the sport? Twenty, or thirty thousand perhaps. But the structure of the sport means that there will still only be a couple of hundred who have really made it. When you compare the odds of getting a good return on all that effort and cost with those in major team sports, or even golf, they are pretty awful.


-- Edited by Osomec on Wednesday 15th of December 2010 06:37:00 PM

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wolf


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steven wrote:

It's an interview with Bloomers in Tipton from April this year, though I'm not sure who by - not the LTA, I don't think!

No! The guy was about my age, I got the impression at the time from looking over his shoulder at his notepad he was doing a uni essay or a journalistic piece.



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