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Post Info TOPIC: BOGGO? AND FINDING/FUNDING PLAYERS DISCUSSION
Osomec


Junior player

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BOGGO? AND FINDING/FUNDING PLAYERS DISCUSSION
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djlovesyou wrote:

It's too easy to blame the 'upper classes'.

Heather Watson comes across as a normal kid from a normal family too.

Don't mistake being well behaved and speaking like an adult with being a 'posh toff'.



I'm on your side, but I would just like to point out that Heather Watson's father is the chief executive of Guernsey Electricity, which must pay pretty well, especially in a tax haven.

It is incredible how much class hatred there is in this country, and how detached from reality it all is. Apart from Laura Robson, I can't think of a single British tennis player I have heard speak in recent years who has an accent that would have counted as posh thirty years ago. This is perhaps because virtually no young people sound really posh nowadays, because privileged kids are influenced by the same proletarianising social pressures as everyone else, and few of them want to have to deal with the scorn that is directed at the "posh" nowadays. Almost all our current tennis players are from the great filling in the modern social sandwich, the middle-middle, lower-middle, and upper-working classes. It is much the same in the more successful tennis countries; the vast majority of top tennis players are middle class, including Federer and Nadal. But British class warriors just don't want to see these realities.



-- Edited by Osomec on Thursday 6th of January 2011 06:44:49 PM

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Osomec


Junior player

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Posts: 99
Date:
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As for the reasons why we don't have many top tennis players, they seem pretty straightforward to me:

1) Tennis is further down the sporting pecking order there than in some other countries
2) Our climate doesn't allow year round outdoor tennis, and we haven't compensated for this by building masses of indoor courts (see 1).
3) Our club structure does not value junior competitive success (see 1), though it is a little better than it used to be.
4) Our ignorant (see 1), and abusive media makes being a British tennis player far less enjoyable than being a foreign tennis player at the same level. 

As for the class thing, you can't get away from the fact that tennis is exceptionally expensive due to the massive amount of one to one coaching needed to make it to the top. This is why most top tennis players from all countries are middle class, but foreign middle class kids have the advantage of enjoying more support from club members (mainly middle class), and local sponsors (owned by middle class people), whereas ours have to rely on the LTA, which is disfunctional and oppressive.


-- Edited by Osomec on Thursday 6th of January 2011 06:58:32 PM

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