What do U think needs to be done by GB Tennis to reverse the dreadful state of British tennis in the world top 100?

VictorE · Improver

What do U think needs to be done by GB Tennis to reverse the dreadful state of British tennis in the world top 100?

Ratty · County player

Well, firstly I think I'd dispute whether British tennis is in a dreadful state.

I reckon we do about as well as one might expect, given the number of young people here who play tennis, and the competing sports of soccer and cricket. As I've said before, our other potential top 100 ATP players are probably in the England cricket team.

As for improving things - well, we have some very strong competition from several countries who are way ahead of us in terms of infrastructure, culture, and sheer numbers.

So the UK catching up with Spain, France, Russia, the USA and Argentina in tennis, is maybe about as likely as the UK winning a war against China; or Costcutter overtaking Tesco's market share. It just ain't gonna happen in the foreseeable future.

VictorE · Improver

sounds like a bit of a contradiction because you say you dispute Brit tennis is not in a dreadful state and yet we've no chance competing against several similarly advanced countries, some of which have similar sized populations. How many top 100 GB players do we have? how many do those other countries have?

The failing infrastructure and funding is only part of the huge problem for GB tennis. "No?" as Nadal would say

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Junior sysstem needs to change.

I understand it, once you're in at a really early age, you stay in, so no incentive to really train. It would be better if there were tourney/rankings at each stage so anyone outside the 'system' who had trained harder, got better could get in, and those in the 'system' wouldn't have a guaranteed space for life.

Ratty · County player

With respect, I think the problem facing anyone who has the job of sustainably improving British tennis rankings is rather more fundamental than tweaking the junior tournament structure.

It's surely just a numbers game. Say countries like Spain, France & the UK have about 750,000 babies born every year.

Maybe about 1% (7,500) are prepared to put in the effort to try to become international sporting champions, and maybe about 1% of them (75) will be successful.

If the LTA can get all 7,500 of those Brit babies born in 2012 to play tennis, we'll jump to the top of the tennis world in about 20 years time. But this is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

For a sporting youngster in the UK, cricket is a much more sensible choice. It's a more sociable game, and for the parent it's miles cheaper and doesn't take nearly so much of a time commitment. And several hundred Brits earn a living at playing cricket, whereas maybe 10 (max) earn a living from tennis.

So enjoy the odd random blips like Murray, Watson and Robson, because (IMO) their success does not provide any evidence - no matter what LTA spin doctors say - that things are getting sustainably better.

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Only 0.84% of the world's population is British, so if all things were equal we would only have one player in the top 100.

Now of course things aren't equal due to so many being below the poverty line and the variable popularity of tennis, but to expect us to have multiple world-beating players is becoming less realistic by the day as more and more countries develop a reasonable standard of health/fitness compared to the UK.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

I thought this was a discussion about how to improve things, not to debate whether they are bad or not?

VictorE · Improver

Very observant Helen, I agree. I think the number one factor to improve things is the amount of money spent on encouraging youngsters to take up the sport and the lack of free, or low cost facilities and, more importantly coaching sessions, whether in the local parks or schools. Also if parks weren't £5 to £9 an hour, and cheaper for adults, they would grow to love the sport and inspire their kids to play regularly, leading to, perish the thought, a successful tennis career.

After that, rumour has it that insufficient investment and rationed coaching opportunities for talented teenagers are still in evidence, leaving many affluent kids to finance their own potential careers.

steven · Tennis legend

Helen40 wrote:
Ratty wrote:
(another common myth is that we do well in juniors, but less well at converting this to senior success. I don't buy that one either.)
I'd agree with that myth on the the grounds that we get fairly regular junior GS winners, but not senior.

That needs to be put into context through - most juniors only play junior slams for 1-2 years, so the contenders at junior slams are constantly changing, whereas each adult slam probably contains 10-12 years' worth of players who were top juniors and we all know how few different slam winners there have been on the men's side in the last few years.

Hence I think it would be fair to say that eventually reaching some last 16s or better at adult slams would imply that a junior slam winner had made a pretty good transition.

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 19th of June 2012 12:44:40 PM

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

On observation these past few weeks especially, it seems we have the talent. It seems to come down to the balls. So I stand by my statemetn earlier in this thread of making them fight the whole way through juniors, that way one ones who are mentally ( as well as physically talented) will come through. Also maybe psych training?(Not sure about that one with younger juniors)

Ratty · County player

Helen40 wrote:
On observation these past few weeks especially, it seems we have the talent.

I'm sure we do. But the problem is that other countries have a lot more of it than us. (another common myth is that we do well in juniors, but less well at converting this to senior success. I don't buy that one either.)

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Ratty wrote:
(another common myth is that we do well in juniors, but less well at converting this to senior success. I don't buy that one either.)

I'd agree with that myth on the the grounds that we get fairly regular junior GS winners, but not senior.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

success in junior slams aside isn't it a case that we've had several top 10 juniors who then failed (or have so far...) to make the top 100. Boggo, Evans etc. definitely talent guys, maybe it's down to their own attitude etc, but it does says something that the only player recently to really make it moved overseas.

I honestly think the problem is two fold, too few people play tennis as a competitive sport in this country so our talent base is smaller, then the talent ones who do come through generally suffer from poor coaching/management etc (see Fitzy's comments previously).

The general fact is tennis is one of the worst commercial sports to try and make a living out of, both financially and the lifestyle you have to adopt from a young age.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

steven wrote:
Helen40 wrote:
Ratty wrote:
(another common myth is that we do well in juniors, but less well at converting this to senior success. I don't buy that one either.)
I'd agree with that myth on the the grounds that we get fairly regular junior GS winners, but not senior.
That needs to be put into context through - most juniors only play junior slams for 1-2 years, so the contenders at junior slams are constantly changing, whereas each adult slam probably contains 10-12 years' worth of players who were top juniors and we all know how few different slam winners there have been on the men's side in the last few years.
Hence I think it would be fair to say that eventually reaching some last 16s or better at adult slams would imply that a junior slam winner had made a pretty good transition.

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 19th of June 2012 12:44:40 PM

Fair point. but as count zero says in the post after yours, the only player to have done that recently has been abroad. If you count Hev too (in my mind the only other player in the top 200 who is mantally tough), then they both were trained abroad.

steven · Tennis legend

I'm not sure where Ratty gets the idea that Andy only spent 6 months training in Spain - I always thought it was 3-4 years and these references appear to corroborate that: http://www.sanchez-casal.com/adm/uploads/documents/andy_murray.pdf & http://blogs.tennis.com/thewrap/2012/04/catching-the-tape-at-home-with-andy.html

Otherwise, though, I think Ratty has a point. His figures for 2004 (i.e. 9 of the top 20 juniors going on to make a decent stab at the ATP top 100) correlate well with the fact I mentioned earlier, i.e. that about 10-12 years' worth of juniors are active in seniors at any given time, though obviously there will also be the odd player who makes it at senior level without ever having done much in juniors.

It's clear from this, though, that it's false to assume that virtually all top juniors who aren't Brits make it into the ATP top 100, let alone the top 10, let alone winning a senior slam.

Obviously, it may be possible to point to concrete reasons why our juniors are less likely to 'make the transition' than others, but I think things are finally improving there. While obviously I don't have any way of knowing this for sure (those on here with links to players may have a much better idea), it seems pretty clear that for a few years, being highly professional made you the 'boring' (to other young GB players) exception rather than the rule whereas now it seems to be much more 'cool' to work hard and be supportive of each other.

Plus, we haven't had quite as good a crop of juniors as this for ages, and come Monday, both of our recent female junior slam winners will be in (or already have been in) the WTA top 100.

I don't get this partial discounting of players who spent some of their teenage years training outside the UK either. With our climate, a lot of the most committed players are likely to want to spend some of their teenage years training abroad (which they often do with some LTA support) - it would be more worrying if they didn't want to, even if the LTA coaching setup was perfect. It doesn't mean they stop being British players, and most of them will have spent the majority of their childhood training in the UK anyway.

Apart from the climate, another reason why we don't produce the same kind of numbers as France, say, is because Brits don't have the same access to courts - if you have ever stayed with friends in France, you'll probably be well aware how easy it is to get access to nearby courts over there - it certainly was in the four places in France I have spent the most time in.

I think that's partly because space is at such a premium (and land is so expensive) in the UK but also partly because media coverage of the LTA leads to the impression that they should be doing everything. What that misses is the fact that in France, it's not the FFT that is responsible for providing the vast majority of the easily accessible courts, it's the local authorities.

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 20th of June 2012 06:42:55 AM