People have up and down days -- the upside of following as closely as we do is that you can sense when something really exciting is happening. The downside is that it becomes possible to read too much into a few results. I'm responding here not the bit about overall lack of depth, which is clearly an issue, but to concerns about Messrs Baker and Ward.

A question just to float ... the French/Spanish systems are clearly really good. And it would be nice to emulate them. But one thing that always strikes me in work contexts is that there's a fundamental set of differences between the way European colleagues in my field approach things (very oriented on government initiative) and the way the UK sector approaches things (much more free market/individual enterprise/voluntary initiatives, whether we like it or not).

So to look at the question slightly differently from the way we normally do -- granted the failures within the LTA (on which others are far better qualified than I to comment), what are the factors not within the LTA but within, as it were, the "individual"/"private" sector that would or wouldn't help to create a flourishing tennis life? And what would a strategy that worked on these and tried to tie them in with LTA efforts look like?

I was thinking about Cayer and his impact when I wrote the post. What's interesting is that on the whole, I'd see his work as being an example of the kind of mix of LTA/individual initiative that seems to have produced some success in the UK in the absence of a wonderful comprehensive development programme. Certainly with at least some of the doubles players, they got a certain distance apart from the LTA -- I'm thinking of Murray (J), Fleming and Skupski in particular -- and then Cayer, I'd gather, worked with them to help them go farther. But particularly in the case of Fleming and Skupski, my understanding is that it was their initiative in the early stages ... the LTA wasn't nurturing them. They showed the vision and the drive to make it on their own.

So I find myself wondering what would happen if you took the three top Challenger-level players GB has -- Baker, Ward and Bogdanovic -- and instead of consigning most of them to outer darkness because they've breached the age of 21, accepted that yes, these are the ones who have shown the discipline and the desire to keep playing, generally without other players or coaches around, at a fairly high level despite all kinds of obstacles. And then gave them the kind of decent support and coaching that might enable them to make that leap ... rather than only focusing funding on the youngsters who have come through the system.

But, one might argue, they did that for Bogdanovic, and it failed. To which I would answer that throwing a player of Bogdanovic's temperament together with Brad Gilbert in a very high profile, high pressure situation is not at all what I had in mind.