The fact is noone will ever know if what Roger did is/was successful as it would be several years before any kids who would have been a 100% product of his system were playing pro. By that time there will have been another few changes in leadership and direction and so many different approaches, initiatives and systems that players will have been pulled all over the place.

The fact our current pro's haven't generally pushed on isn't so much down to Roger doing things wrong as it is those people being brought through a bad system when they were kids and were transitioning into seniors (which cannot be unwound and fixed overnight, and for some it will have damaged their prospects entirely and no matter how great things are it would never sort them out - remember, its far easier to forget good habits than drop bad ones).

In addition, at some point somone needs to stand up and say the reason we don't have more men in the top 100 is not just because of failings at the LTA. Some people will just never make it for the sole reason that they are not good enough. That then leads into participation numbers which the LTA do have to take responsibility for IF grassroots is the proper responsibility for the LTA. Some would argue it is not and call for a complete separation of performance and participation/grassroots.

There is lots I disagree with, but if he is remembered for one good thing it should be the Aegon sponsorship. And although some players seem to treat it with derision, I think the Bonus Prize Money for breaking certain ranking steps and reaching certain rounds of events is a step in the right direction.

In my experience of these things, I suspect there has been a dialogue going on between Draper and the new Chairman for about 4-6 weeks to refine and agree the precise process and terms of his departure, but I am under no illusions that he was probably told about the end game within weeks of the new Chairman arriving and the commencement of his review. It has been very noticeable in recent weeks that Draper has been extremely low profile by his own standards, but I had actually presumed this was more to do with keeping his head down after the salary, Sport England and Ministerial attack incidents.

What will now happen is that the search process will aim to bring in a successor well before September, and as soon as that person can start, Draper will leave straight away............as it is, I'm sure every decision of any importance will already be being signed of by the Chairman, so in that sense Mr Draper is already a lame duck. However, if the Chairman really is only 1 day a week, there are practical issues with every decision being passed up the line.......so what that menas, I fear, is that nothing of importance will happen at the LTA for the next few months, except for canning any wasteful or patently barmy projects that may have been red flagged by the strategic review.

I read Neil Harman's piece this morning, and it is actually not particularly insightful. Perhaps he will reflect and pen something more substantial in due course and is biding his time.

The fact that he is being touted as a potential candidate, and that he has explicitly not ruled himself out is borderline scary. He loves his tennis, is a fine journalist, and is free to say what he wants, often hitting the nail on the head. But the administration of a big sporting body requiring a major turnaround of grassroots tennis.........the long term challenge is about growing the scale of the grassroots game by step-change amounts, step changing the grassroots coaching and talent identification structures (both volume and quality), and breaking the disfunctional relationships between the LTA, the membership tennis clubs and the big GB tournaments which make it far too difficult financially and emotionally for young talented athletes without financial means or without links to local clubs to play tennis regularly, watch quality tennis regularly or progress through the system. Gael Monfils was brought up in the tough Parisian suburbs around St Denis and Sarcelles, near where my wife grew up, and alongside the likes of Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka........my nephew grew up in a small very poor Normandy village of now mostly unemployed farmers and cider manufacturers (happy days by the way!) with 4 public tennis courts......both were good athletes......both played tennis very young, chose tennis as their sport, and were picked up by and supported by the system early......the new LTA Chief needs to focus on finding and nurturing thousands of boys and girls like that......which is very nuts and bolts, grassroots stuff, and not suited to the skillsets or indeed the mindsets of people like the Neil Harman's of this world. And with respect, I don't think it played to Mr Draper's strengths either, which is way he all but ignored it for 5 years, preferring to buy success at the elite level with expensive foreign coaches and the NTC to achieve quick wins, on the misguided notion that if he achieved elite success with a small number of players, the problems of the grassroots GB tennis would be all but ignored by the press and the general public alike.

I'm very encouraged by the noises coming from this new Chairman, and the key premise that much more of the focus should be on grassroots support, not elite tennis. The more that can be done to market the sport to young people from all backgrounds and make it free or as low cost as possible to sample and learn for those young people the better......the fact that this not in the interests of the (LTA membership fee paying, Wimbledon ticket receiving) tennis and health clubs and their core customers is a VERY tough nut to crack. But the reality is that Wimbledon/the LTA could break this impasse at a stroke if it wished to, by moving to an open buying process for all seated tickets from SW19 (excpet those "owned" by debenture holders), and cutting the links to the tennis clubs altogether......it is not the "right" of tennis clubs to have the best tennis tickets simply by paying their LTA membership fees.............this "right" needs to be earned by their behaviours, or taken away. I prefer the carrot, rather than the stick........but some big changes need to be seen at Club level, not just talked about.

The next weeks newsflow should be very interesting 

Bob. I know what you mean. There's no doubt elite success creates interest, which certainly may encourage participation (just like the Olympics) - which is something that the LTA's Simon Long mentions often. But with more and more of our GB calender shoehorned into June, and without the appropriate investments and structures to encourage and enable the mass trial of tennis by young people.......this can often leads to a 2 week post-Wimbledon dash to poor public courts, typically overrun, and without coaching quality and quantity to cope, rather than a more measured and controlled process of kids getting into and trying out tennis in Spring through Autumn, or even Winter.

It would be churlish to say the LTA ignored mass participation, but it definitely didn;t appear to be a priority until very recently, when Sport England started telling some home truths. I think Mr Draper's motives for focussing on elite success first, rather than mass participation, were to do with timing (the latter takes longer), difficulty (the latter is much harder), and his own legacy (the fruits of a successful long term mass participation programme would accrue to following CEOs, not him). There are also much bigger PR benefits from elite success than grass roots growth, and we know that's an important consideration.........

As long as the new CEO is given iron-cast objectives which focus on growing the game and making it a mass sport for everyone first and foremost.....and a mandate to use the leverage of Wimbledon to break down any barriers and interest groups which torpedo those objectives.....we could see some traction.