By my reckoning the last GBR woman to qualify was Karen Cross back in 2001 

I remember watching Josh Goodall beat Scoville Jenkins in FQR at Roehampton a few years ago. Maybe 2008?

I'll be there around midday, if you fancy meeting up text or call  07546 136577.  I've been lurking on this board for many years, never have met anyone.....

Cheers

Steve

Will any of these players make it into the top 200/150?

Why should Josh W-H have a qwc and not them? It seems like he is the next "golden boy" for the next year and a bit and likely not go anywhere big. Hey prove me wrong Josh that would be nice but I dont see anything that makes him special at this stage to have a QWC. Surely if the lta funds them they should think they have a chance of going somewhere just as much...

Ok my thoughts in this post are totally scattered and probably put across really badly but I hope someone gets what I mean.

Twizzle wrote:

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I wish the LTA would stop funding large amounts of money to so few. Spread the money and fund more, the more competing the more chance we have of getting top players. I am new to this forum but I feel very frustrated that it's so few that are helped and so many kids go off to university in the USA because this country offers no other (good) choice. We are the richest tennis nation in the world but most of our kids can't afford to compete abroad or even train here in the UK. Putting so much money into so few kids is wrong!

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Welcome

Indiana: "Me thinks Chris Eaton was the last Brit to come through qualifying - 2008 when he also won his main draw R1 match."

In fact, no British man has even made the final qualifying round since then - Bloomers also made it to the FQR in 2008.

Sandman: "By my reckoning the last GBR woman to qualify was Karen Cross back in 2001"

She was ... and she is the only British woman to have qualified since 1995, doing it twice - she qualified and reached R3 in 1997 and qualified and reached R2 in 2001.

Spectator: "It's hardly surprising that Britons don't qualify at Wimbledon. If they're at the level where they should be competitive in the qualies (ie better than 250), they get a MDWC. So you're automatically starting with a pool which actually shouldn't, by ranking, win any matches at all. By contrast, the Britons in the qualies at Australia or the US are there by merit and stand a much stronger chance of qualifying."

This is true and I think part of the reason why the number of Brits doing well in qualifying has dropped off in the last few years is that grass is playing more like the other surfaces these days, whereas before the British tendency to prefer playing on fast surfaces tended to nullify the rankings gap more often.

1999 was the last time more than one Brit qualified (Sapsford, Delgado and Parmar - who all won at least one main draw match) and we did have a 5-year run of qualifiers in the mid-noughties (Delgado in 2004 & 2005, Goodall in 2006, Childs in 2007 & Eaton in 2008) before the GB qualifiers ran out.

I disagree to an extent. Previously the LTA didn't continue to support senior players, most were dropped totally from any funding at 18 the rest were lucky to get much after 21. It resulted in big drop outs and people failing to transition despite being good juniors if they hasn't broken through on the pro tour within 18 months. They went from getting too much to getting nothing at all.

Continuing to support our top players for longer is the reason why Anne, and then Bally and Katie broke through, and more flexible more objective funding which is better spread across the ages is one of the things Drapers regime, in my view, got right on the performance side. They recognised that players are breaking through older and funding should not be focused on 16-18 years olds almost exclusively. Because all that gave us was an endless stream of good juniors who went on to achieve nothing and masses of wasted investment. Being a good junior is really nothing to be excited about if you are aiming for the pros.

You can't switch of the tap for our elite players because they are a bit older. The stats on age don't lie And heavy funding of top juniors is just repeating past mistakes that got us nowhere.

I do agree that we need to widen the base and look and restructuring funding, but in my view far too much individual funding is still given to under 12 and under 14 players who might never even decide to go pro because they are more interested in other sports or just fall out of love with the sport or don't progress well. That money should be rerouted into building a much better and stronger club network so good local coaches don't lose all their players to HPCs who are just interested in finding targets and not the best interests of the individual players.

Sarah Borwell has some fantastic ideas on this topic which I hope are listened to. If kids don't feel happy and welcome at their local club, we will never get anywhere. And kids, particularly girls, prefer to compete as part of a team. We need to rebuild NCL and County Cup more akin to the French League system. I also like the idea of players effectively being contracted and paying back some of their prize money to the LTA if they are matrix funded.