This is what happens when an ignorant group of tennis regulators aka the LTA tries to control everything itself - from coaching to competition - and ends up achieving nothing. What's happened with Evans isn't even a salutary lesson. It's repeated time and again, year after year. It's ingrained into British tennis culture from the bottom up. A highly professional sport at one end still largely run and regulated by blazers. The end product is what you see all around; from modest players like Evans holding a massive sense of entitlement to an attitude, supported by many, that it's ok for a player like Andy Murray to pick the Davis Cup team and worse, a succession of heads of the LTA trousering half a million plus a year to run a largely moribund sport.

Player funding is a crutch that ultimately fails when applied as a centralised system. Player development should never rest on centrally funded players. What the LTA ought to concentrate on is its enabling role, creating the playing environment where players of all ages and hue flock to this country to play in prize-based tournaments. Create a capitalist system, allow private enterprise to participate and allow a free for all. The LTA's objective ought to be to build the greatest, richest tournament base in Europe. We have the money, the starting money anyway, to do it while many other federations don't. It wouldn't matter one jot if the tournaments got flooded out with overseas players coming here for easy pickings. Because that would provide the competitive environment in which home-grown players with sufficient motivation would eventually flourish.

Ask yourself the question, why would players go off and play their tennis in France, Germany and Italy, rather than here, even modest amateurs like myself? What we need is to build out own systems so that players flock here rather than there. It's not rocket science.

First among equals would probably be the diplomatic way to put it.

No inference should be drawn (from my post) that Murray junior picks the Davis Cup team. Others suggested that, and think that's ok which was my point. In fact I don't think he does pick the team. It's not his job plus we have a perfectly competent captain and he makes his team selection as far as I know. I'm sure Andy Murray is hugely influential though and has made his point in the past by, for example, either making himself available or not.

The main point I'd like to get through is that there is an imbalance in our player development system. There's a system bias toward funding coaching and individual player development rather than funding the ways and means for players to compete which ultimately is what it's all about. In my view, this country lacks a decent tournament structure, a fundamental structural problem. That position needs to be reversed. We need to create far more incentive for competing, at all levels, by building a tournament structure that stands head and shoulders above anywhere else. Instead of paying Nadal £250,000 for turning up at Queens to titillate the Pimms crowd (or allow an LTA head to trouser £640,000 just to employ other expensive carpetbaggers), how about vastly more money tournaments lower down the food chain?

Looking at the women's schedule for this year, here...

www.itftennis.com/media/189963/189963.pdf

...it looks like the LTA has decided to concentrate most available resources on the elongated grass season.

I have to presume that this is a new strategic decision; and it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

To begin with, I expect it to work out badly for our players. Every foreign player with a ghost of a chance of getting through Wimbleburger qualifying will be keen to play - so stacked fields; and even if some of our lot get some good results, then where else can they play on grass in the rest of the year? I get the distinct impression that several of them spend 47 weeks of the year pining for the green stuff.

OTOH, with the extra week available between RG and W, that grass-court window has just increased by 50%.

And why does it have to be just BEFORE Wimbledon? As enny fule no, the worst time to find a vacant UK tennis court is for the week AFTER. I would have thought it possible that the LTA might be pleased with the attendance figures if they were to try to organise some ITFs for the weeks following Wimbledon - particularly in the North of England/the West/Scotland.

Another thought: it was suggested that the Davis Cup tie versus France could be played at Celtic Park, Murrayfield or Ibrox. Which is an interesting idea; why can't you hold a tennis tournament in a football ground? If you can, then there are 92 available in England alone, and they're all vacant between May and August. And while the LTA might not want to fork out sufficient to hire Old Trafford or Anfield for a week, there's plenty of smaller grounds. The football club(s) could also perhaps make some extra rent money by renting out court space to local amateurs in the weeks following a pro tournament. You can fit dozens of tennis courts on a football pitch. (I realise that there are also some possible existing UK grass court specialist tennis venues, but I think that the idea of using a football ground is interesting because there are, to my knowledge, no grass courts available for tennis in France, Spain, or Greece, for example. But plenty, plenty football grounds; all vacant from May til August.) The basis for a pan-European revival of tennis on grass? Probably not.

At any rate, you have to work with what you've got; and Wimbledon is what we've got. It will always overshadow all else in UK tennis. But it can be a bit of a curse if there are so few other tournaments on the same surface. For a player like Broady, who loves grass, she's got an annual season of four weeks in the UK, plus 3 in Japan. For a Carreras, who likes clay, she can play on that in nearly every week of the year; but her national association has nothing to offer her.

So, this has got far too long. I think I may be in the process of changing my mind about a long-held prejudice, which has induced a certain amount of wittering. Laughably, I must now press the 'Post Quick Reply' button...

Again, I know it sounds like a cracked record, but the finances are similar in France and GB and yet in France, each and every county has a FFT county headquarters which has COURTS (as well as an admin office). Strange concept, really - local federation representation, and with COURTS. These are used primarily for giving extra lessons to promising county youngsters, training coaches, running county championships, country team tennis etc. etc. But they can also be 'let' out (for a song) for any other tennis purpose (assuming they're free).

Each region has a regional headquarters which is the same but twice the size, i.e. each county in the south-west has its own federation facilities, and then Devon, say, is head of the south-west region and they get the bigger, better facilities (and give extra lessons to all the regional best youngsers, run regional championships etc. etc.

So the answer is, it can't be that expensive to build and maintain some indoor courts - and what else is the federation for ? In fact, the very fact that the LTA is not called a federation says something - after all, a federation implies a pyramid structure, a delegation etc. etc. Unlike the LTA which is all central - was speaking to a club President the other day and was GOBSMACKED to hear that the LTA has absolutely nothing to do with them, year in, year out. No contact unless the LTA wants something, is what he said. And then they use Wimbledon tickets as their bargaining power i.e. toe the line or we;ll cut your ticket allowance. Makes you want to cry . . .

wimdledont wrote:

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(Following on from BeefyDeedz above; posts crossed with CD)

 

Yeah, but if you're relaying the pitch, even better, in that you can scribble tennis court lines all over the old one; use that for tennis, then rip it up and lay a clean new one with football markings ready for the new season. But I have no idea of the practicalities. You'd need to ask a professional groundsman, which in most towns in the UK, you'd best ask at the football stadium. They also have changing rooms and showers, catering and stands, and so on. Ideal.

To precis my long convoluted above into bite sized chunks...

1. The LTA is apparently putting the house on grass. Is this a change of strategy? Is it wise?

2. If it is wise, why only before Wimbledon? A 3-week grass court season is a week longer, but 3 weeks still isn't a season. And Joe Public and his nagging kids is interested in tennis after Wimbledon, not before.

3. In England, there are 92 grass sports pitches, unused all summer. But the council tax is paid, the facilities are built. Open goal (but you'd have to take them down).

I'm not actually sure what I think about all this, as is probably quite clear;)

-- Edited by wimdledont on Saturday 14th of March 2015 06:01:22 PM

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I have absolutely no idea about the practicalities. The pitch will be in action as early as mid-July and the process cannot be started until mid-May. If possible it would be a nice idea, but I'm just not sure that the majority of clubs would see it as a worthwhile thing when many clubs host hospitality events during the summer also. 

Coup Droit wrote:

it's obvious that if more adults play, then more of their kids will play (and those kids' friends etc.)

BUT if you look to Europe, it is amazing how many top youngsters (and then top players) are not only children of good players but are actually coached by their parents, i.e. are children of VERY good players, dedicated tennispeople who are putting it all on the line for their kids' tennis careers.

It's more common with girls (teenage lads and fathers are maybe not an ideal match) but quite a few blokes too. By my reckoning, at least half the very top French juniors are coached by their parents, or were coached for a considerable time by one of their parents. This, even at the most basic level, gets round a lot of the costs issue. (And it's obviously not the ideal solution for every family but the numbers are dramatic and a part of the whole issue that shouldn't be ignored).

We need a pyramid of tennis in this country. It's obvious. It can only work that way. For many reasons. But one might be so that there are tons of ex-good players who love top tennis and produce children who love top tennis too.

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That's an important observation. Consider doctors and their children. Invariably one or two offspring will become doctors themselves. That's just the way it is. Tennis should be tapping into that, but does it? Where's the encouragement to pass the baton? Probably not a good time to mention this but among the first thing that hits you when you step into a club these days is a child protection notice. It's like anyone offering to hit with children these days is a latent pervert.