More 'tough love' from Brett today:

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/30422039

Completely agree.

The average age of a player breaking through is 27 now, how can they cut off at 24.

What happens if someone at 23/24 and is on the verge of breaking into the top 250 and then gets a bad injury and has to start again losing most of their ranking points?

Lisa Whybourn is a prime example, who had to ask for funds on social media sites.


The best bit, which should have been a no brainer at the start is that if a player is making a reasonable living out of tennis, then they should be playing back the LTA some of the costs of their earlier LTA training.

'Funding for up-and-coming British tennis players is to be severely cut in an attempt to develop more players who can survive in the world's top 100.'

Throwing money at your national system does not produce stars without proper planning, realistic expectations and, of course, compromise. I would also suggest that severely cutting funding does not produce stars without an effective plan and a lowering of expectations. Indy is completely right - why does the LTA insist on operating on a polar basis?

Of course one isn't seeing the whole thing ... but this plan as presented does seem completely to ignore developments in men's (and to a lesser degree women's) tennis, with players developing at university, starting later, and then doing quite well ... or just coming up the ladder later. And while it's fine to suggest people should stay in the LTA system, there is indeed a certain Catch 22 about acknowledging that the LTA doesn't have home-grown talent ... and then penalising anyone who seeks talent elsewhere. Why not phase in the changes while you develop the local talent base? There would seem to be a good reason why so many of the UK's best players have benefited from/currently benefit from time abroad.

-- Edited by Spectator on Friday 12th of December 2014 09:57:09 AM

I dither slightly but I think Spectator has a good point (and others have said similar things)

On the pro-Brett side, the level of coaching, overall, and with definite exceptions, is very poor in the UK. It's a major problem. Focusing a lot of time and money on it seems a good idea. It's your building block.

And a country the size of the UK, with the tennis financial resources of the UK, should NOT be having to pay to send kids to foreign academies (although it should be noted that the kids are going to foreign private academies, not foreign federation ones. So are the LTA saying that if the private academies were in the UK that would be OK ? Seemingly not (you're either in the LTA or you're not) so it's not actually foreign academies they are against but private ones, wherever).

However, as Spec and others say, what are the kids supposed to do while we wait for this supposed explosion of excellent coaches and excellent federation academies in the UK ?

And I haven't seen any mention of LTA federation academies, just coaches. That's not the same at all. The reason French kids do not (in general) go to foreign academies is because the federation provides lots of specific elite tennis/academic academies around the country - is the LTA going to do this ? All I see is they've just shut down the only one they had.

And it's interesting that basically the LTA is saying we don't want another Andy. (Andy went to Barcelona, did him a lot of good, Brett says, but we won;t be doing that any more. Andy had expensive, high-profile coaches. Worked. But we won't be doing that any more, says Brett). Makes you laugh. But they have a point. Andy's achievements have done nothing for the level of British tennis, which continues to be horrid.

I also note (with sadness but not surprise) that a couple of the most talented but hugely under-achieving GB players have been the most vocal in arguing that it's all so unfair, and that the cut in funding is disastrous etc. etc. Makes you think that Brett and Downey may well have a point . ..

It's just bonkers. 100% pump money into improving coaching, great badly needed, but then when it boils down to it the new "initiative" is:

"WE HAVE NO GOOD COACHES IN THE UK, BUT WE ARE FORCING ANY PLAYER WHO WANTS FUNDING TO WORK WITH ONE"

Tremendous. Making our best players who we want to become word-class players work with coaches who the LTA have just publicly announced are not of the required standard to be able to produce world class players.

It was perfectly possible to leave coaching development and player performance uncoupled within the new regime.

Also, the much lauded Tennis Scotland funding deal amounts to them getting pretty much exactly the same amount of money as they do at the moment anyway, they've just phrased it as "over 4 years" so it sounds like a bigger number.

Feeling a bit deflated to be honest. I just see us ending up with far more players getting stuck around 500-700, maybe with the odd flirtation inside the top 350 than ever.

Naomi's blog post which talks a bit about performance coaching (and pre-dates this announcement) really makes you think.

-- Edited by PaulM on Friday 12th of December 2014 12:01:36 PM

paulisi wrote:

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Naomi Cavaday and Josh Goodall's blogs about the poor levels of coaching within the LTA make interesting reading.

I'm very much for the focus to be in this area, but the LTA need to recognise this will take time and they should not take funding away from people who deem it insufficient at the moment.

There are good coaching set ups at Nottingham, Gosling, Bath and to some extent some of the other academies(Northwood, Sutton, Stirling), but this will not suit all.


If they want to cut down the bonus payments. Keep the current age restrictions(not 24) and make it only applicable to overseas tournaments(or tournaments outside their own country for players based abroad) so it helps to cover the costs of travel.

-- Edited by paulisi on Friday 12th of December 2014 12:20:09 PM

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 To be honest, this is more than enough good coaching centres for the amount of pro players / serious prospects that we have in this country!!  What I don't fully understand is how this coach coaching is going to work in practice.  Are those in need of improvement going to spend time at the good coaching set ups learning good practice?  Are they going to have Brett and his lieutenants regularly visiting them with their players to show them how it's done?  Is it just more courses (which I've heard don't bear a lot of relation to real life)?

The bulk of the men seem to train at Notts / Bath and the women at Northwood / Bath.  Are the coaches here going to be funded to work with specific players?  So many questions - anyone got any answers??