Who will be the new CEO of the LTA ?

steven · Tennis legend

RE: Who will be the new CEO of the LTA ?

DWH · Club Coach

Ah, thanks Steven. Yes they may or may not know but I think that's what confused me a little. The fact that people seemed outraged (or at least critical of the LTA) on his behalf, without Mr Kermode ever explicitly stating that he wanted the job. And yes the scenario that you posed also sounds plausible if in fact he did not want the job. Like you said, what he has done before is more akin the ATP job.

And thanks CD yes that was my thinking. With all that he has done at Queens and the o2 etc, if he really wanted the job and made it known, surely he could have gotten an interview or sit down or whatever regardless of whether or not he was eventually hired.

Ah well. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors eh?

PaulM · Tennis legend

Yes I agree Steven I think it's plausible both parties knew he was in line for the ATP role and stepped back. No point spending time and effort interviewing etc.. If he was unlikely to take the job. His skill set seems more directly relevant to running the ATP than the LTA.

It's a total non-point but any excuse eh. Too difficult to support the current regime for more than a month I guess.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I think the link was somewhere else but i can't find it for love nor money.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/27121820

So, just wondering, did other people think this was a daft article? I know it's just an interview and he's probably nto going to say anything of real insight but all the same . .

So we need former top class players to be coaches to because Tauziat told Bouchard not to have any regrets? Does Nadal or Federer or Djoko or the vast majority of top players have former world-class payers as their coach? No. So, we need to make the players hungrier by sending them on the road and letting them lose and then stay there to train?

"I talked with Jeremy Bates (the head coach of women's tennis at the LTA) and he made a very good point. He said it's important that the best kids in Britain have to go on the road and play in a country that may not have great facilities, and learn to lose in the first round and actually have to stay there and train in those conditions before they move on"

And the facilities at our Challengers are too good ?

My opinion of Jeremy is pretty low at the best of times but what is this? It's the 'starving-kids-from-the-Eastern-bloc' argument from 20 years ago that may have a had a minute grain of truth but never really bore fruit. Does France send kids on the road on purpose to play in grotty places and leave them there? I don't think so. Does Italy have deliberately bad tournaments to toughen kids up? Our Challengers (the few we have) may be OK but has he seen the Futures? They do their best but they're hardly deluxe. You get far better facilities at your average Spanish futures.

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

I thought the article was a load of "cods wallop " we have plently of talent in GB but the management in GB is the weakness .

I tried to get an appointment with CEO but Could not get past the PA -

Thought be worth listening to a manager that on a tiny budget has outperformed the Aegon sponsored players in 2013 . I can only say I wish all my competitors in business had been as equally inept as the LTA 's management who are not really at the races !

baxi2 · Lower Club Player

Which actually has a similar overtone to the comments I mentioned on the "LTA in court" thread earlier today !

EddietheEagle · County player

Coup Droit wrote:

So we need former top class players to be coaches to because Tauziat told Bouchard not to have any regrets? Does Nadal or Federer or Djoko or the vast majority of top players have former world-class payers as their coach? No. So, we need to make the players hungrier by sending them on the road and letting them lose and then stay there to train?

The evidence from both tennis directly and other sports, indicates that healthy player development systems are very dependent on attracting former high level professionals to remain in the game and contribute at a significant level, coaching or otherwise. It's not rocket science.

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

EddietheEagle wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:

So we need former top class players to be coaches to because Tauziat told Bouchard not to have any regrets? Does Nadal or Federer or Djoko or the vast majority of top players have former world-class payers as their coach? No. So, we need to make the players hungrier by sending them on the road and letting them lose and then stay there to train?

The evidence from both tennis directly and other sports, indicates that healthy player development systems are very dependent on attracting former high level professionals to remain in the game and contribute at a significant level, coaching or otherwise. It's not rocket science.

Nick bolleteri was an excellent example of above average club player that became a great coach

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

I think I'll be reserving judgement just a little longer given I felt I learnt more about the interviewer's opinions than the interviewee's in this article - especially when combined with other, similarly blog-style articles I've read by him in the past.

Just to sit even more firmly on the fence, I'm not saying I think he's a bad writer/interviewer or indeed that his opinions are wrong, merely that the brief he seems to have been given by the BBC clearly allows for - perhaps even wants - a strong bias to exist.

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Didn't quite know what to make of this interview with Downey.

Make the players hungrier to compete with those for whom tennis is a route to a better life. Well, there's a grain of truth in this but it is a v tired argument. It probably used to be true in the Eastern Bloc when sports training was funded by the governments and to be picked and succeed through this system WAS life changing. Not the case now. It is true though that in some countries career opportunities are quite limited and a pursuing a career as a sportsman or woman is not seen as a particularly risky venture. Kids from such countries often do have more focus than those from countries such as the UK in that from a young age the player and family approach it as a future career. As for making the kids train in grotty conditions. Well, I would say only those with a lot of LTA support don't rough it at some point!

Discuss the top 20 kids and work out what is best for the player. Really like this one. IMO one of the things holding back GB tennis is that the player is not at the heart of decision making. HPCs get a lot of funding, some dependent upon the quality of players they have in training. An incentive to keep a player at that site, even if something different would benefit them. Age group managers at the LTA get (or at least used to) bonuses based on the results of the players they were responsible for. An incentive to get results now rather risk losses now in order to develop a player for longer term success. Academies need to hang onto high profile players and have results to post to attract new business. An incentive to put the health of the business before the needs and development of individual players. There are so many interests which need to be satisfied before anyone thinks about what is REALLY best for the player.

Does the average coach and player really know what it takes to succeed. Good point. I'm not sure they do. I think plenty of coaches know what it take to succeed as a junior but I haven't come across many who have any experience of success at a higher level (or even a real grasp of the standard needed). There are some of course, and I think you would easily be able to identify them by the players they attract (and they are not necessarily ex-top-players!). I don't think the average junior has a great concept of what it takes to succeed. I don't think our juniors are lazy, most of them work hard within the framework they are given but I don't think they are used to coming off the court or out of the gym feeling absolutely wrecked every session, having given every last ounce of anything they've got. It's just not asked of them on a regular basis. Again, this is a generalisation and of course there are exceptions.

So, think our CEO's pronouncements are a mixture of good stuff and rubbish. Will follow with interest!!

EddietheEagle · County player

This wasn't an interview. Downey met with a gathering of sports journalists to set out his theme. Subsequent press reports of the meeting show consistency with the BBC piece. For example, the Telegraph article:-

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/10781137/Britains-young-tennis-players-are-too-soft-and-lazy-to-make-it-to-the-top-says-the-new-chief-of-the-LTA.html

His comments on the competitive mindset of overseas players may be tired but it is valid all the same. Tennis is absolutely a route to a better way of life for some and those players fight all the harder for that.

The best point he makes around player development in my view, is the need to approach every athlete as a unique individual. It's a method the East Europeans have used for some time and with great success. There's a Russian tennis coaching manual knocking around somewhere based on the Spartak Club methods which really ought to be translated for the benefit of coaches here. Here's a taste of their system:-

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/sports/playmagazine/04play-talent.html

In my opinion the average UK tennis coach knows very little of 'what it takes'. I think he's right to flag that as a major weakness. Another reason why we need Henman and Rusedski to hang around. The LTA has spent years spurning that approach. They pushed out Tony Pickard, for example, perhaps the most successful of any UK national to have been involved in tennis in a major way over the past twenty or so years aside from Andy Murray. He ought to have been running the whole show but wouldn't button up his blazer the way they wanted it.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I agree 100% with your comment about the average UK coach knowing nothing about top level tennis. It is a major weakness. But that doesn;t necessarily mean we need absolute top players, just coaches who have experience of top level tennis (which will probably include some reasonable level tennis)

And I agree with The Optimist - the argument about 'better life' is not only old but pretty much disproven - they'd tried extremely hard to enforce the 'Eastern bloc' make-them-hungry approach in France for about 7 years (about 10 years back). It misfired badly - the only players who came through were those who had dropped out of the FFT system.
French/Italian/Spanish/German players do not need to play tennis for a better life and they account for a large number of the top 100 players. Neither do Serbs or quite a lot of the Eastern European countries (it might have been true once but economic figures don't back it up now).

The point about the blazer buttons seems to me on the money, sadly.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, the fact that tennis has undoubtably been the way to a better life for many, particularly east Europeans, in the past, is for me no arguement at all for purposefully making life more difficult than it could otherwise be. The one does not follow from the other.

Is living out of a camper van generally likely to make you a better tennis player than funded to stay in decent accommodation ? I rather doubt it.

But again, I'm afraid I suspect too much of a truth about the "blazer buttons". One must hope for much progress by the recently appointed CEO in sorting out many of the LTA's real priorities.

EddietheEagle · County player

Nobody is suggesting life has to be made purposefully more difficult and nor is Eastern Bloc athlete training based on any such principle, not that I know of anyway. Those places have grotty facilities not from choice but because their federations lack money. The article explains more of 'what it takes' and the tremendous drive that motivates players like Sharapova (and her parents) to lever their way onto the world stage. I expect, like everywhere in tennis, the social composition of their pools of tennis youngsters will be solid middle class by and large.

The average LTA member, by contrast, has two main priorities when it comes to tennis - one, wangling free coaching for his or her son or daughter and two, free Wimbledon tickets, if not membership of the club itself.