GB futures in early 2014

freerider · Futures level

GB futures in early 2014

RJA · Hall of fame

The calender looks very similar to this year with a run of four 10K futures starting mid January

Week 3 - Glasgow

Week 4 - Sunderland

Week 5 - Sheffield

Week 6 - Wirral

Salmon · Tennis legend

I'm afraid that the 2014 calendar will be a mirror image of 2013's, with only a few cosmetic changes. I'll get a pleasant surprise if I see some hard court Challengers.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

It does seem a shame that Ashley, Richard, Ed, Dave, Sean, Dan S, Josh M, George Coupland, Alex, Brydan, James, Dan E. etc. are all playing challengers this week - not to mention Dan C the week before, Marcus hopefully soon, Tom and Neil and Boggo and Oli who were all down to play, Kyle obviously, Josh G who can still hack it, Liam and mates who'd all like to give it a go etc. etc. etc. AND YET they've all got to travel to the four corners of the earth because there are no challengers in the UK . . .
I agree - it WOULD be nice to see a regular hard-court challenger next year . . .

Salmon · Tennis legend

Or ten of them.

If you want more top 100 players, having plenty of Challengers is a much safer bet than getting a highly paid chief executive.

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

GB Hard court challenger be great

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

Salmon wrote:
Or ten of them.

If you want more top 100 players, having plenty of Challengers is a much safer bet than getting a highly paid chief executive.

Roger was on 400 + 200 OTE this Canadian chap is on 200+ 100 OTE

A saving of min £ 200k there is your "dough" for the challengers

Of course if had made me the CEO

Would have saved £600,000 plus a few executives I Would have sacked quite a few another £200,000

Total Saving £ 800k . Enough to develop

A plan for funding 100 ATP ranked players & 4 in top

100 within 3 years ( end 2016 )

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

RJA wrote:
The calender looks very similar to this year with a run of four 10K futures starting mid January

Week 3 - Glasgow
Week 4 - Sunderland
Week 5 - Sheffield
Week 6 - Wirral

Be interested in knowing which alternative futures on hard might be preferable

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

freerider wrote:
anyway, we digress. On what evidence are we basing that there is to be no increase in GB challengers next year?

-- Edited by freerider on Saturday 26th of October 2013 08:35:27 PM

I have just deleted the off topic posts from this thread, please would everyone refrain from posting personal comments/insults and/or from responding to such posts.

I second your question freerider, I seem to remember some posts from a few weeks ago saying the opposite and that they had some inside information that we would be getting more challengers next year? Of courI'm, as usual, I'm relying on someone else(Steven?) to find said thread for me as I'm too lazy myself!

-- Edited by imoen on Sunday 27th of October 2013 02:31:54 AM

Salmon · Tennis legend

Gut feeling.

I must insist that I'll be very happy if that isn't the case.

Salmon · Tennis legend

philwrig wrote:
You've got to also factor in that because of the reduced Sport England funding/Wimby funding ( due to new redevelopment work ), there is major cost cutting going on at the NTC at the moment. Therefore there isn't as much room to spend on challengers as there might have been in other years.

There's no reason to believe that there won't be more Challengers this year.

However, if the reason for not having more Challengers is that they don't have money (as opposed to "tough love", or whatever the new philosophy is), it's completely their fault. Obviously the LTA don't see the participation rates of France, or the growing market of China, but here are some countries with more than two Challengers.

Uzbekistan
Colombia
Slovakia
Turkey
Ecuador

All of them have more money than the LTA, I guess?

-- Edited by Salmon on Thursday 31st of October 2013 07:47:52 PM

Salmon · Tennis legend

Of course, the only duty of a federation isn't that of organising Challengers. And instead of having Challengers, the LTA guys spend a lot on state of the art facilities, and the best coaches. These countries must be spending A LOT more, then, because since the emergence of Murray in 2005, they've had these players (there could be a few more, I'm not going in too deep) break into the singles top 100 -

Denis Istomin

Alejandro Falla (not sure about this one, did Falla first break into the top 100 before 2005?)
Santiago Giraldo
** Alejandro Gonzalez is not there yet, but he'll be there before the year ends

Lucas Lacko
Martin Klizan

Marsel Ilhan

-- Edited by Salmon on Thursday 31st of October 2013 10:09:16 PM

philwrig · Hall of fame

You've got to also factor in that because of the reduced Sport England funding/Wimby funding ( due to new redevelopment work ), there is major cost cutting going on at the NTC at the moment. Therefore there isn't as much room to spend on challengers as there might have been in other years.

korriban · Challenger level

philwrig wrote:
You've got to also factor in that because of the reduced Sport England funding/Wimby funding ( due to new redevelopment work ), there is major cost cutting going on at the NTC at the moment. Therefore there isn't as much room to spend on challengers as there might have been in other years.

They have completely decimated the GB Challenger tournament profile from around 7-8 p.a. at peak to just 2 last year. All years when SE and Wimbledon funding was still very much large and growing. If they simply grew player numbers and club membership numbers in line with targets, there should be more than enough additional fee income to cover these tournaments and a whole bunch more.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

"And instead of having Challengers, the LTA guys spend a lot on state of the art facilities, and the best coaches"

I think I'd dispute this (unless you were being sarcastic?). . . but interesting to see the other countries - it's a good point,