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wales1994 · County player

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paulisi · Tennis legend

Is there a lack of depth in British tennis? The women have generally had more than one in the top 100 for many years.

Does throwing money at tennis the answer. It's not working in America.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Very quickly:

Yes, there is a clear and unjustifiable lack of depth in British tennis (women's and men's). I've no idea what they do with the money (if you find out from your studies, I'd be interested to know).

However, one reason (especially as compared to European countries - Germany, France, Spain, Italy, all of whom have far greater depth) is the problem that a large number of tennis clubs (and certain key ones in particular) in the UK are private clubs, effectively social clubs.

Private tennis clubs (ie where membership is based on being sponsored and forwarded by an existing member) do not exist in Europe. There is a fee (modest) but any member of the public has the right to join.

Tennis in Europe is a sport, not a social jolly. And a democratic one.

As a social club, there is too much emphasis in the UK on adults and doubles ('too much' for the advancement of tennis - perfectly nice for social sundays or whatever).

At the clubs I've visited here, there are 'kids Tuesdays' - kids can play on Tuesdays (Sorry????? - in France, kids are members on an equal footing and have equal priority to the courts, even the posh ones). People at certain clubs here can turn up and 'insist' to join you for doubles - again, sorry???

I could twitter on at great length but that's just one of the problems.

indiana · Tennis legend

Hmm, I thought one thing we were almost all ageeed with here was that there is a lack of depth in GB tennis, particularly on the women's side ( I'm sorry, Paulisi, but having consistently at least one in the top 100 has almost zero connection with any sort of "depth" ). Any rational look at the the GB women's top 25 table would conclude this.

The men's ranking distribution is quite significantly different. Here there is much more depth of good future / verging on Challenger level players ( although still far from comparable with such as France, Spain and Germany ), but a continual lack of top 100 / 200 players.

wales1994, you are probably aware that it does get discussed quite often directly and indirectly on the forum and the social non inclusivity of tennis in this country is undoubtably a factor. There are no doubt some good people within the LTA trying to change things ( and hopefully the fairly new leadership can have more success ), but Coup Droit would undoubtably be a very good source as to how things are so very different in much of mainland Europe.

Back to the women, I am aware that someone recently correctly pointed to the huge increase in girls going to US Colleges as helping to leave much of the GB women's rankings pretty bereft with so few genuinely competitive players at even 10K level. With the first really big wave at these US Colleges now, the big question is how many will in time come out of college onto the circuit and bolster these rankings. There is though much more to the depth issue than that.

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Coup Droit wrote:
Very quickly:

Yes, there is a clear and unjustifiable lack of depth in British tennis (women's and men's). I've no idea what they do with the money (if you find out from your studies, I'd be interested to know).

However, one reason (especially as compared to European countries - Germany, France, Spain, Italy, all of whom have far greater depth) is the problem that a large number of tennis clubs (and certain key ones in particular) in the UK are private clubs, effectively social clubs.

Private tennis clubs (ie where membership is based on being sponsored and forwarded by an existing member) do not exist in Europe. There is a fee (modest) but any member of the public has the right to join.

Tennis in Europe is a sport, not a social jolly. And a democratic one.

As a social club, there is too much emphasis in the UK on adults and doubles ('too much' for the advancement of tennis - perfectly nice for social sundays or whatever).

At the clubs I've visited here, there are 'kids Tuesdays' - kids can play on Tuesdays (Sorry????? - in France, kids are members on an equal footing and have equal priority to the courts, even the posh ones). People at certain clubs here can turn up and 'insist' to join you for doubles - again, sorry???

I could twitter on at great length but that's just one of the problems.

On the kids' front, to counteract their exclusion from so many clubs, the LTA established a 'performance pathway' for kids which has funnelled most of the keen players into High Performance Centres. So we now have a situation where most of the good young blood plays in (IMO soulless) HPCs where all tennis is supervised and paid for by the (expensive) hour and tennis clubs which are often full of ageing social players and never the twain shall meet. When good kids get fed up with the performance route (for any number of reasons) they just give up, they don't have a link to an appealing club culture to move over and become good, keen club players. Ergo, tennis does not exist in this country as a sport, it exists as a social exercise or as training for a career!

wales1994 · County player

Coup Droit wrote:

However, one reason (especially as compared to European countries - Germany, France, Spain, Italy, all of whom have far greater depth) is the problem that a large number of tennis clubs (and certain key ones in particular) in the UK are private clubs, effectively social clubs.

Private tennis clubs (ie where membership is based on being sponsored and forwarded by an existing member) do not exist in Europe. There is a fee (modest) but any member of the public has the right to join.

Tennis in Europe is a sport, not a social jolly. And a democratic one.

As a social club, there is too much emphasis in the UK on adults and doubles ('too much' for the advancement of tennis - perfectly nice for social sundays or whatever).

At the clubs I've visited here, there are 'kids Tuesdays' - kids can play on Tuesdays (Sorry????? - in France, kids are members on an equal footing and have equal priority to the courts, even the posh ones). People at certain clubs here can turn up and 'insist' to join you for doubles - again, sorry???

I could twitter on at great length but that's just one of the problems.

I totally agree with you. The other point I wanted to explore was the fact that most British players have trained abroad, I know the weather plays a huge part in this. But surely a tennis foundation like the LTA could afford to actually train their own players? Murray, Watson, Moore, Ward all trained in either Spain or America.

I also feel we lack depth as tennis isn't inclusive in Britain, it seems to be reserved for the more privileged, although I admit that point could be used for many countries. But we possess one of the richest tennis federations, and yet most of the population seems to be excluded from tennis. As a result many people play it socially, and not that many youngsters actually want to give it a real go.

BeefyDeedz · Pro player

I'm currently 18, and when I was 10, I really wanted to pick up tennis. There is a sports centre around the corner with two tennis courts on concrete, and I went to try to play. It was £7 an hour, per person. I told my parents, and they agreed to fund me quite often. The next time I went, the prices had been doubled to £15 an hour - per person. When I asked why, it was because of "executive orders", but it was eventually admitted that because they had the only courts within 20 miles, they felt they could make a hell of a dime.

Now, take the dozens of other kids in my position at the time. This country is losing potential players daily, as already said, and I feel that this is strongly because of inclusiveness, or lack thereof. And, in order to cement my point, I created a petition with the help of my secondary school. I gained over 5,000 signatures from schools in my city, and they changed their prices down to £5 an hour for the court, not per person. Now, they have the courts constantly booked, and many players have gone on to join social clubs with scholarships offered by the sports centre, which obviously don't save a lot of money, but are symbolic as to the progress made around here.

indiana · Tennis legend

Well done BeefyDeedz on being so proactive, and showing the effect people can have when they put their mind to it.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Well done BeefyDeedz on being so proactive, and showing the effect people can have when they put their mind to it.

Hear, hear. Congratulations to you. The power of positive action.

And to the LTA - only two courts in a radius of 20 miles??? And this is presumably not out in the wilds either (as you got 5000 signatures).

steven · Tennis legend

That is very impressive, BeefyDeedz. You'd think they'd want to set a price at which the club could thrive and have a real buzz to it. Maybe they didn't think it was possible ... and in fact maybe by spreading the word as part of doing the petition, you made it possible by raising awareness as well as getting the prices cut

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Congrats to BeefyDeeds. Sound like you truly lived up to your name on that occasion.

We need more ideas like that and more people to take up the initiative.

wales1994 · County player

BeefyDeeds that's rather impressive! How ludicrous though. I know it's still a business, and they need to keep the money coming in.... but at the expense of having people engage in the sport, frustrating.

I had messaged / called the LTA, only for them to dismiss my interview requests... they wouldn't offer me anybody. Quite annoyed by that, I live in Roehampton, so the NTC's down the road. How silly!

EddietheEagle · County player

There are tons of private clubs in Italy and tennis has broadly the same social caché all round the world as it does here. The top club in Argentina, for instance, is the "Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club" complete with its English name. Check out its website. When I was out there, the Argentine federation had the princely sum of $600,000 U.S. as its total annual budget.

Throwing money at young tennis players has been proven not to work. I think what we need to do is study what is going on in countries near to us like France (with twelve top 100 ATP players currently), Germany (six) Spain (fourteen) and Italy (four).

I'm of the opinion that Roehampton was a massive strategic mistake. Better half a dozen regional outfits all over the country, humming with activity than a lifeless national centre with all its politics. Promising players shouldn't have to travel far from home to train nor be required to go to London if they live in Carlisle. I once read about Robredo's story. A promising youngster, the coaches came to him from Madrid, (or wherever) not the other way round.

The other factor which ought not to be discounted is the weather. Global warming is good for Tennis UK. You need sun for tennis, lots of it preferably.

indiana · Tennis legend

On the global warming front, there are of course many many opinions, but it is certainly the case that many experts actually predict generally wetter winters and summers in the UK.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Yes, I don't think there's any guarantee of warm, balmy summers.

And, anyway, there are many countries which have very healthy tennis programmes but not particularly amazing weather.

Also, all clay courts clubs where there is any chance of frost (a large number in France and Italy) have no outside courts during three months of the year as the clay can't be used and has to repaired in spring.

However, I agree with your point re Roehampton, Eddie - the UK does not need one showcase centre, all gleaming and pristine.

Again, just to highlight the difference, each county (département) in France has a federation headquarters with FFT owned indoor courts and a FFT trainer (plus committee and secretary etc). In the bigger counties these HQ are bigger (obviously). Some get expanded to become centres 'of excellence'. But all the others, i.e. each and every county, provide training (free) for promising youngsters, training for apprentice coaches, host competitions etc.