British performance tennis..............what now?

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

RE: British performance tennis..............what now?

wimdledont · Challenger level

Before addressing what I think is the solution, for the British game, and the LTA, more on the problem caused by the ITF; because I think this helps shed some light on some of the concerns raised above...

If you look at the ITF 10k tournaments, as set up in 1984, I think there was a reasonable system. But to look at how it worked you need to take the modern day prize money and treble it; because money is worth 1/3 less today, due to inflation.

Prize money

16 R1 losers get US$98 (1984 money), which is equivalent to US$296 today. These players are in trouble. They can't pay their hotel bill. They are being forced out of the game.

8 R2 losers get US$196 (1984), equivalent to US$588 today. These players, after 20% tax in Egypt (US$120) can only just pay their hotel bills. No money for flights. Carry on, but must try harder.

4 QF losers get US$245 (1984), equivalent to US$735. Still, after tax, with accommodation to pay for, that's pretty tight. More money in stacking shelves at Asda, and you have won 2, lost one. So its not generous.

2 SF losers get US$490 (1984), US$1,470 in 2015 prices. Fly in, pay your bills, fly out, and even after tax you've got about US$500 (£300 - a little under UK median income).

1 RU gets $980 (1984), or US$2,940 today. Even after US$600 paid in tax, and with costs of up to US$1,000, you're really doing well.

1 Champ gets $1,470 (1984), or US$4,410 - and is clearly making the money of a successful professional sportsperson.

That's what the ITF 10k circuit was apparently designed to do - to not reward players for losing, leaving half of the field out of pocket, if they lost in R1, but to offer a small income to anyone who has won a professional tennis match that week; and to offer those who do well significant rewards, which should make them the envy of other players, aspirational figures for their juniors to emulate, and significantly better off than they would be if they simply retired, and took up coaching instead.

wimdledont · Challenger level

OTOH...

And as Otto is perhaps suggesting above, over the page...

If you were hosting 10k tournaments in this country, this problem all disappears; and is actually an advantage to British players. If an ITF 10k is a short rail-fare away from home-base, and you don't need an airfare to get there, nor a seven day hotel reservation, then a player might make some money.

Spend £50 on a return rail ticket for Q1, or drive to a 10k, in Leicester, say, without a hotel reservation - maybe.

Spend £300 on return flights for Q1, plus £300 for accommodation, in Egypt, say - no chance.

As for the peskies...

Heck, these tennis players are cheap to keep. US$98 for R1 losers - for providing a couple of hours of webcastable, sponsorable professional sporting competition, including somewhere between 10 and 30 potential 2-minute advertising breaks, in the course of every match, in a sport that is the most popular women's sport in Asia. One day the LTA will find out that the internet exists, and that webcams have been invented.

Tuesday evening, Shanghai, 8pm. Prime time. £1,000,000 ready to play. No football to bet on, at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday in Europe. Whadja got? Only tennis.

Besides which, they, the peskies,, provide "coaching" at very competitive rates. If some Belarussiianiova only wants US$245(£160), for beating up two of our lasses in R1 and R2, losing to one of ours in a QF, then she's played 3 matches for that money. UK coaches get as much, or more, per hourly rate.

Is this what you were after, Otto?

Otto · Social player

The point I was making is that the countries that can afford to have a full calender of 10ks have a big advantage over those that can't. The middle of Europe tend to operate as one country so will have less events, moving between countries. Italy and Spain feel more geograficly isolated so will have 30 plus events. I think the UK falls into the latter.

EddietheEagle · County player

The issue of coaching or more specifically coach earnings, has little or no bearing on competitive structure, or lack of, imo.

And the issue of 10ks and/or challenger level events has to be considered in the context of an overall programme of performance tennis and competition. Having a load of 10ks with nothing underneath is not the answer in my opinion. Nor is having great training facilities all over the place when there is nowhere to continually showcase and develop those skills at the ultimate coal face - in tournament play. Competition forces excellence, from the bottom up. We need a broad, cohesive and understandable competition structure that will draw in, motivate and sustain the maximum number of players playing the maximum number of events across the greatest period of time. The 10Ks and Challengers would sit at the top of an integrated apex of tennis competition.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

I can't say having a national tour is going to have much of an impact unless it attracts elite athletes, desperate to optimise their potential. That needs to be the agenda. Really if you are outside the top 300 at 25 your playing for your own enjoyment not that of the spectators, there is nothing wrong with that but the LTA shouldn't fund it.

Now a bright young player ranked in the top 50 as a junior staright into ITF at 16\17 who shows an aptitude for coaching and hasn't broken top 300 by 22 would be worth funding to learn to coach at the highest level. Arsene Wegner, Jose Morhinio, Roy Hodgson, Alec Ferguson could play football but none would be considered elite. In the absence of 9 months a year if sunshine and a plethora of tennis clubs which form the hubs of communities, cherry picking athletic youngsters with good movement and desire and supporting them has to be the way forward when the budget is notlimitless.

The set up in Evypt is perfect to get the Katie Swans of this of this world going, similarly supporting the grass court season with some challengers and ATP tour events around Wimbledon. I don't think an extensive UK 10K tour gives much value, a few selected events are entirely appropriate otherwis it just prolongs the agony for players in their mid twenties who need to get on and get a career.

EddietheEagle · County player

Otto wrote:
So to recap, there seem to be a few issues here.

1 - Do the British players that are clearly never going to be top 200 (or top 1000 for that matter) especially the ones with poor attitudes, deserve to win prize money?

2 - Would the creation of the strongest, richest and most professional domestic structure in Europe make any difference to the amount of top 100 players we produce.

3 - What is the solution to the cost of playing international ITF 10k events for British players, and is there a possible advantage in the prize money being so low?

Discuss........
(Careful there are 2 trick questions here).

1. Yes, if they win, they deserve the prizes. Poor attitude generally will lose out over the longer term and you cannot legislate for attitude in any case. Competition will sort attitude out.

2. Yes; hugely so. Because more players will train, practice and compete for those events. Competition forces excellence and moreover, induces training and practice in turn. Win-win all round.

3. A strong domestic competition structure will tend to lower costs. Having said that, 10ks are not intended to finance careers. Players with the necessary talent and ethic will want to move in and through asap. No point in a serious player hanging around futures for long or for a development phase to shower players with enough so they remain content at that level. Developing players are hungry players, always wanting more. Like I've said before, if you're not ATP 300 or better by 18 or 19, you can more or less forget it. That's the way of the world.

-- Edited by EddietheEagle on Monday 1st of June 2015 03:03:06 PM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Eddie, your points are fine.

But although you've said it before, the being ATP 100 by 18 or 19 is simply not true (although it depends how you define 'making it' obviously)

If you take the male players, currently ranked WR 41 -50, the average age that they broke into the top 100 was 23.4 years old.

Now, the top 41-50 is pretty good, surely, by anyone's standards - very solid - earning well - making a nice career for themselves. (And it includes both an exceptional 'oldie' and an exceptional youngster so is balanced).

And if they only need to get in the top 100 by age 23+, then that's surely proof that this teenage top 100 thing is not valid (unless you're talking about the absolute VERY top).

wimdledont · Challenger level

There are 3 teenagers in the WTA top 100.

EddietheEagle · County player

Apologies Wimble, my thesis was based on attaining ATP top 300, not top-100. It was a rule of thumb I'd raised previously in an earlier debate.

Getting to a 300 ranking or better by 18 or 19 is a requisite for getting to the top in tennis. I realise, as Coup Droit points out, there are plenty of exceptions but they merely prove the rule and that remains a keystone target. Top 300 forms a goal that any young player with serious ambitions for the top, has to attain, certainly before reaching twenty.

-- Edited by EddietheEagle on Monday 1st of June 2015 03:11:51 PM

wimdledont · Challenger level

Well, I think 10ks are the answer - a good score of them per year.

If you're hosting them, not travelling to them, they're extraordinary value for money. Though the players get paid a lot less than French league tennis, they will still play ITFs, as this is the way towards the sunlit uplands of the WTA/ATP, which is the point. Were it not for our UK 10ks, Alison van Uytvanck wouldn't be where she is tomorrow.

They would also give any purely domestic competition a raison d'etre, and a meaningful prize. If there's a 10k coming up in Manchester in three months time, say, you can have a dozen regional tournaments, with the glamorous prize of a place in qualifying for an international tennis tournament.

Further benefits:

The majority of the UK participants can feel pretty good about themselves. If they have to travel abroad, and they're shelling out up to US$1,000 for a week in a tennis tournament, UK travel, flights, taxis, entry fees, accommodation and food, etc, included, then they are financial losers, and significant financial losers, unless they win the tournament. Embarrassing. Depressing. Give up. Why start, even? Catch a train from Liverpool to Manchester, and nearly get through Q1, but lose 7-5 in the third, and end up £60 out of pocket, but Mum and Dad said I could have very nearly won. Well, there's always next week, and that weird Otto bloke said that if I rang him...

There are 24 MD places, and 32 qualifiers. Assuming that 1/2 of these are Brits, for ease of calculation, that's 28 UK players. Normal cost of flying them round the Mediterranean, or the Far East, plus hotels, somewhere between US$14k and US28k.

Press and publicity. If Emily W-S won a 25k tournament in Japan, who knows? If she entered a 10k tournament in Bristol, she'd get in her local paper. Freya Christie, I see, is now sponsored by "the Nottingham". Local sponsorship + local celebrity = financial independence.

Access to LTA facilities. What, pray, is the point of the LTA's empty sheds, if any of our tennis players not injured are in China/Egypt/Turkey? How do you perform physiotherapy on somebody who is 3,000 miles away? Are the players supposed to phone in their queries about their niggles each day to Roehampton?

Coaching. I suppose it's some use. How many hours LTA coaching has Danielle K received over the last couple of years? (I'm guessing about 6 hours doubles coaching, when Katie+ needed hitting partners, back in March this year - after which Dasha+ started winning an extra round of doubles every week. But six hours coaching over two years, for one of our top 30 players, and arguably, our most dedicated professional tennis player, out of a budget of £5,000,000 per year is... slim.)

Financial open goal. As per my comment above - just US10k for a week's sporting action, in the fastest growing sport in Asia, in Asian primetime, at a time when there is no European football happening, in a country in Europe (the home of tennis) where Asian visiting tennis players can express themselves in the lingua franca of the Asian international business set? Does BMW know about this? At 11am this morning (GMT), the No3 and No4 Chinese ranked WTA players took to the court in Eastbourne. That's No3 and No4 in the race to replace Li Na as the richest woman in sport. It was 5pm in Shanghai - and there wasn't even a tournament website online, let alone a livestream.

Home advantage. Nuff said.

The sport of football seems to be able to offer reasonable financial rewards to, for example, the 700+ players at the last World Cup. In this country, there are 92 league clubs, with squads of 20+ players each, plus reserves + youth teams. (About 2,000 squad players, then the rest, in the UK alone.)

Below that level...

www.thesecretfootballer.com/articles/the-secret-non-league/12741/insecurity-can-be-overwhelming/

..it's really difficult, because the average earnings are only £28,000 per year.

So tennis players have to give up, after 4 years, if they aren't in the top 300 in the world, but football players should carry on, for 20 years, if they are ranked somewhere round about 2,000 in the UK? On this basis, who on Earth would ever choose tennis, other than the younger son of mad Judy McMad, the famous tennis nut?

Female athletes peak at around 26; males at around 28. 39 of the MD messieurs at Roland Garros were over 30. UK tennis really needs to think about how to make a tennis playing career last 20 years; like football, rugby, cricket... whatever.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Your figures make good sense.

But my only problem is, as before, that we've had years where the UK has put on close to 20 tournaments a year.

And it doesn't seem to have worked.

Even now, with relatively few, we have trouble filling the quali draws.

I think our problem is more fundamental. We don't have the number or depth of players to warrant all the futures. Something has to be done about club tennis or park tennis or whatever in order to get WAY more participation so that the pool of players, and competitive players, is double or three times the size.

EddietheEagle · County player

Coup Droit wrote:
I think our problem is more fundamental. We don't have the number or depth of players to warrant all the futures. Something has to be done about club tennis or park tennis or whatever in order to get WAY more participation so that the pool of players, and competitive players, is double or three times the size.

Yes!

That is the single, biggest problem that now exists within the British game in my view. There are not enough active players to support the sophisticated game structure that an either deluded or disingenuous LTA, in its failure to openly acknowledge the problem, believes it presides over. Somehow those hundreds of sinecures, overpaid executives and five-minute-wonder celebrity coaches - all of which deplete resources better utilised in the wider game - have to be justified. The sport is in denial with only minority interests catered for. Those that command the resources i.e the LTA and Wimbledon - need to consider both their contribution to the problem and the measures required to rebuild the sport. Resuscitating tennis competition would be a big factor in that. It's become a chicken and egg argument now because we don't have the numbers. So what do you do first?

Well, and with regard to 10ks, you could make a start by sacking one hundred people at the LTA. That would free up four or five million pounds at least, probably more. The LTA could then afford to match the funds that any club puts up to run a futures or other money tournament. So for no extra annual cost you start to make an impact with better, more serious tennis competition on offer. I see this as the responsibility of clubs and LTA combined. In that context, the LTA has to become less monolithic in its approach by encouraging and enabling others to initiate these 10ks rather than try and do everything itself, including ownership and control of clubs like West Hants and Queens. Only 10% of what comes into the LTA ought to be going into head office costs. The money should largely go into continuing training of coaches and competition. At the moment everything is skewed the wrong way and as with many a local authority in the disdainful way they treat local residents, you feel you're there to serve their needs rather than the other way round.

Otto · Social player

Ok, I wont rake over old ground as we know what we all think. So let me follow the direction we are going in.

Many years ago, When I played German league, the club that I played for (in fact as I found out, with most German clubs) had a very enterprising set up.
As a regular member of the club, half your membership fee went to the clubs performance programme. This enabled them to operate as a mini federation. Then each player in the programme would sign a contract to play for the club. It went further than this as bigger clubs would buy the contracts of players from smaller clubs if they thought they were good.

Later I mentioned this to committee members of some of the big clubs in the South East area, only to watch their faces go pale with horror.

EddietheEagle · County player

The year I played Regionalliga, we'd get back, sometimes after travelling hundreds of kilometres, to find all the results for that day already posted online on the state tennis federation website. This included game scores from your own individual matches. Good discipline and organisation allied to continual reporting and feedback provides that lift and feeling you're playing for something worthwhile. Back home in England, I'd be asked to play some instantly-forgotten, midweek mixed doubles match. That's the general perception clubs here have of older players. I couldn't even practice after work sometimes as juniors had priority in line with some over-reactionary LTA policy.