Latest use for the NTC

PaulM · Tennis legend

RE: Latest use for the NTC

indiana · Tennis legend

The more I hear there seems an element of 'the baby getting thrown out with the bathwater' re the NTC.

It seemed a headline big move by the 'new regine' with minimal consultation and with players getting blamed for it not really working, with quotes of 'mucking around' and not using the facilities as effectively as they could. If there was an element of this ( and some folk have confirmed some strange goings on ) where were the attempts to change the culture and add some productive discipline where necessary ? Where was the consultation as to how things could be better ? One can argue about the best set-up, but I'm not sure how hard they tried to correct issues and make the NTC a much more positive and productive hub.

As it is the place seems so often empty. Players like Kyle and others that have previously used the NTC as some sort of base, and would still like to if not having another particular UK base, find it empty, therefore not much use to them, so are less likely to go there at all, so presumably it gets even emptier of decent ranked players at any time.

-- Edited by indiana on Tuesday 1st of December 2015 04:42:30 PM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

PaulM wrote:
Every player with a senior ranking or top 500 ITF ranking should be allowed to use all the facilities at the NTC free of charge.

Arguably, they should all be able to access the "experts" on site (personal trainers, physios, nutritionists and any on-site coaches who are being paid to do, well what exactly, currently) as well, either for a fee, or only for free at a higher level e.g. top 500 senior and top 200 junior.

Players were driven out of the NTC so it's not a surprise it's currently empty, as everyone who used to be based there has been pushed out or left over the past 3 years to another set-up. If you are based at, say Gosling, why would you ever be at the NTC?

Yes. I've been arguing something similar for a while. After all, a far cheaper way of helping players, rather than giving direct cash, is to make resources widely available.

I think the 'free access to the experts' argument is key. It's precisely what most middle-ranked players can't afford on an individual basis, and precisely what is reasonably cheap for the LTA to provide (because the guys are already on salaries and can't be fully booked, by definition, if the place is empty - and, anyway, a lot of it gets economies of scale i.e. nutrition advice can be done in groups etc. etc.)

And it's obviously 100% daft to have facilities sitting empty. So let them use it. If you then get inundated (as if!), review the situation.

Players who are based in Nottingham or wherever, say, should be encouraged to come for one-week training sessions, on a group basis, maybe with specific focuses i.e. we;re doing a one-week training programme with emphasis on the mental aspect of tennis, free, sign up now.

Players want to be involved and 'cared' about, and facilities need to be used.

As to not being allowed to use the gym, Otto - what????? Are they scared you're going to hurt yourself? Or that they'll have to take the plastic bubble-wrap off the machines? Ridiculous.

EddietheEagle · County player

paulisi wrote:
I get the impression communication is the LTA weakest activity.

There seems to be no discussion with the players, coaches, parents or counties about strategies or development.

Interesting preceding comment from Otto. The collective voice holds the answers as he infers, but who speaks and who remains silent in the shadows?

I've said this before. You cannot exclude from discussion the overarching influence of Wimbledon - with its land, its hundreds of millions in financial firepower and, perhaps even more importantly, the overall tone it sets for the game. To the public, tennis and Wimbledon are one and the same. It's nothing to do with us, the club says. But how could any responsible parent or relation - you perhaps - continually hand money over to a child for his benefit, knowing it goes on drugs? That would be an unthinkable proposition to you as a parent. But not in tennis seemingly, a sport where inconvenient truth forms a way of life.

Top down, you start with the money, the governance and proceed from there; no sport flourishes without fit-for-purpose governance. Bottom up, you start with the invaluable, incremental, technical improvements that players and eagle-eyed, seasoned coaches will only too readily list - provided they get to those meetings!

Ratty · County player

Coup Droit wrote:
As to not being allowed to use the gym, Otto - what????? Are they scared you're going to hurt yourself? Or that they'll have to take the plastic bubble-wrap off the machines? Ridiculous.

Maybe it's not so ridiculous. Gym equipment, particularly free weights, is dangerous. If a club allows unsupervised access to its gym, that would be very unwise. And supervision costs money - the three people needed to cover 12 hours per day 7 days per week would cost about £100,000 pa in London.

Yes, the NTC in retrospect appears to have been a waste of money, like so many vanity projects. Yes, there's lots of lovely unused courts, but magically generating players to play on them is actually very hard. It's in Roehampton, and a long way from non-road frequent public transport. Driving round London is very slow and very boring, so that limits its catchment radius for non-performance players to a maximum of 5 miles, realistically.

How about putting on week-long performance camps for promising juniors - it sounds great doesn't it. But children can only do, maybe, 6 hours per day of strenuous exercise. What do you do with your gang of, er, "energetic" children for the other 18 hours? Where do they sleep? Who supervises them? You know, the boring - and very expensive - logistical stuff.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

So, Anne Keothavong says she offered to help out at the NTC, and coach, or whatever, FOR FREE, but has only been contact once.....

"Keothavong said that after retiring two and a half years ago, she offered to volunteer at the NTC in Roehampton but had only been contacted once since then, which she described as "ridiculous"."

see www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/34978027

you've got to cry....

indiana · Tennis legend

Interesting, also in that BBC article, the carefully worded response by Michael Downey to Monday's PC. So the door is always open to the Davis Cup guys. Evo, you should have been in there Maybe give less of a sense it is up to them and others to come to the powers ( not that it got Anne very far with her offer ) than show more intention to consult down as more of a matter of course ?

Hopefully Peter Keen will be much more consultative and at least seek out opinions from these many folk in the game that Anne K says are passionate and want to give back. If some of these people can be more included going forward all the better. People can make a difference.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 2nd of December 2015 12:45:30 PM

EddietheEagle · County player

You'd think that Keothavong in there driving the place alongside Judy Murray and a few other coaches would have the place humming, boys and girls all hitting together, Spartak Academy-style. The more female coaches the merrier; the children would be looked after better. These administrators need docking a few quid for every hour the courts (and gym!) remain empty.

Ratty · County player

EddietheEagle wrote:
You'd think that Keothavong in there driving the place alongside Judy Murray and a few other coaches would have the place humming, boys and girls all hitting together, Spartak Academy-style. The more female coaches the merrier; the children would be looked after better. These administrators need docking a few quid for every hour the courts (and gym!) remain empty.

If only it were so easy.

Where will they come from, these boys and girls, and how will they get there? The only rail station remotely within walking distance is Barnes, which is 0.7 miles away, and which serves the impeccably middle class areas of SW London and Surrey. And while Anne Keothavong might occasionally work for free, any paid staff working in Roehampton will need to be paid London rates.

And of course the NTC used to be a training base for performance players, but get this - IT JUST DIDN'T WORK OUT!!!! Who can forget Pizza-gate in 2007 with David Rice & Naomi Broady and the so-called party lifestyle of Britain's top juniors?

Honestly, the only way to stop people dredging this up all the time will be to knock the courts down.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Ratty - what's one rather rowdy teenage party in 2007 (EIGHT years ago!) got to do with anything?

Kids get rowdy. It's normal. And it was a long time ago. You can't say: hey, that proves it, the place is a disaster.

Doesn't make logical sense.

The place failed because of management.

(And that's maybe why there was a party lifestyle).

Draper's thinking was flawed. But the place could work fine.

Most academies in France don't have great access. (Land is cheaper if out of town).

But the kids live there. (As the players used to at NTC). And are schooled there (or locally). It's only one idea but it wouldn't be hard. Provide top tennis facilities and training. Sub-contract the schooling out to supervised correspondance course runners. Or come to an agreement with a local school. And have a live-in youngsters academy. Which would then attract the older players as there would be more professionals/experts and more of a buzz about the place.

I'm nit saying it's the best option (there are tons of other ones) but it's a valid one.

NB London pay rates are, frankly, barely any different from anywhere else - I know! :(

indiana · Tennis legend

Management, management, management ...

I remain far from convinced the NTC was beyond life even as originally intended. The idea that it wasn't possible to provide the culture and leadership there that British pro players couldn't very usefully develop together just remains very strange to me.

Whatever and whyever it was seen to not work, there must still be so much more that could be done there, and certainly with youngsters, if folk really think what CAN we do.

There is nothing intrinsically unmanageable about young or older British tennis players compared to the great and productive group dynamics found in many other sports in the UK and abroad.

People, management ...

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 2nd of December 2015 06:53:45 PM

EddietheEagle · County player

If the coaching were free (and I'm not suggesting it would be) you'd fill that place on Day 1 with ten applications for every place. You'd audition, select an intake of the most promising and go from there.

In fact, you could fill the courts day and night because you'd have adult groups in there too: good players; ambitious seniors; learners; wannabee superstars; the lot. People would bite your hand off to train there.

On a separate note, one thing the LTA could do at this point is take the Davis Cup round on a road trip and hold a series of seminars of the kind Felgate did on that single occasion which Otto refers to in the Davis Cup thread. If you have performance coaches saying these meetings are invaluable, then now couldn't be a better time to hold them. The LTA could present basic facts and figures relating to each region and the meeting would then be thrown open to an exchange of views generally. The presence of a known player or coaches would enhance the sessions and help to draw participants in as would authoritative representation from Wimbledon. The LTA has already acknowledged it would welcome such an exchange with the elite players so the general principle as such is already accepted. Drawing in views from those who work at the coal face can only enhance the exercise. Does the LTA have have the gumption and energy to do something like this?

baxi2 · Lower Club Player

Management ?

May be sheer hypocrisy has stalled progress ?

Mr Smith has had more than a hand in guiding the LTA ship over the last 10 years after all he was head of the mens and womens programs as well as Davis cup captain. Before this he headed the junior program ! The information is all on Wikipedia ! (Headed under 16s There cant be many with more clout than him. Its shameful for him to come out in support of Andy Murray criticising the LTA for having no juniors when Leon is arguably the main protagonist ! Surely Andy Murray should be criticising Leon ?

Quote :-

British captain Leon Smith, once Head of Men?s and Women?s Tennis at the LTA concurred: ?I would guess £25 million has gone into junior programs,? said Murray?s fellow Scot. ?Maybe it is spread too thinly but it?s not worked, because there are no juniors" .

indiana · Tennis legend

Shameful ?

So Leon questions how funds have maybe been used in the past. Has he denied being part of it all ? His LTA history is hardly a secret.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 2nd of December 2015 09:14:02 PM

Spectator · All-time great

Others will understand the ins and outs better than I - but as I understand it, Mr Smith was the U16s coach in 2006 and the U18s coach in 2008, before becoming DC coach and head of player development in 2010.

So on the negative side, he must have been part of the NTC setup at the point where the discipline doesn't seem to have been the best. And if he had any responsibility for transitions for the 1990s, he was part of a system that didn't quite work. And I'm not sure what it means to be head of player development and how much power he had to create/change the system, so it's hard to assess his role in setting up programmes (or not) that should be bringing through juniors now.

But would I be correct in thinking that he also had responsibility of some sort (whether directly or in terms of oversight) for the coaching of the 1990s (Dan Evans, Dan Cox, Marcus Willis et al) who achieved quite a bit as juniors and also for the next wave - Mr Golding, Mr Broady, Mr Morgan et al - at the point at which they were beginning to break through? If so, that's quite something. I've always felt that the period from 2008 to 2012 was quite exceptional. Players seemed to achieve quite a bit generally, and the sheer number of major titles won by GB players was extraordinary, rather like (though not quite up to) some of the Australian years or the US run at present. That is to say that you may well have someone like Vesely dominating a given year, but to have so many different players competing at the highest level and winning Grade As in singles and doubles was remarkable. (In the same period, the much vaunted French programme had one GS winner ... PHH in doubles. He's done reasonably well for himself since, though. And yes, that's another discussion)

At any rate, while commenting on some things might not be very helpful, commenting on the lack of juniors in slams doesn't feel like hypocrisy. A number of juniors who came through while he was national coach produced precisely the kind of results that many would like to see now. The one thing I would say is that if the 2008/9 to 2012 period is your idea of the norm, you're going to spend a lot of your life being disappointed, whatever country you're in.

-- Edited by Spectator on Wednesday 2nd of December 2015 10:01:59 PM