LTA Strategy

Michael D · All-time great

LTA Strategy

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Agree with that post 100% Michael D. Absolutely nothing to suggest anything will change in any way.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I have decided that the LTA need a change of tack.

Have they not realised the common thread to success?

Sacha Zverev of Germany, Denis Shapovalov of Canada, Stefano Tsitsipas of Greece....... all have mothers who were tennis players in the Soviet Union

So the strategy should be to teach our promising young men how to make eyes at young Russian female tennis players and then nature will take its course.....

Of course, it might be a bit late and it's only Soviet-style mothers that work (certainly Tsitsipas says his was very old school - routine, discipline. Although tempered with Greek-style 'fun' from Dad who was main coach)

But it's got to be worth a try....

Michael D · All-time great

Why not go the full hog CD? Simply run match making boot camps using soviet era methods, and make it clear that future LTA funding depends on the resultant children being brought up using the soviet style forms of discipline. That'll keep them away from mobile phones and social media...

Michael D · All-time great

The LTA publishes it's accounts for 2018 and shows a loss of some £8.8 million. Considering all its Wimbledon revenue, that's quite an achievement to manage to lose that much still. The figures explained below, including 'a capital investment programme into building and improving Britain's tennis infrastructure, such as building new indoor courts in areas where there isn't any tennis provision currently.'

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/48293633

Shhh · Challenger level

To produce more top 100 players in a conversation we have had many times on here but looking at what tournaments the LTA stages speciafically, what sort of Pro-Tournaments should they fund?

The pre-Wimbledon grass events cost an awful lot. It raises the sports profile in UK a bit, gives a few opportunities but are they really worth the very large cost? Under previous administrations we staged quite a high number of futures events but found many players funded a living with that circuit, but did not really break through to the next level. Does this aspect have any bearing at all on top level success or is it all down to other factors?

paulisi · Tennis legend

It seems to me that they are not getting the sponsorship for the big pre- Wimbledon events or the ticket sales to match.
Birmingham is not particularly well supported and I'm not sure Nottingham is either.
With losses like this, I expect the other events to be cut again.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

From Dan:

www.eurosport.co.uk/tennis/french-open/2019/britain-s-dan-evans-hits-out-at-lta-after-practice-with-goat-federer_sto7290062/story.shtml

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Well the University of South Carolina and TCU appear to be having as much impact on the development of our young talent between the ages of 18 and 22 as the LTA.

Congratulations. To Jubby and the team coaching him at UNiversity of South Carolina

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Interesting report about what is working, and what is not, in the Canadian system:

www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/23/how-did-canada-become-a-tennis-superpower-its-complicated

christ · Futures qualifying

Coup Droit wrote:
Interesting report about what is working, and what is not, in the Canadian system:

www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/23/how-did-canada-become-a-tennis-superpower-its-complicated

Summary: the system can't claim any credit, it isn't really working, but they want a lot more money. Sounds very familiar.

... there's also something vaguely racist (although quite possibly accurate) about saying that only immigrants have a strong work ethic.

-- Edited by christ on Tuesday 28th of May 2019 09:04:50 AM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

christ wrote:
Coup Droit wrote:
Interesting report about what is working, and what is not, in the Canadian system:

www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/23/how-did-canada-become-a-tennis-superpower-its-complicated
Summary: the system can't claim any credit, it isn't really working, but they want a lot more money. Sounds very familiar.

Yep, that's what I thought.

And the fact it's a French guy running it struck home too.

The French found some time ago that centres of excellence didn't really work for girls. So you'd have thought that wouldn't have been a surprise.

And - as I keep twittering on about - it's not about the specific federation detection and training etc. It just scrapes the surface.

You need the parents to play, and play quite well. They get their kids playing and then - hugely importantly - can help train them in the early days (and later days) when it's way too costly to take lessons and the federation aren't there.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Tennis is such a small sport with relatively few naturally gifted athletes opting for it as children. It is skewed further by the enormous costs of coaching. Its not rocket science when 2 out of 3 of Canadas young stars have parents who are tennis coaches and or elite players (Shapovalovs mother coach and on Russian national team) to see two factors that impact the likelihood of becoming a tennis playing child before the age of 8 and good at it. Deniss tennis skills wee apparent at the age of 6!

A strong work ethic is not uncommon in families who migrate for opportunity and are successful, it is also implicit in athletes. Some of the parents are also athletes or expressing their own athletic aspirations via ( intensively coaching) their child. Retrodpectively its easy to see they were prepared to sacrifice time/skills/money to facilitate their children in reaching their goals.

Obviously very few children get into the top 150 and are able to make a living from tennis let alone have the wealth or skills to facilitate early technical development. Those that are successful are a self selected group ie good athlete, early high quality coaching facilitated by wealth and or parent who can coach, strong work ethic this is in no way unique to tennis players from Canada. (Ref Murrays, Clarkes, Drapers, Baltacha, Noah, Zevrevs, Fritz, Golding, Appleton, Holte, Tomic thats just off the top of my head.

All the more remarkable that Paul Jubb has got to the level hes got to! Hopefully he will get some decent support from the LTA! Some summer wild cards???

-- Edited by Oakland2002 on Wednesday 29th of May 2019 04:33:43 AM

EddietheEagle · County player

Coaching isn't the be all and end all. You need good clubs, decent facilities, bubbles to play in winter and a well organised, national club competition structure which provides direction, focus and purpose for the sport as a whole, none of which characterises our game currently. Players emerge (and helpful coaches too) and you improve your own level as much through practice, training and competition with your peers and betters, as coaching. Children don't need to be organised like sheep, told to stand in line and wait their turn. They're better off picking up racquets and mucking in. Structured coaching for the young at clubs is largely wasted effort and money, unless parents are looking for a babysitting substitute.

christ · Futures qualifying

The two things that the successful ones have in common appear to be motivation and motivated coaches. With these two things (and, of course, a modicum of talent), success is possible. Bubbles, centres of excellence, even tournaments are icing on the cake rather than requirements.

Coaches that are nothing more than glorified babysitters are never going to nurture talent. It is no coincidence that the successful kids have talented, motivated coaches (often parents), but the National tennis organisations have tried to formalise this into a system, but the system appears designed to drive out individual enthusiasm and replace it with proceduralised things that can be taught by rote.

My (admittedly local and parochial) experience of LTA coaches is that they are/ were fairly gifted tennis players that chose coaching as a way of staying with what they were good at instead of getting a "proper" job. Tennis coaching is - in general - a comparatively poorly paid job, and so the coach's day-to-day life is mostly spent trying to eke out enough money to survive, rather than being a vocation - spending long hours with someone else's children trying to individualise the training for each to determine where the talent, if any, lies and then protecting and nurturing such talent as can be found is not a job for someone who can barely make ends meet. Rarely are these coaches inspirational, and still less often do they have the ability to spot and nurture talent - even when they are/ were very skilful players. Combine this with local and regional staff who likewise selected sports administration as a way of staying near the sport that they were quite good at rather than because they have any innate ability to lead inspire and support coaches or clubs - particularly in the soft "non-sport" part of their job, and success is the last thing that one should expect.

I don't know about the talent or skillset of the higher (or even middle) echelons of the LTA, but what I see of the lower levels does not fill me with confidence: coaches that are happier on their mobile phones setting up their next lesson whilst kids stand in lines to miss forehands, "supported" by local administrators that are only good for helping clubs to fill out application forms is not a recipe for success. Finding/ creating inspirational coaches, and paying them so that they can concentrate on being coaches (as well as inspirational and talented regional representation, that can help advise clubs and coaches on the best way to encourage and inspire both the talented and non-talented, rather than in how to raise enough money to pay for a bubble) would be a start, and would relieve a lot of the financial pressure on both the coaches and the players. How many coaches could Wimbledon's profits support if the LTA stopped paying for National Tennis Centres?

... but I guess that it is all down to finding and encouraging talent, in administrators coaches and players, and this is very difficult - if not impossible - to capture in an instruction manual that can be photocopied, circulated and measured by career bureaucrats that are perpetually held to account by their (ever-changing) Key Performance Indicators.

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