LTA Strategy

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

LTA Strategy

The Realist · Junior player

Very sad to read the adverse comments about coaches. In any profession there will be always be a mixture of good and bad, but there are lots of good, even excellent coaches out there!

I will be regarded as biased as my elder daughter has been coaching for just over a year, but our family has always found the coaches in our area ( rural Cotswolds) to be excellent, professional and giving of their time.

Our daughters were lucky to be coached by a great role model who had just left the professional tour and who came to watch them in tournaments all over the country free of charge, until I had to insist on paying him for his travel / time. I could also give you examples of other coaches in small clubs in our county who have coached children for free when their parents couldn't afford to pay for lessons

Perhaps we are lucky to live in a nice part of the country which attracts excellent, motivated coaches, but we have no complaints at all about the coaches in our area. Our younger daughter went to a UK University in the Midlands whose tennis coaches were enthusiastic and supportive and concerned to improve the players

The only bad coach we has come across was the so called coach of our elder daughter's US college team who was merely a " man manager" whose coaching comprised of shouting abuse at the player if they dared to lose.

Our elder daughter is a gifted tennis player and has found, ( admittedly somewhat to her surprise) that she loves coaching ; it is certainly not a case of doing it because she can't think of anything else to do; and I can't believe that she is in a minority

As for money, well she is just preparing her accounts for her first full tax year of coaching , and if she had been at a UK university she would be well above the threshold for repaying a student loan

Yes there are bad coaches out there, but don't tar them all with the same brush

Oakland2002 · All-time great

I dont know, I have met a couple of inspirational coaches at club level, two different clubs. Always professional, motivated by getting kids into tennis and developing a love of the game. One had converted fro a PE teacher the other played professionally. Often it is the clubs themselves that really dont want big junior programmes cluttering up their courts (the members) or if they do see them as a cash cow and generally feel the best courts should be reserved for them (the competitive doubles players) to play their local league matches on. One club did integrate juniors into the adult teams the other no interest at all really.

I have also come across some excellent junior performance coaches who have had success be it getting players into the national set up as internationally ranked juniors moving to the professional ranks or into good college scholarships. The rate limiting factor is the number of elite athletes that come their way or are discouraged by the cost. I would have trusted my child with the set up they have. Honestly though I am firm believer in kids playing multi sports and if my child had the necessary athleticism I would probably choose another sport with a wider professional base.

Football has a plethora of junior football clubs run by adults (volunteer coaches all trained to various levels by the FA) for children, they play each other in leagues and rarely have to travel more than 4 or 5 miles for a competitive fixture. A similar set up would be like Turkeys voting for Christmas! That is how you engage large numbers of children and pick up the next level athletes capable of playing sport (they can usually choose) professionally. They well usually only come to tennis if their parent or parents are coaches and deeply invested in the sport.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Steven Retweeted

Kris Soutar

@KrisSoutar
9h9 hours ago
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It beggars belief that this needs to be pointed out. Total common sense. Competition on your doorstep seeps into all areas of tennis

Randy Walker

@TennisPublisher
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Jim Courier says the increased number of Futures and Challenger-level events in Italy is part of the reason why Italian players have seen increased success in pro tennis. Players dont have to spend so much money on planes and trains he says #MoreFutures #MoreChallengers

5:31 AM - 1 Jun 2019

flamingowings · All-time great

The LTA have said in response to a query on Twitter that the reason the men have played indoors but not the women is to even out the draws. This may be correct but optics are very bad.

wolf · Tennis legend

flamingowings wrote:
The LTA have said in response to a query on Twitter that the reason the men have played indoors but not the women is to even out the draws. This may be correct but optics are very bad.

They're really not...

christ · Futures level

Let's face it whichever way they chose to play it, someone would have found a way of complaining that it wasn't fair.

Elegant Point · Satellite level

The LTA have announced an 'exciting changes ahead'

Unfortunately they're not all quitting to let someone with a modicum of common sense run the LTA but introducing a World Tennis Number 'designed to meet the needs of all players from recreational to performance ' more info later this year..........

Unlike UTR (proprietary algorithm) the principles for the new world tennis ranking calculation will be published

https://www.lta.org.uk/play-compete/competing/competition-changes-20192020/ LTA

https://www.itftennis.com/news/308289.aspx?utm_campaign=1022280_THW%20-%20This%20Week%20-%2008%2F07%2F2019&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailtwocircles&dm_i=4OYA,LWSO,3HGFRL,2KG48,1 ITF

-- Edited by Elegant Point on Monday 8th of July 2019 08:06:51 PM

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

twitter.com/the_LTA/status/1164123258054238208

U16 and U18 Nationals moving to Easter next year with Wimbledon QWCs and Junior Wimbledon WCs on the line.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

What a sensible idea (at last).

And proper wildcards too, not just into some pre-quali event.

Really hope it will boost the National Championships

The Realist · Junior player

Excellent idea

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Agreed, this does make a lot of sense, good move.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

paulisi wrote:
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.

Turns out you where on the right track here, Paulisi, with Birminham being cut. If you have a Premier event with $1m prizemoney and no one watches and few Brits can get into the draw then probably better value to have a $250k event, with more British opportunities, even if still no one turns up to watch

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Don't know if people saw this article a couple of months back about the new LTA hot-house academies:

www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2019/07/09/lawn-tennis-associations-plans-break-away-traditional-middle/

There are 15 students, aged 12-16, who will start training when the new school year begins. Seven will be based at Stirling University and eight at Loughborough University, on a package of coaching, sports science and overseas travel that has been estimated to come to at least £90,000 per annum, yet is only charged at £5,000 to the parents.

It includes three black, Asian and minority ethnic teenagers and one child who is the daughter of a London single mother, as tennis tries to break out of its traditional middle-class image.

Interestingly, the leading 16-year-old boys declined to apply for the LTAs new programmes. The lack of any track record for the academies was a factor in their collective decision, while parents and coaches are well aware that the LTAs previous attempts to centralise tennis development have tended to backfire.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Stuart Fraser

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13h13 hours ago
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One British participant in the junior singles draws (boys and girls) at the US Open this year. One.

Your latest reminder that the LTA receives a annual surplus in the region of £30-£40 million from Wimbledon (it was a record £40.8m last year).