British Tennis inquest

Tennis Saltire · Junior player

British Tennis inquest

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

A question also being pursued by the Beeb in the light of comments by Heather following her exit from Roland-Garros yesterday.

indiana · Tennis legend

Note that that Daily Mail article about Heather's forthright comments has already been well received and provoked some discussion in two other threads :
British women section - French Open
General discussion secton - The LTA

While there are many problems with British tennis and indeed undoubtably different aspects for players to look at, i have for now one or two late night comments about the initial post's comments about the players.

Tennis players of all nations apart from the very best ( though they are not immune ) clearly very often lose to lower ranked players generally and in Slams. They ard not machines but unpredictable sportspeople. Put two of these unpredictable beings on either side of the net and on any given days many relative and some big surprises happen while the loser has been trying their best. I am not sure about these "should not be accepted / tolerated" phrases.

There's also a bit of a mixture goung on, from initially talking about players not deliverng at Slam level what they can elsewhere ( again far frim a purely Brifush issue, but with many many othetrs having had good successes at times elsewhere ) to then discuss such as Jo Konta who, as said, has reached two Slam SFs. Re her losing to players she is expected to beat, again such a sin is widespread.

ROSAMUND · Futures level

Correction Jo has reached 3 Grand Slam semi finals not 2. It's not fair to pull our best players to pieces over their Grand Slam performances. Without Jo and Heather we would have had virtually no representives in the Ladies Grand Slams over the last 6 years. The LTA is the one who should be examined throughly for our failures at the top level. Re fans not tolerating players performances e.g.Cam the players are playing for themselves excluding team events. They are not playing for us unless we had a bet on them and we have lost our money. But then they have not forced us to bet on them.

-- Edited by ROSAMUND on Wednesday 30th of September 2020 07:24:58 AM

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, sorry ROSAMUND, I also was missing out Jo's initial 2016 Aus Open SF. So point even more made that her particular Slam record stands up pretty well. A final would be great as could be said of many well ranked players. From where she came in her early 20s she's done very well.

Good point re the players essentilly playing for themselves. We support them, we criticise them at times, we take it upon ourselves to make suggestions but we have no real entitlement. If anyone is justified in feeling let down at times it is the players themselves and perhaps their teams. Clearly that's who any underperformance truly effects and they have a vested interest in continually trying to do better.

The LTA, on the other hand ...

ROSAMUND · Futures level

indiana wrote:
Yes, sorry ROSAMUND, I also was missing out Jo's initial 2016 Aus Open SF. So point even more made that her particular Slam record stands up pretty well. A final would be great as could be said of many well ranked players. From where she came in her early 20s she's done very well.

Good point re the players essentilly playing for themselves. We support them, we criticise them at times, we take it upon ourselves to make suggestions but we have no real entitlement. If anyone is justified in feeling let down at times it is the players themselves and perhaps their teams. Clearly that's who any underperformance truly effects and they have a vested interest in continually trying to do better.

Mentioning well ranked players not reaching finals Elina Svitolina is a good example even with 15 tour titles. There is one aspect about Jo's semi finals that is interesting.She reached the semi finals in Australia on her debut, she reached the semi finals of Paris in the year when she first won a match there and she entered Wimbledon in 2017 having won only 1 match there in previous years and went on to reach the semi finals. There was no previous success in any of them. You are right to say from where she came from in her early 20's she's done very well.

ROSAMUND · Futures level

I see the headline on the BBC tennis website is "LTA chief dismisses Watson's comments about running of the sport. " About par for the course!

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

I read Jamie has jumped in and supporting heather but its behind a firewall so I cant read it. Anyone able to paste his comments?

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Ps why has this thread got a flashing blue and orange arrow thing going on?!

flamingowings · All-time great

JonH comes home wrote:
I read Jamie has jumped in and supporting heather but its behind a firewall so I cant read it. Anyone able to paste his comments?

Helpfully a similar article (probably) is in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/sep/30/jamie-murray-wants-lta-to-think-long-term-after-french-open-failures

indiana · Tennis legend

ROSAMUND wrote:
I see the headline on the BBC tennis website is "LTA chief dismisses Watson's comments about running of the sport. " About par for the course!

Gave a lot of consideration to that then

Deucebag · Intermediate Club Player

I might of stumbled on this conversation a little late as I am new to this site but I just wanted to add I would probably take heathers comments with a pinch of salt. This may have been just to deflect attention towards other areas following her loss however there may have been a bit of pressure on her being the last Brit in the french. I have always been a big fan of Heather and although she won the US open juniors at the last hour of her junior career up until that stage she was never one of the top juniors in the world nor is it important as development and firepower as well as many other aspects are more important at that age. I also heard during the British tour summer series that she Practices with some of the juniors so I doubt she would have said this in a way to offend any of them.
But the bottom line is she is right. The numbers of players coming through are not enough
We definitely have an abundance of talent in this country but we do not have the talented coaches who are good enough to take them all the way through as well as not having the best conditions in this country and also topped off with having a Performance team within our federation who quite frankly are robbing a living and Unfortunately the national academies will fail.I mean when the time comes for the player/parent to choose between an American college or University to continue their education with the opportunity to play a lower level of tennis or on the flip side put all your faith in a coach in this country who has no track record of taking players from junior towards the top 50/100 as well as the poor weather conditions and costs injuries lack of support and be a lonely soul in the process because you dont have many friends on the same pathway/level. It would take a very tough individual/family who was deeply in love with the sport with an abundance of talent who had complete confidence in themselves to choose this path.
Of course they are going to play safe every time unfortunately.