Join the debate or post a new topic

Sorry to steal the tag form The Times but I just want to highlight some good comments that are coming up from the issues discussed on this site. I have entered them onto a main page as I feel they should be more public than hidden away in the comments section. I reiterate from previous posts you all have the ability to post these thoughts, articles, ideas yourselves – please do as it will make the site much more interesting for you……

2 Comments Close this window Jump to comment form

Rob Lewis said... This could be replicated for most sports as you say - and Oz haven't produced a tennis player since Hewitt and certainly no female top ranked player for a generation. I would have less worry about national champions as role models if there was a decent infrastructure for sport in this country apart from rugby and soccer- I think even cricket suffers although the ECB are at least addressing the issue.

Tennis will always be seen as an elitist sport- it is more class ridden than most sports, difficult to master, and usually poorly coached in schools (as the blog suggests). Each sport needs its own development strategy in the sense that it competes for 'customers' (read participants) and it would be interesting to know why the LTA thinks national champions are a desirable target rather than increased participation in the sport, coupled with increased facilities and access to affordable coaching.

As with cricket, getting young players to experiment with a 'short' version of the game should be encouraged ('short tennis' and paddle tennis is almost non existent outside specialist centres in my experience in the UK compared with, say, Spain). Monday, 11 June, 2007

Tarminder said... The article starts with the 'humiliating news' and it seems as a surprise that country like Serbia can do better than cash rich UK, ... they need to take another look at the amount of tennis played in UK and country like Serbia, Croatia, Czec … etc. Look at our University Tennis team, no British players (except last year we had Rob in the team) and we are all England University Champions. As the blog at the end of the article express lack of opportunity at participation level, it is even more so at the elite level.

Of course, British Tennis is one of the richest associations in the world and those riches come at the cost of players they seek to produce. There are more opportunities in England to train or be coached (i.e. if you have the money to pay for it) at tennis then to actually play the game. Britain is the only country, where the most talented ones, who get all the funding, don’t actually get to play the sport. The coaches in this country think 'tennis coaching is a sport!!' Players are on court as long as coaches are on court. Moreover the competition structure is poor and insufficient to give enough match play to the players.

The only way to measure how well a country does at competitions is to see how much competition is there within the country. For instance, Croatia (neighbouring Serbia) holds four Women ITF $10000 tournaments (lowest prise money tournament for the players who are starting up on the tour) with a qualifying draw of 128 every summer (there are many more of these tournaments throughout the year in that area). This means many local players actually are able to play an international tournament at home - an opportunity to earn world ranking points at the door steps. In contrast, all the international tournaments held in England are so high profile that lower ranked or starter would not get in. In addition, even the ITF $10000 tournaments never have a qualifying draw bigger than 32, again a situation where only ranked players (who are normally foreigners) get in the tournaments.

While I was playing at one of the events in England, one of the coaches at the venue expressed the annoyance about the amount of business and money lost by conducting such events, therefore, the smaller the draw the better. Moreover, there are not enough opportunities for players to play tournaments at local level, leave alone International level. There aren’t enough tournaments, and the referees of the different tournaments will not coordinate to help players play more matches during the week. For most players, these tournaments are the motivating events and a fair chance to test the practicality to peruse career in full time tennis.

I am sorry to say but kids don’t feel motivated to do a sport watching their grandparents playing for social and that little bit of gentle exercise! And that is the age group which plays more tennis then any other in the country (visit of the private clubs on Tuesday morning). Aspiring junior players need to witness and be a participant in the real action of the sport. Tournaments like Wimbledon only create image of wowness and feeling impossibility to achieve that standard in the minds. Boris Becker, three time Wimbledon Champion said in one of his interviews that when he won the first Wimbledon title at the age of 17years, he didn’t realise at the time how big of deal was to win this prestigious title, for him it was just one of the many matches played as he enjoyed playing and winning.

Regarding coaching, as Rob mentioned coaching isn’t that great in the country, it’s actually too good to let players develop. Every coach is an expert, and they rarely listen to each other. (try academics!! - PK) That’s my experience of attending all the coaching conferences. They really don’t even list to the person conducting the conference and are too eager to express their opinion. Also the amount of emphasis is placed on the private one to one coaching for children, correct techniques (as if there is one) and even the money LTA subsidies for the coaching of the tennis players, is beyond my ability to understand. All throughout my training, I have never had a private lesson, it has been all about training. Here, juniors get up to 5 one to one lessons a week, if they are the talented once, the LTA subsidise that.

All I can say is thank goodness Nadal is not British, and if he was, by now British coaches would have spent all his playing time in correcting a funny forehand follow-through, poor backhand technique and not so powerful first serve ... the guy just won French open for the 3rd time in a row with all that, at the age of 21years. Whereas Andy Murray with technique and even the tennis talent level superior to Nadal, haven’t been in the list to title contenders yet, clearly the amount of playing of the game is missing even at Murray’s level. This is not just an opinion, I have been to the base training centre where Nadal and Moya have trained their. The full time players at the centre get 1 ball between the two to train, in England that will be considered very unprofessional on the tennis coaches’ part. Another comparison, Nadal's coach is his uncle who have never played tennis himself at any fancy level, where as the LTA spends close to £1million to hire his American coach, Brad Gilbert. Even the present LTA motto is to "place best coaches with best players!!" Please explain the meaning of the above. My observation of training and teaching in England is that coaches themselves are striving for the glory to be a coach of a champion rather then placing importance on the player or rather a person, an individual ... and giving an opportunity to the player to develop.

They seem to be responsible for every shot a player hits on the court. It has been pointed out in the past, that tennis is over taught in Britain and thus the British players are known to have the best techniques on the circuit. The most talented ones have everything planed for them, when they sleep, what they eat, what their backhand grip should be and etc ... (attention to detail is the name) and when it comes to playing, they lose to the most notorious of the kids from Spain and France (who are moaned at for running around, shouting in the corridors of the hotels in the middle of the night at the tournaments), .... One of the coaches in my interviews told me so. Another thing the LTA recently did was to promote tennis in inner city areas, thinking on the lines of Russian players’ success on the circuit and the fact that they do so well striving to get out of poverty. So what do they do, they officially put the charge on use of pubic courts in the area to structure the tennis. Result, now even on the public courts, tennis coaching is more popular sport then tennis. Does help a lot of tennis coaching to make a good living … I should be the last one to complain!

I don't think Britain should complain about not producing Champions, as the professionals surely do make a lot more money from the sport then any other country does ... (may be US but they have a big head start, and also the advantage from economies of scale). Blaming the bad weather, not enough infrastructures, coaches, no desire among the players ... bla bla bla … for not succeeding are only cover up excusing, for not making the change they really need to make. All the changes in British tennis are very business focused on finance and funding then on the performance. The required change to facilitating better and more playing opportunities (both at participation and performance level) have the potential to take away that elitism of the sport and may seriously affect the business of tennis coaching in the country. Also the secret that tennis is actually not that difficult, specially with the improvement in technology and advancement of equipment, might just come out and take away the sense of difficulty associated with mastering the game, … and may be more and more people will give the game a fair go.
Monday, 18 June, 2007