State of British tennis

by Jamie Jubon

Why has Britain never produced enough decent tennis players?

It’s a question that has been constantly asked ever since Fred Perry became the last player from these shores to win Wimbledon way back in 1936.

It is certainly not a question of money, with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) having poured millions of pounds into developing, coaching and funding players in the last few years, not to mention having a multi-million pound sponsorship deal with Aegon and an arrangement with Sport England, bringing in nearly £60 million between them.

However despite this financial power, the possible list of reasons why we have failed is endless. Lack of talent, poor attitude, lack of facilities and other distractions for young players are just some of the reasons thrown in when discussing the issue of Britain’s poor record in tennis.

Ok, we have Andy Murray - currently ranked at four in the world, having been as high as two earlier in the year - he is a phenomenal tennis player. Though he may not have won a Grand Slam as yet and has received a lot of criticism for failing to do so.

But there is no doubt that he will eventually win one and go on to win more. For Britain to be able to produce a player of that calibre is a huge surprise when you consider there is no other man ranked inside the top 100, and only two players, including Murray, progressed beyond the first round at Wimbledon this year.

Elena Baltacha was the other on the women’s side, where there has actually been some degree of progress with three players breaking the top 100, but serious questions have still to be asked as to why a country like ours, with a rich sporting pedigree and huge infrastructure, have failed to produce a Grand Slam winner of any kind for over 30 years, a Wimbledon men’s champion for more than 70, and who saw nine of their 11 competing singles players fall at the first hurdle at Wimbledon.

Talent

Lack of talent? Well it seems so, with only one real recognised tennis player. If you asked the average person in the street to name a current British player, they’d be hard-pressed to come up with anyone other than Andy Murray.

If you mentioned Anne Keothavong, Alex Bogdanovic or Elena Baltacha to them they’d probably look about as confused as a Brit aboard. Only people who regularly watch tennis will be aware of any other British players. In Spain, there are five or six players who are hugely recognisable to the public, France and Russia the same. Even smaller countries such as Serbia have been producing some outstanding players over the last few years.

The LTA made a bold statement back in 2003 by saying that the number of British players in the world’s top 100 would double in the next 10 years. It wasn’t much of a statement when you consider that only two players were in the top 100 at the time, and whilst it may have been proved somewhat correct with the women, on the men’s side six years later, the number of players has actually declined.

A timid tiger from Oxford has made way for a spirited Scot from Dunblane and good old Greg Rusedski has swapped the tennis court for a SkySports studio. We are down to one, and there is no immediate sign of anyone about to join him. They may have four years left but I’m sure they didn’t expect the number of men’s players to fall as opposed to rise.

Wildcards

Lack of talent is certainly a viable argument, however leading figures in the game have said before that British players are hugely talented but just don’t have the desire to become as good as they can be. Andy Murray is certainly in this school of thought, having criticised his Davis Cup team-mates attitudes on numerous occasions.

These under-performing players are being funded continually by the ATP, flying around different countries usually to come home having fallen at the first hurdle. You only have to look at Wimbledon to see what Murray’s talking about.

Wildcards are awarded to players not ranked high enough to automatically qualify, and Wimbledon officials regularly use them to give British players not really good enough to play a chance to compete at Wimbledon. It may sound a good idea, and somewhat romantic. But it’s not a chance, it's countless chances.

Indeed, Bogdanovic has only just been told he won’t be awarded a wildcard again after EIGHT first-round defeats in the last eight years. It is offering a chance to mediocrity and devaluing the championships. If players are good enough to play, then they’ll play.

Surely, it would act as a great motivation for young British tennis players to dream about one day being ranked high enough to compete at Wimbledon. Just giving out wildcards to players who are either not ready to play or simply not good enough to play, is just making things too easy for players who don’t deserve any kind of preferential treatment.

Bogdanovic also disgracefully pocketed £10,750 for his Wimbledon loss, along with all the other first-round losers, a perfect example of the acceptance of mediocrity and of the players having things all too easy. The performances of these players over the years have shown it doesn’t help them.

The Sports Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, has also put his voice into the argument, threatening to reduce the money, £27million - to be exact - that the LTA are given by Sport England unless results do not improve. “I’m getting tired of the excuses, we need to find a way to be successful now” he said. “If the results don't come, reducing the money is something that has to be looked at.”

Murray has said before that: “Someone in authority in British tennis needs to admit that Britain is doing really badly as a tennis nation.” Maybe this could be the kick up the backside that both the LTA and the players themselves need, by threatening to reduce finance. It will certainly get Bogdanovic worried.

However Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the All England club delivered a typical response. “Everybody talks about money and in fact, overall, it's a pretty small sum of money to develop an entire sport across the UK. You could put an argument, I think, that says if performance is not ideal, then you look at more funding, not less funding.”

Facilities

Lack of facilities could be the real issue. Playing tennis for free in this country is a very rare thing. Tennis courts are few and far between and where there are some, invariably there is a cost. I

f you go to Spain for instance, every corner you turn there are tennis courts. Some of them are free, some of them are not but they are there and there are lots of them.

An argument may be that the weather in this country compared to somewhere like Spain, where the climate is perfect for tennis, is a reason why there are so many more courts over there and why so many more people play the game. That point of view holds some validity but tennis could still so easily become more accessible to lots of people if there were more courts being built.

The state of facilities is summed up really when our only good tennis player had to up-root from Scotland and head for Barcelona at 15 years of age so that he could fulfil his dream. Most families wouldn’t have the money to allow their child to head for a foreign country in pursuit of sporting ambition, leaving the path to tennis glory in this country ever more with the middle-classes, another long-standing problem with British tennis.

Class

The working-class are clearly at a huge disadvantage in this country when it comes to tennis. The lack of decent facilities and poor weather mean that the best way to be successful is to be coached elsewhere.

Working class families just can’t afford this and it’s also no coincidence that the last decent tennis player to be coached in this country was Tim Henman, Tiger Tim being the definition of middle class.

Without the money to pay for proper coaching, equipment and facilities, or to fund a move abroad, working class British tennis players will always be at a premium. Compare this to other countries, where the majority of tennis players are working-class, again summing up the facilities problem and availability of tennis courts over here.

People like Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France and Spain’s Rafael Nadal are average, down-to-earth people who the public of their country can relate to, having clearly been brought up from working-class backgrounds. This gets the working-class interested in the sport and makes them want to get involved and start playing themselves.

The Williams sisters are another prime example of such working-class success. Raised in the back-streets of LA, they are now the two most successful and famous women tennis players in the world. They may be a one-off but it just shows what can be achieved when facilities are made readily available for the working class.

Future

It’s not all bad news though. Some of you may have heard of Laura Robson, and she really is a supremely talented young British tennis player (we’ll ignore the fact she’s Australian-born).

Winner of the Wimbledon junior title last year at just 15 years-of-age, she is the brightest hope in the aforementioned gradual progress of British women’s tennis over the last twelve months. Certainly Baltacha, Keothavong and Katie O’Brien can all be proud of having cracked the top 100, and Miss Robson is certain to join them.

It is certainly progress and if the women’s game improves again in the next few years to the degree it has done over the last few, there may, dare we say it, be some hope to hold on to.