A seven-point plan to rescue British tennis

After the debacle of Great Britain’s Davis Cup defeat in Lithuania at the weekend, which is almost certain to cost John Lloyd, the captain, his job, the LTA promised a review of the tie and where it could have done better.

Here, The Times becomes the governing body’s chief executive for a day and says what it would do in seven steps to turn the sport around.

1, Scrap the National Tennis Centre

The Roehampton renaissance building in southwest London is a £40 million cradle of elitism, too opulent and cosy and not fit for purpose. It is everything that the sport has no right to think that it is. There are six indoor courts and more than 60 people staring into computers. There are not enough players of sufficient quality to make the figures stack upAndy Murray was asked if he would vacate a court last week to make way for a mini-tennis tournament, so he went to practise in nearby Chiswick. One young player who used the NTC for the first time wrote to his parents saying that “everyone in there thinks they are God”.

Use it as a reference point for sports science and competitions, but abandon the pretence that it should be a high-performance centre.

2, Disband national training and support independent centres

When Judy Murray said that, rather than building one £40 million centre, the LTA should have funded forty £1 million centres across the country, she was spot on. Independence is the way forward, with competitive squads across Britain that are funded centrally but run on strict licensing guidelines. We must free the regions to do their own thing, invest in young British coaches, give them the freedom to flourish from under the iron hand of national interference. Make sure that all the courts in these centres have free access to children under the age of 16 from 6.30 to 8.30am every day.

3, End the love affair with foreigners

What do Belgians know about British tennis that British people do not? Do we really need a Belgian as player director, a 26-year-old Belgian as head of coach education and a Belgian as head of research (what is that?), as well as Belgian coaches? Yes, Belgium struck gold in Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters, but what has it achieved since? How much does this insistence on bringing foreign people into key positions in the sport motivate the young coaches in Britain?

4, Breathe new life into a moribund club system

The whole environment of British clubs, the way they are run, staffed and organised, needs to be changed if ever we are going to inspire young people to play there. We have to invest more in places to play, but also youngsters need to be able to play at the same time as their parents or grandparents, not fobbed off as outcasts A ten-year-old can learn more about strategy by facing a 70-year-old who slices and dices the ball than he ever could with a soft red ball on a half-sized red court with a cut-down racket. This absorption with mini-tennis is a scourge on the game.

Do they play mini-tennis at the Bollettieri or Casal-Sánchez academies, two of the best in the world? Of course they don’t.

5, Hand over the responsibility of wild cards into Wimbledon

Rather than have to spend countless days explaining why the performances of British players who cannot get into the Championships by right are so poor, let the All England Club decide who should fill their eight wild-card places. If it wants to give them to British players, so be it, but the LTA should leave the reckoning up to them and not be involved in the process at all.

6, Make tennis live and make it relevant

Give the coach the stature in a tennis club that a golf professional has in his. Rather than crush him with daft targets and box-ticking, let him live the dream and pass it on to his protégés. Offer free tennis equipment to every primary school in the country.

7, Be inspirational, be honest and, most important, be realistic

There is an inherent weakness at the top and tennis requires a leader of courage, wisdom and experience who stands up for his sport with concise words and strong character.

I would stop making outrageous claims, stop raising expectation to levels that cannot be realised and be prepared to take responsibility when things did not work out, not just say that I would. So if I made mistakes I would own up to them and if I made too many and the game was going down the plughole, I would resign.

Source:The Times