The sorry state of British tennis. (Tennis in General)

Member Name: theanarchistkid

Product:	Tennis in General
Date:	17/03/01 (550 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's improving

Disadvantages: Slowly

Recently in the press, British tennis has actually appeared in some quite favourable articles. People are heralding the return of top British players into the highest rankings and some people think that British tennis as a whole is on the up again. The harsh reality of it though is currently quite the opposite. How many current British female players can you name? Come to think of it, how many male British players can the average person on the steet name? I'd hazard a guess at two or three. What you have to ask yourself is how this happened, why this happened and what can be done about it.

British tennis has been in steady decline over the last few decades really. The only half decent players at an international level of late are Rusedski and Henman. Out of those two, it's only Henman that went through the British coaching scheme because from what I believe, Rusedski was taught to play tennis in Canada. To be honest, I think this speaks volumes. Britain's tennis clubs became complacent and decided that they were happy with what they had already got.

Now, what they actually had though was a bunch of decent adult players and a few good young players. Over the eighties and nineties, the players got older and older until they were no longer as good as they had been. At this point, there were no new kids to start improving so there's a big gap in ages. At the club which I play at (www.keyworth-tennis.co.uk) we have about 70 kids under the age of 18, 70 adults and then only one or two people like me around the age of 20. It's a sorry state of affairs at my club because there's a massive age gap between the players.

The reason for this age gap and a lack of good players in their twenties is because of clubs which never bothered to employ coaches. I'm fortunate because my club always had a coach. That's not to say that the coach was popular though. I remember when I was 13 and starting to break into the adult teams
at my club, the adults then suddenly become anti-junior. The reason for this is because they were worried about losing their team places and it could have meant that I never got to play at a higher level.

Fortunately, my coach was a persistant person so he made sure that we got picked for the teams. Over the last 7 years, I have now become a respected member of the Mens 1st team and play just about every week for them. As I said, I was fortunate because my coach never gave up, but this hasn't been the case at all clubs. I have first hand experience of what it's like to be discriminated against by the older generation and I'm lucky now because they now accept me as an adult but there are still some kids that don't get picked for the teams just because they are young.

Incidentally, all the teams that have picked young players over the last few years have been promoted several times and the club is still improving, although the club coach has now left for a post at another club. Our club coach was poorly treated from the very first day but luckily he stuck at it and built up big squads of young players. This has benefitted the club, the county and with a little luck, eventually it will benefit Britain. From what I've heard, most clubs are in a similar situation, with disgruntled club coaches and grumpy old people clogging up the teams.

It is this mentality that has caused the decline of British tennis over the last few years so really, it's the people that are constantly moaning that have probably caused it.

So, what can be done about it? Well the good news is that action is being taken which will hopefully lead to a stronger nation of tennis players in a few years time. What people have to appreciate is that British tennis won't improve overnight, it's going to take several years to find the talent, coach these players and then get them up to a high enough standard to compete internationally. The ne
w person in charge of the LTA has been in power for slightly over a year and already people are dismissing his plans a failures. The thing is though that nobody can tell yet if they're going to work and from what I've seen it certainly looks as if they will.

One of his major plans is something called ClubVision which is basically where each club has to fill in a long questionnaire which gives your local Lawn Tennis Association information and also dictates how much funding they will give to you. ClubVision encourages employment of a club coach, junior squads and things like that in order to bring in a wealth of new young talent. If a club manages to set up a good programme of junior coaching, they will receive extra funding in order to make sure that the club succeeds with its aims. The LTA will also provide free coaching for exceptionally good players who they think have the talent and potential it takes to become a professional player. ClubVision is intended to bring British tennis up to date with the rest of the world and currently it looks like it's succeeding.

My club recently received £200 from the Notts Lawn Tennis Association in order to fund coaching courses for people, buy equipment and to train up new coaches. Whilst this may not sound like a lot of money, we are hoping that it will be the first of many payments. My club should benefit from ClubVision more than some other clubs primarily because we have a large junior membership. The way that ClubVision works is that it gives funding to clubs that are looking towards the future, and gives nothing to those that want to stay as they are. This gives the clubs the choice of just staying as they are and eventually running out of money, or setting up a junior coaching scheme and prosper and grow into a large competitive club.

The image of British tennis has been having problems over the last few years because let's face it, it's hardly the most macho of sports. We
ll, actually it is a VERY competitive sport that requires a lot of aggression if you want to succeed. Often people don't like it because they think that it's not a team sport and that you only play as an individual. This is another view which is wrong because there are plenty of organised doubles leagues where you get the chance to play doubles as part of a team of six players.

If British tennis wants to get big again, it can't just rely on the Wimbledon months. It's quite well known that the majority of people that ever play tennis in Britain, only get motivated to play during Wimbledon. This shouldn't be the case, but most clubs will pick up a lot of new members during this period. Unfortunately, most of these new members will never play during the Winter so they probably won't join again the next year. This is a bad situation, because clubs need not only appeal to new members but they also need to maintain their old ones.

As you can see, British tennis has a lot of major problems, which I'm not going to be able to tackle all of in one opinion. I hope that I have given you an insight into the flaws and problems of the tennis scene in this country and I hope that you can help to do something about it. Just remember though, we can't tell if the new LTA schemes are a success for another few years. So don't hold your breathe!

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