After another grim year for British tennis the pr machine at the LTA has once again sprung into life, claiming to those assessing the “Latest scores” that things are going in the right direction.
With £60 million spent in 2010 on the likes of business support, competitions and events as well as the players themselves, the LTA actually made a loss of £1million. But for a tennis fan it is one the field where the losses are really felt.
In 2006, there were nine British men inside the top 300 and three inside the top 100. In 2010 there are only three inside 300 and just Andy Murray inside 100. A Davis Cup defeat to Lithuania – a country with a tennis budget of just £100,000 – plunged the British men’s game to an all time low.
This perhaps casts a shadow over some progress made in the women’s game, with Elena Baltacha now 55 in the world, and the promising Heather Watson making the transition from the junior to adult game.
The LTA are quick to trot out the stats – The number of adults playing weekly is up above 500,000 for the first time, the number of juniors
regularly competing is above 41,000 and the number of juniors “on track” for a professional career is also up to 31 from 26 last year.
But something must be going wrong because time and time again all these facilities and coaches are not producing world-class players.
Those looking at the “Latest tennis scores” regularly will know that this isn’t a new problem either, the ritual disappointment at Wimbledon as become as engrained in the British psyche as cups of tea and the weather.
You listen to what the authorities have to say, you see the number of player competing in youth tournaments and it is hard not to feel
optimistic. But yet there is always this nagging doubt that we have been here before and despite the united front from the powers that be, it is
merely a prelude to another year of British disappointment.
