The LTA is the face of tennis in Britain, responsible for encouraging people to play tennis, and ensure that Britain has a strong contingent of players challenging in the professional circuits. Right now they basking in the glory of the Davis Cup victory, achieved by Leon Smith, Andy Murray, and the rest of the team.
“The Lawn Tennis Association’s (LTA) mission is to get more people playing tennis more often, and part of its role is to govern tennis in Great Britain, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man by acting as guardians to promote and safeguard the integrity of the sport.” http://www.lta.org.uk/about-the-lta/
There are however inherent problems with the national governing body. Michael Downey, the chief executive of the LTA since 2013, attempted to use former top player and coach Bob Brett to solve the nation’s young player crisis. Yet Brett departed just over a year into the job. Why? Because like other “super coaches” Paul Annacone (former coach of Roger Federer) and Brad Gilbert (Agassi, Roddick, Murray, Nishikori) the role that the LTA asked them to perform was not in line with the real-life skills that these people possess. Brett left because he was not spending time on court with players, and Gilbert found he was not suited to working with the likes of Alex Bogdanovic.
The LTA also spent a huge amount touting the futures of a huge group of youngsters that included Kyle Edmund and Liam Broady. But there were at least five or six others within that group including George Morgan and Oliver Golding. It says a lot about the LTA that Golding has now opted to pursue his promising acting career over one in tennis. The LTA has also had a strained relationship with Broady over funding issues.
There are other systemic issues below the top-level that makes the LTA appear a failing body.
“There are huge towns in Scotland like Inverness and Paisley that don’t have any indoor courts. Fife has over a quarter of a million people and there’s not one public indoor court.” – a criticism levelled at the LTA by Davis Cup winner Jamie Murray.
Where do other countries get their success from? The surprising answer is that many do not come form national governing bodies like the LTA. Take the United States. Yes some players are funded by the USTA, but more actually attend elite private academies. The Nick Bollettieri Academy (now owned by IMG) has been responsible for the likes of Andre Agassi,Monica Seles, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova and Tommy Haas. The Saddlebrook academy, started by the late Harry Hopman, has seen the likes of Mardy Fish, Andy Roddick, James Blake, John Isner, and the Bryans play. Other private academies in Austria,Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and Serbia have produced far more players than nation institutes.
Why? Often these academies are started by former pros. IMG now owns the Bollettieri Academy, but Bollettieri still runs things. Magnus Norman, a coach with an impressive track record in coaching on the tour, is now beginning to see the first players leave for the main tour, including Elias Ymer.
These Academies are different to the LTA in Britain. They focus on players. Norman’s Good to Great initiative insists on a maximum 3-1 player-to-coach ratio. They do not do an LTA and hire one super coach expecting them to turn everything around. They do not use players to promote or exaggerate quotas to satisfy governments, and they do not pay more than six-hundred thousand pounds a year to a single chief executive.
Now Academies in places like Spain and the southern United States perhaps benefit from a warmer climate and comparable state or corporate funding. But Austria and Sweden cannot claim a better climate, and Serbia probably has a national tennis budget not much larger than what the LTA pays its chief executive.
Private tennis bodies in Britain for the most part belong in two categories. The first is one that offers excellent facilities but excludes the vast majority of the population with fees, hankering to the idea that tennis remains an elitist and unaffordable sport. The other group maintains courts at a basic level, often letting them deteriorate but still charging for them, making tennis unattractive for any generation. Some are actually free, probably because private businesses are so embarrassed by their condition that they abandoned them. Both prefer to maintain courts as cheaply as possible, and this means particularly in the lower group that an investment in indoor courts, imperative for the winter months, is neglected.
Britain does not benefit from a former pro with the investment capital to independently run an academy that focuses on developing a player both for the sport and the individual’s development. Current private bodies mostly charge too much for good facilities or too much for bad facilities. Finally, the LTA focuses on quotas and participation figures, but can’t even improve those right now.
It would be easy to say Britain just needs to follow the structure implemented in the United States or other European states. But the reality is that the problem is systemic. The system needs a re-vamp, and players need to be valued, and new generations encouraged, but not suffocated, if any successors to Andy Murray are to appear.
