Are the Lawn Tennis Association doing enough to encourage young British tennis players?
Many believe that British tennis is at an all time after Great Britain’s heroic Davis Cup victory, their first for 79 years, plus the recent success of World Number 2, Andy Murray. Despite this, the Lawn Tennis Association seem to be resting on their laurels and watching on as local clubs struggle to get more people involved in the sport.
Could Great Britain learn from countries like France who have a total of 7 players currently ranked inside the top 50 of the ATP World Rankings and continue to produce young talent? The talent coming from countries like France is there for all to see. Despite having world class players like Murray, and hosting one of the World’s most prestigious tournaments in Wimbledon, not enough young people are playing tennis.
Is the issue that not enough young people are getting involved, or that the LTA is not doing enough to promote the sport in local clubs?
The Chairman of Fulwood Lawn Tennis club, Peter Kitchen, believes that more needs to be done by the LTA to help with funding for local clubs to promote the sport. He believes that enough people become involved in tennis, but the LTA do nothing to help the smaller clubs. He also claims “You can be 11 years old with all the talent in the world but without being at a top club and receiving funding from the LTA, the chances of making it are slim.”
The Lawn Tennis Association have a strict policy on what constitutes as funding, and clubs that do not meet these requirements will always struggle. These requirements are to “grow tennis through community participation” and “demonstrate sustainable growth through facility development”. Even then, this funding the LTA provides is a loan, which must be paid back in full.
Peter Kitchen believes that accessibility is not an issue because membership for clubs is not too expensive for young people at the right club. Asked if he believes tennis is still viewed as a “middle class” sport, he said it shouldn’t be, but it probably is. He believes the only benefits of a direct affiliation with the LTA are the advantages of insurance and Wimbledon tickets but even then this has been halved, and all the advantages and funding go to clubs in the south, and to get help with tennis, the club itself must be rich.
Furthermore, Andy Murray slated the LTA in December last year after he accused them of not building on the success of the Davis Cup victory the LTA claimed Murray was not doing enough to promote tennis. When interviewed on the subject, Murray said “I don’t know where the next generation are. They need to act on it now. It’s no use doing it in 18 months. Start now. It should have started before today. It’s time to make some positive changes so that things get better.”
Murray also claimed that no one is making use of the money the LTA actually are investing programmes and a National training centre.
“I would guess £25m has gone into junior programmes but it’s not worked, because there are no juniors.”
“I was there on a Monday at about 3pm and then on Tuesday, at the same time,” Murray stated. “There was not one person using any of the indoor courts and not one person in the gym. I took photos of it because the place cost, like, £40m and there are no people.
“There is nobody to train with when I am at home, nobody to practise with any more, which makes things frustrating. You want to have the best possible practice and training to prepare for the biggest events and we don’t have that anymore.”
This demonstrates that the LTA are not doing enough but are people meeting them halfway?
There are plenty of courts throughout the country and yet most people rarely plenty tennis except for the Wimbledon fortnight. The general consensus seems to be that the LTA need to do more to encourage people to continue playing tennis after Wimbledon, but it seems that plenty of people lose interest in the sport. Peter Kitchen says enough people are showing enthusiasm and desire for tennis and the LTA should be doing more to promote this even further.
I ran a Twitter poll to see if the LTA were doing enough to encourage British tennis, and the results suggested a vast majority of people said “no”.
I therefore asked Peter what more could be done to encourage more from the LTA, and in a response he simply said; “show some interest in what is happening at club level.”
In response to this issue The LTA have developed a “Places to Play” priority project. The project aims in the coming year to amend this issue. The main aims of the project are to:
- Build low cost, quality indoor structures
- Install Floodlit outdoor courts
- Renovate park courts
More of the LTA’s initiatives can be seen at: http://www3.lta.org.uk/clubs-schools/Develop-Your-Facilities/Priority-projects/#sthash.ymXWujjR.dpuf
The LTA hope this will see a vast improvement in the amount of people playing tennis and involve more juniors in the sport. They hope this will maximise the number of tennis hours played in order to see a positive return on their investment.
Whilst there is evidence that at the minute, not enough is being done, the structure is in place to resolve this issue and hopefully there will not be as much of a wait for the next Davis Cup winning team, or even the next Great British grand slam winner.
