How is it every year in June/ July the UK finally remembers its heritage in tennis by watching Wimbledon or Queens, and normally getting disappointed and then in August reverting back to soccer again.

We find tennis in the UK at present at a crossroads, an LTA determined to spend money on coaches, players and tennis centers, a media desperate to laud a Wimbledon champion, but something is inherently wrong with tennis in this country.

For all the initiatives that may be launched nationally by the LTA tennis ultimately boils down to the following according to the General Manager of Bourneside Lawn Tennis club John Kaponi "for this nation to become a super-power in tennis like Serbia, Russia and France we need more young children being coached at an early age.  It is not unheard of in academies in Russia to see 3 and 4 year olds being taught tennis." 

The Bourneside Lawn Tennis club located in Southgate north London, an initiative backed by IPM Media the publishers of the London Daily News, will be an attempt to coach and drill young children the very basic fundamentals of tennis.  According to Roger Draper the number of British tennis players at competitive levels is around 60,000 with a target set of 80,000 in the next few years. 

The problem of the low level all year participation in tennis cannot be blamed on the weather or the facilities, in comparison our weather is now moderate in winter months, and we have an abundance of tennis courts.  What we do not have is enough organised groups that can identify talented young players and then progress them as has happened in Serbia with Novak Djokovic, Ana Ivanoic, Tipsarevic and others.

Another element that could be the biggest problem is that the wrong "sort of people" is playing tennis in this country.  If we look at our highest paid footballers, athletes and boxers most of them are black.  How many tennis players do we have at present in the inner cities who like in France have gone on to be international stars like Tsonga, Gael Monfils?  None.  Tennis is too white and too middle class, and until the inner cities are encouraged to play and believe that tennis can give them a ticket out of the squalor of city life, your average teenager from Surrey who really does not need to do well at tennis, will float around the satellites tournaments, spend the LTA's money traveling, then probably meander into a coaching career.

Moreover the LTA cannot be blamed for the faults of British tennis, they can only work with the players they have.  We as a society need to change if we are going to produce the waves of champions that other nations like Spain are producing.  We want tennis to stop being a middle class sport and we want to see the same success we enjoyed at athletics in the 1980's with the likes of the New River project in Haringey under Ron Pickering’s guidance, tapping into the youth in Tottenham.

We can do it, but tennis must not just be a summer sport.