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Editorial
Once the British contingent in this year’s main draw is eliminated from play at Wimbledon, the annual soul searching for answers will commence as to why British tennis has not produced a winner at the All-England Club for over thirty years, and why we only have one man in the top 100 in the world’s best tennis players. To blame the LTA for the problems of British Tennis is to be disingenuous to the organisation which has seen a steady increase in participation of tennis in the last 10 years. The fundamental problem in British tennis is that tennis is no longer a mainstay in the British "psyche", it is not moreover a British sport anymore. Take a trip to any of the events organised by the ATP or WTA and you will hear every language in the world, apart from English from the mouth of a Brit. We maybe good at producing players for junior events, but we are not able, despite millions going into tennis, producing top level men or women. The problem is that there are not enough parents able to invest the time or money into coaching their own children to become top tennis players. In order for a tennis player to reach world standard tennis at least 10,000 hours must have been invested into practice. How many people can invest at least five hours a day playing tennis for 10 years, very few..
The process of investing into the grass roots of British tennis is underway and needs time to develop. What is now required is a process of uniting all tennis interests to achieve the same goals. Private and public tennis clubs must work together to develop more interest in tennis in their local areas, we cannot blame the LTA for everything that goes wrong in tennis, after all this is not a team game, but is a one-on-one sport. It’s on the shoulders of the players to win or lose a match.
Our players must be more aggressive, and clubs must promote the "will to win" and at the same time the integration of tennis into a lifestyle. It must not be just about competing, but it must be about the love of tennis and its material benefits to everyone who takes part.
What we need in this country is for tennis and sport in general to be looked at something that is not only done on a Wednesday afternoon at school, but before school, at home, after school at the weekends.
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