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By John Kaponi
Team GB lost to Lithuania at the weekend, the Davis Cup team have called for Roger Draper the head of the LTA to resign, the LTA have called on the Davis Cup team to assess their roles too, but this does not mean its all doom and gloom in British tennis. It's now an accepted school of thinking that Andy Murray was a blip, a freak even, he was not a product of the British tennis structures; in fact he spent most of his life in Spain, under the eye of his mum Judy who coached him.
The work the LTA is doing now in grass roots development will not produce the wave of tennis stars that France, Spain, US and Russia are producing for another 5-10 years. But the LTA are doing some excellent work, with programmes that have been developed to make sure that young players begin to play tennis, and keep playing in their early teens, when it seems they lose interest.
The problem is at the higher echelons of tennis, and it seems the problem of British sport, and not just in tennis, is that our athletes are not hungry enough; they do not want it enough. Why is it the Russians after the recent Olympic Games went ballistic because they only managed 3 gold medals coming sixth, President Medvedev went on national television in Russia to berate the poor performance of the Russian Federation team. In the UK we are not used to these type of things, only in football would such an outburst occur, and in England's case it’s not because of the regular times our team wins championships, it’s because "we expect the team to do well".
Going back to tennis, I just begin to think that its not in our DNA to be good tennis players in the UK, we are not hungry enough, or tough mentally enough to go on the pro-tour, sacrifice school and our child's social life, so that our children maybe one day top tennis players. It’s not about money. The LTA have lots of it, and other bodies in tennis have money too. It’s about educating parents, and children that if they want to become top tennis players there is a pain element involved. Why is it that Richard Williams, spent hours on the tennis court with his daughters in LA, on rubbish tennis courts, with no money, but a desire to produce tennis players? This type of language is not accepted in mainstream British tennis, "to produce a tennis player".
Moreover it’s not fair anymore to blame the LTA, every single club around the UK must look at what it is doing to encourage tennis. Ultimately if people feel so strongly about tennis, they have to take things in their own hands and actually go on a tennis court and start making a difference. OK, losing against Lithuania was bad, but I know that within 10 years the UK will have at least 20-30 players in the top 100 in the men’s and women’s game. The programmes in place by the LTA must be allowed to mature, so that we can have more young players breaking through, its not a time for knee-jerk reactions.
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