The state of British tennis has been widely and publicly criticised over the last decade or so, and since the retirement of Greg Rusedski and Tim Henman there has been an alarming lack of serious up and coming players, with the obvious exception of Andy Murray.
This apparent dearth of talent has been realised in recent Davis Cup ties, where Great Britain have been relegated to the third tier of the Davis Cup structure, Europe/Africa Zone Group 1, on the back of a 3-2 loss to Poland. Even though they have been seeded first in this group, they still failed to beat the unseeded Lithuania.
Andy Murray has also made himself ineligible to be selected for the team, citing a busy tournament schedule throughout the year as his reason. Although this means the British team doesn’t feature a player from the top 100, this should eventually give the other, much lower ranked, British players invaluable match practice on the Davis Cup stage.
Great Britain are also only represented by two male players in the draw for Wimbledon, both of which are from Scotland, meaning there is no Englishman for the first time in Wimbledon’s 133 year history. This has called Roger Draper’s position, as head of the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), into serious question. With tennis being one of the most commercial sports in the United Kingdom, behind only football, rugby and cricket, and valued at around £1.3 billion, we should surely have more talented players coming through the ranks.
Around half a million adults play tennis every week in the UK, and with this number bound to increase with Wimbledon starting next week, this number needs to translate down to the younger generation if Britain are going to have some bright prospects for the future. Wimbledon always provides great inspiration for children to take up tennis, and the ever growing presence of Andy Murray in the latter stages of the competition can only enhance that.
Of course, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, or any of the grand slams for that matter, would do the power of good for British tennis, but it is also the myth that tennis is only played by white middle class people that hinders the growth of the sport. While Roger Draper claims that tennis is played by people of a mixture of backgrounds and races, it seems that more is needed to be done to get a larger amount of children interested in tennis.
However with planned spending cuts set to hit tennis more than most sports it has to be questioned how much faith there is in the UK producing more Henmans and Murrays to contest future competitions. This will inevitably make the LTAs job harder to discover hidden talent.
On the other hand British girls are seemingly flourishing, with both Laura Robson and Heather Watson winning junior Grand Slams in 2008 and 2009 respectively. While players like Anne Keothavong and Elena Baltacha aren’t sending massive shockwaves throughout women’s tennis, this new crop of players should encourage younger girls, and hopefully boys, to take up the sport.
So while women’s tennis in the UK is making great strides, men’s tennis is in dire straits, and at present there is no sign that that will change. With Fred Perry being our last Grand Slam winner back in the 1930s, who knows when we’ll have our next Grand Slam winner? While Andy Murray seems to be hitting the right balls to win one of those four elusive Slams, let’s just hope there’s a talented crop of youngsters following him.
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