What a weekend for British watching sport and for British Sport
specifically!! Seeing the Lions beat Australia by the margin that
they did was staggering and in my eyes, pretty unprecedented, not
only for the simple reason that Australia are and always have been a
massive force in Rugby but also due to the controversial decision
made by Gatland to drop O’Driscoll. This seemed to many, including
me, a bizarre decision. O’Driscoll being the amazingly creative
player that he is, is a very important link between the forwards and
the backs, allowing the ball to get out to the wings where the
danger and flare is. The analysis of the game after their defeat in
the 2nd test would have seen that the wingers didn’t get
much of the ball so to then replace O’Driscoll with another big
centre to crash the ball through the middle seemed a very poor
decision. But it paid off!
I can see and feel in the air that British sport has taken a
massive surge of confidence and inspiration from the Olympics, not
just through results recently but the feeling I get when people talk
about the Olympics. This will be a golden era for British sport.
The only one that I can foresee not included in this era is British
tennis as a whole. Which may seem surprising after Andy Murray’s
Wimbledon, Us Open and Gold Medal wins but British Tennis is still
in a shocking state, with Murray being the one and only standard
bearer. The problem here isn’t confidence, inspiration or
aspiration. It is the LTA. And let me assure you, Andy Murray’s win
had nothing to do with the LTA, they were no help to him at all – he
moved to Spain to train when he was 16 after his brother was
“ruined” by the LTA. No matter how much Murray’s wins and the
Olympics inspires people to play tennis, the set up for British
tennis just isn’t right. They are one of the most heavily
financially endowed sports in Britain but are one of the worst
performing! This is due to the complete pile of crap that the system
is. They pile in £30m every year, with a new National Tennis Centre
in Roehampton, massive funding for their players, bringing in
coaches from around the world on crazy salaries to coach lowly
ranked British players but all of this money is going in at the top,
to the people who have got through the system and are already
playing at a reasonably high level. Which seems crazy when you think
about it as to get more players to that level (and higher) then more
emphasis needs to be put on pulling in the masses at the grass roots
level, to find the talent and to then nurture it all the way
through. Firstly, they need to be pulled in, to be interested by
tennis. And then the hardest part comes in keeping their interest
and enjoyment right the way through. But there is no emphasis on
this side. In fact, I have seen a steady decrease in participation
of tennis since I started playing.
I remember when I played the Berkshire tournament for the first
time and it was a hub of activity. Obviously I had nothing to
compare it to but I remember there being a lot of families and
entrants there, with all courts in constant use. Fast forward 4
years to the most recent one and it was a small tournament with not
much going on with a lot less entrants and a lot more free courts.
To see this decline at the county tournament, which should have been
the biggest tournament in the year, showed where the problems lay.
It showed that less and less people were sticking with tennis than
before but even more importantly, less children were even starting
tennis, as the U10 tournaments were always the most heavily
populated.
I then asked myself what keeps people playing football or rugby or
any other big sport. It’s simple. The enjoyment of playing the sport
keeps people playing and also brings people to the sport in the
first place. This says a lot about the attitude to tennis in this
country and as ever, the attitude comes from the top ie. The LTA.
Whenever I played tournaments, I always felt as if most of the
people who played them were the un-sporty, spoilt children who
didn’t really enjoy playing at all but were there for some reason.
In football, people stick with it because they love playing it: the
thrill of matches, the exhilaration of scoring a goal, the up hill
battles when losing etc. etc. etc. And for me, there wasn’t much of
this in the tennis tournaments I played. There wasn’t a massive
feeling of a sport being played and the love of playing and running
about. If children go to watch their friends play tennis and see
this stifled atmosphere with a few spoilt, un-sporty children
playing then any child who enjoys sport for what it is won’t want to
give it a go. For the simple reason that it isn’t enjoyable! The
attitude to tennis in this country has a massive part to play and
also, the LTA have a massive part to play in the attitude that the
country has to tennis. You see, tennis is still seen as a reserved
English man’s game where people sit watching, sipping wine and
clapping with two fingers when someone wins a point. From this
attitude comes a part that I dislike tremendously and it was
showcased live on TV at Wimbledon. Marion Bartoli won a grand slam
for the first time in her career with a very mentally solid display
in the final. I loved it when Bartoli won it because of her crazy
french-ness and brilliant attitude towards the game. John
Inverdale’s view of the final was only to start talking about
Bartoli “not being blonde or a looker”, not talking at all about her
ability. Quite apart from the fact that Bartoli isn’t ugly at all,
this was so indicative of the attitude towards tennis in this
country.
As I’m part of JooMo, all to do with celebrating feeling and
looking good, Bartoli, a brilliant character and professional tennis
player should be celebrated so much, the opposite of what we should
think about John Inverdale, a stuck up British snob with nothing to
be celebrated!! This is the part of British tennis that I hate as
these people obviously don’t enjoy playing or watching tennis. Most
sporty children play sport as they are energetic and want to run
about, go crazy and bash into their mates. Tennis, as it is seen,
isn’t the sort of game that these children would like to play so it
is only the un-sporty children that take it up. So, this comes to
where tennis stands and how it can be improved. Tennis needs a whole
new branding. It needs to start by the LTA getting rid of any
delusional drips (like Roger Draper who has just “resigned”) and to
start making tennis a fun sport to play and be part of. There needs
to be a massive investment in pulling children in to tennis. And the
biggest effort of them all needs to be to keep their interest by
keeping them loving to play, to compete and this only comes when it
is played like the sport that it really is. Take notes from the
Olympics and Andy Murray – play sport like it should be played –
hard, fair and enjoyable and go mental for brilliance and success!
