Wimbledon and the state of British Tennis

So Wimbledon is upon us again. Middle England is on the march and clogging the queues to get in for us real tennis fans. Yesterday I took the kids and ended up queuing for 4-5 hours for the privilege of giving £60 to the coffers of the LTA so they can squander it on gutless middle-England no-hopers in the (always) vain hope of miraculously producing a champion. £750k for Brad Gilbert to 'coach' Andy Murray, just for him to throw a wobbly and and fail miserably tournament-after-tournament. The LTA consider the public to be a bunch of morons that will pay shed-loads to be treated like dirt and then they spend it on their friends, children and colleagues! If they were a business they'd be the most useless of all-time and close within days. But when you have a bottomless pit of cash you can do as you wish.

What have the LTA produced? Tim Henman (ha ha). The only decent player, full stop (Murray left the LTA young and Rusedski came from The Canadian system). Henman was a bottle-less, chinless loser from middle-England in-breeding. have you seen his Father!!!

The solution is easy

1) Take all funding away from LTA affiliated clubs UNLESS they offer free membership to juniors and show how they use funding to provide free/subsidised coaching sessions.

2) Sponsor a free parks coaching prgramme and spend significant sums on refurbishing public courts and subsidising usage.

3) Do NOT pay for elite coaches on exorbitant salaries.

This will produce a pyramid structure that can be built on. We currently have a reverse pyramid with almost all the best athletes not playing tennis as it costs a fortune and the LTA will destroy what they touch (why did the Murrays remove their sons from the clutches of the LTA and go to Spain? Because of their incompetent handling of Jamie Murray as a junior). This leads to a paucity of quality at the top. Why do the Serbs/Russians/Spanish have so many good players? Because they came through a system/situation that didn't molly-coddle the privileged. They worked hard and had determination to succeed.

More later when I predict this years men's winner....