Social and Tennis commentary, interesting societal angle on British tennis

I'm middle class, so it's partly my fault. Actually 1,024,000 of you (out of the Guardian's 1,154,000 UK readers) are middle class too – so you share a lot of the blame. Why hasn't a British man won Wimbledon since 1936? What happened to British women after Angela, Ann and Virginia? Yes: the curse of the sporting middle class wreaked its familiar humiliation. We puffed and blew up when the going got tough. We were first-round flops time and again.

And the grisliest thing about the whole continuing debacle is that the general excuse that comes easiest to us – lack of resources, penny-pinching administrative policies, cutbacks Ed Balls would never have countenanced – is the hollowest cop-out imaginable. Lawn tennis in Britain is rolling in (mostly Wimbledon-generated) cash.

Does £250m over the past five years sound enough to get a few first serves in play? It's a fortune. It has bought new facilities, new courts, new training schemes, new scholarships and new promises of success. What it hasn't bought, alas, is anything much beyond drab old disappointment.

Put Andy Murray aside for a moment, because he's a very special case, and there's almost nothing to get the crowds buzzing this week. Elena from Ipswich, number 61 in the world, who once got as far as a third round (in 2002); Anne from London, number 113, who's managed two second round appearances (the last of them three years ago); Laura from London, once a junior champion, now down to 257 in the world from 234 in 2010. Will James (176) come through at last? Can Dan One (272) or Dan Two (305)? What about Heather, who won a round at the French? It's a long, long trail a'winding, with precious few dreams along the way.

There must be a reason, and you only need to peek under the umbrellas today to see it. Wimbledon is a kind of sub-Ascot, indelibly middle class from the car park to the loos. The people who watch tennis are middle class. The people who play it are middle class. They join middle class clubs and get tutored by middle class coaches. There is no pressing need to succeed, because tolerable success already attends them.

Of course there are exceptions – exceptions such as Murray, with mum driving him on to get the best coaching (in Barcelona), not your average UK version. But he's the exception that proves the rule, a loner wrapped in his own cocoon of anxieties who'll never plump for a soft life doing richly paid inter-set commentaries on the BBC.

And there is a much bigger question here. Who'll make the biggest impact this coming fortnight? Russians, Serbs, Czechs, Chinese, Spaniards … players, in the main, who see tennis as a way of transforming their lives. Where are the big American men of yesteryear? Gone soft, gone missing. Once the Williams sisters pack up, America's women will be similarly blighted. It's intrinsically the same question as asking what happened to America's former hold on boxing's championships – with much the same answer. Nobody's hungry enough to take the pain any longer. Boxing can be left to Filipinos, Russians and Mexicans, people scrambling to survive.

That isn't quite the British experience yet. We currently hold five different version of a boxing world championship. The sport – without the slightest trace of middle class infection or self-satisfaction – still has strength and desperation. We can find hundreds of would-be football star lads looking for a ladder. We can still manufacture Olympic dreams.

But tennis? No. British tennis is the show, not the game: the communal tittering, the strawberries, the blazers, the flowery dresses, the Pimm's – more a royal wedding than a sport. Will we be sad when our temporary heroes disappear by round two? Not really: we, and they, expect it. And would loads more money solve our genteel problem? Actually, loads less would probably help.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/19/tennis-wimbledon-middle-class-malaise

NOT MY OPINIONS JUST FOUND THIS ARTICLE INTERESTING AS A NON-BRITISH TENNIS FAN, JUST WONDERING WHAT THE THOUGHTS ARE ON BOTH THE SOCIETAL AND TENNIS RELATED ASPECTS OF THIS ARTICLE. OR IS THIS JUST MORE SELF-LOATHING FROM THE LEFTWING GUARDIAN?

socal

Yes, it's the Grauniad, so definitely conforms to their self-loathing of the middle classes. However, there is at least a couple of half truths buried in there regarding the LTA, funding and club coaching.

Firstly, there's the issue of who do you (or rather the journalist) mean by the 'middle classes' - this is now such a broad brush description (since the demise in the UK of a true 'working class' - i.e. mass manufacturing, mining etc) that it includes people on an average salary who have little left for luxuries, up to the Middleton's and their ilk.

Andy Murray might be within the definition of middle class, but he certainly isn't from the same affluent background as Henman - noting also though that Henman had plenty of competetive edge and had a remarkably good career given his limitations as a player (i.e. a slight lack of strength and athleticism compared with the very best of his time).

It is true that Wimbledon as an event, and the tennis club scene in southern England at least is more focussed on the affluent and social members rather than on competetive play - there can be some elements of snobbery still around the game here, and that can reflect into the junior game. However, it is possible for the middle classes to produce good players, and indeed may be easier in some ways because they can afford the coaching and the time to support their children's development and travel commitments.

The bigger question is why do the LTA and their coaching scheme do such a poor job of identifying and nuturing talent wherever it comes from? Again, take the Murray's as an example, Jamie was developed by the LTA system and by all accounts they ruined his forehand and seriously compromised his game, to such an extent that Andy was taken away from their system and trained in Spain to great effect.

I don't know enough about the inner workings of the LTA, but I do get the impression that they focus development money too narrowly at junior level and do not do a very good job of promoting mass participation at a young age - having said that, there is also the problem of getting the talented boys to do anything other than football.

There are probably hundreds of kids in the UK who have the same natural talent and aptitude for tennis as all our pros except Murray, but many will either never have picked up a racket or at most had a bit of a casual knock-around with their mates. How you identify the potential in such circumstances is a bit of a difficult question (afer all, we can't adopt the former Eastern Bloc sports hot-house approach, even excluding the doping), but I'm sure a bit more creative thinking from the LTA would help.

Of course the other question is how come the LTA do such a poor job of taking talented juniors up to at least a decent career as a professional? Given their resources, it should be possible to coach a couple of players into the top 100 or so, even if they don't have enough natural talent to be in the real elite. I have heard it argued (even back in the Jeremy Bates era of the late 80s-early 90s) that there was too easy a living to be made as a British pro around the challengers and futures events plus wild cards to Wimbledon and Queens, that there was little need to really push on to try and become established at the really top level. I'm not sure that this arqument holds up quite so well now (looking at how even the players in the 200s are playing internationally now), but perhaps there is still some truth in it.

Dummy it certainly is a perplexing question, for my part I guess I could understand how a big paying team sport like football would attract more high quality athletes. I think you touched on it when you said that as a british pro at the challenger level you can still make a comfortable living with assistance from the LTA and that maybe the real focus should be on a grass roots approach that fosters more unstructured participation from youths. There is I think a hunger issue as why we are seeing more players coming up from south america and from eastern europe then we have ever seen before. Also frankly I think the terrible weather plays a role as well because you can't play outdoor tennis in britain most of the year, while football you can play in rain, sleet, snow, and shine. But I think it does come to a top down approach as opposed to a grass roots approach.

socal,

Some great views and great article.

I think it is criminal when you look that over the last 10 years, the LTA have made £500 million from Wimbledon.

For me British tennis needs to get back into the schools. I think the LTA need to set up a scouting system so that they can identify the talent at a young age. When I was at school they never had tennis rackets at school and if the LTA were able to fund an initiative to get the basic equipment into schools, they could help generate interest in the game at an early age.

Kids in Britain want to play football and be a famous footballer. The scouting system in football is far easier than that of tennis and much less complicated. Yes it is a cultural issue too, but getting the equipment into schools is half the battle won for me.

That sounds like a great approach, building hitting walls and a couple of courts at each school and giving out the equipment to play. In most American highschools there are tennis courts and equipment. Not that it has done USA tennis much good over the years.

It would work wonders socal. Something as basic as that. In the US there are more sports which have a bigger interest than that of tennis, but at least they have the 'basics'

In the UK it is football or a popstar! That mentality needs to change

For a variety of reasons it's a minority sport in the U.K and you'll always struggle to produce players in great numbers from a minority sport.

Come to think of it football/soccer is our biggest sport and we're stuggling to produce decent players in that.

"Come to think of it football/soccer is our biggest sport and we're stuggling to produce decent players in that"

Well, there's a whole new discussion, although there are some parallels with the issues in tennis - coaching historically not being very good on the technical aspects of the game (concentrating more on the physical in football), and players lacking the desire to go on and prove themselves really world class because the rewards for being pretty good allow for a more than comfortable lifestyle.

Spot on post AND why we should be so grateful for and support Andy Murray. The chances are NOBODY as good as him will come along for the forseeable future.

we have actually been very spoilt in this country with Tim and Andy. I am going to savour the remaining few years because Wimbledon will be a whole lot poorer in about 5 years time.

Try playing tennis anywhere in London...ONE hour at Regent's Park, for instance, is £9 at off peak times and £11 for peak hours. For an outdoor court. Of not particularly high quality. And don't even think about playing under floodlights, since that'll set you back a further £6. Since I'm a student with no money, I'm forced to have to wait around for ages for some of the terrible middle-aged players that generally take up all the courts to sidle off, and hope we have enough time left to get a decent hit before we're kicked off. If you're not overly inundated with money, I can see why you would never take up tennis in London; the only reason I go through all the hassle is because I like the sport so much.

Good points, I think the LTA should just try to build a lot of public courts and let people play for free. Put a couple of courts in the schools, the cost of participating in a sport is going to basically thwart the interest and development of young stars. Murray's mother was a coach so he and his brother were always around the game. In the US the best players come from CA and Florida, and that isn't much of a surprise because of the weather and because in the newer areas like Florida and CA with their master planned communities they built alot of public tennis courts. In Orange county where I lived you can find literally hundreds if not thousands of public tennis courts within a 20 or 30 mile radius which cost you nothing to play.