What do people think about Britain's defeat against Poland in the Davis Cup? Seems like a shame that we have now sunk down into the third tier of the competition. Andy Murray has even admitted that its where we "deserve" to be. It seems like there just aren't enough strong players to keep us in the higher groups, apart from Murray who won all of his rubbers. Do people think that Murray should carry on playing in the Davis Cup? Or should he just focus on winning a Grand Slam until we have some more experienced players on the British team?

 

Isobel

ACE Tennis Magazine

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ACE-Tennis-M...ine/50375017857

:o Seriously it's dire, losing to Poland is shocking. To think, we used to be in the world tier just a couple of years ago.

I think it's a good thing personally.

 

British men's tennis is p*** poor, for the wealth and facilites of our country we should be producing better tennis players. If they're not looking decent enough by 22/23 years old then funding should be withdrawn from them as otherwise it's just hampering younger players who could have the ability to progress. If we didn't have Murray, then Great Britain would be an exeptionally poor country at Men's tennis...

British men's tennis is p*** poor, for the wealth and facilites of our country we should be producing better tennis players. If they're not looking decent enough by 22/23 years old then funding should be withdrawn from them as otherwise it's just hampering younger players who could have the ability to progress. If we didn't have Murray, then Great Britain would be an exeptionally poor country at Men's tennis...

 

This is true. In fact, the British tennis system hasn't produced a single decent male player in over 30 years. Murray was trained at a Spanish academy, Rusedski came through the Canadian system, even Henman was trained privately and didn't use the LTA. Things have been a little better on the women's side lately, but there still hasn't been a world-class British women's player either (until Laura Robson matures anyway). It's totally unacceptable for the wealthiest tennis association in the world.

It's time for the LTA to totally rethink how they allocate money. As you say, they should stop funding players who are clearly going nowhere. They should develop the grassroots instead i.e. providing money for far more decent public courts and pushing for tennis to be played more in schools. I'm convinced there's a potential Wimbledon champion playing football on some council estate right now.

 

Definitely. Tennis is hardly played in schools - which I think is wrong. It's hard to get everyone involved but the goverment and the LTA need to think how to combat this. There's way too many kids playing football instead of other sports, and there definitely needs to be something done to change the whole system. Doing rubbish in the Davis Cup helps realise this factor, but the plights of Andy Murray and Tim Henman bing reasonably successful also put a bit of an arrogant stance into British tennis as we have had a top tennis player regardless of how crap the other ones are. It would be great if we could have two top tennis players (in the male department), but that is probably wishful thinking on my behalf...