Stirling to host LTA national academy

TENNIS: Stirling to be site of national academy, with aim to become worldclass training base

Stirling and Loughborough Universities have been named as the sites of two national academies that will form the centrepiece of the Lawn Tennis Association’s new high performance pathway.

The strategy, unveiled at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton on Tuesday, is the LTA’s latest attempt at producing a system that will create strength in depth at the top of the sport.

It has been a long time coming, with the high performance department in flux under the stewardship of former chief executive Michael Downey and the new pathway then delayed by Downey’s resignation and the appointment of Scott Lloyd as his successor.

Downey prioritised grass roots and decentralised high performance following the big-spending and muchcriticised efforts of his predecessor Roger Draper to grow the number of top-100 players from Britain.

This strategy, the brainchild of performance director Simon Timson, who moved from the same position at UK Sport two years ago, very much goes back to a centralised approach, beginning with children aged seven.

It is envisaged 2-3,000 children between seven and 10 will hone their skills at local player development centres and take part in county training before the best 250-300 move on to one of 11 regional development centres.

There will then be a maximum of 32 residential places available at Stirling and Loughborough from September 2019 for those players aged 13-18 – or potentially as young as 11 – deemed to have potential to reach the top.

They will attend a local school alongside their tennis commitments and, addressing one of the key barriers to a notoriously expensive sport, the places will be funded to cap the cost to players or their families at £5,000 a year.

Timson and Lloyd refused to reveal what the LTA has committed to each centre over five years, only that it is a significant proportion of the highperformance budget.

They are also steering clear of putting a figure on the number of top-100 players they hope to see in 10 years’ time, given that that became a millstone around Draper’s neck.

Instead the focus is on establishing Britain’s reputation as a world-class base for player development – although unlike renowned academies such as Nick Bollettieri’s in Florida, SanchezCasal in Spain (where Andy Murray trained) or Patrick Mouratoglou’s in France – foreign players will not be welcomed.

Central to the pathway’s success, meanwhile, will be finding the right head coaches for both academies, who are very likely to be recruited from outside the UK.

But the LTA insist no previous strategy has been as comprehensively researched and planned, with Lloyd saying: “We’re incredibly excited about what this can do.”

“Everything the Murrays have achieved – Andy, Jamie and Judy–at growing the game in Scotland has created a huge interest in tennis.

COLIN FLEMING