Fall Britannia Watson and Dart complete GB wipeout
Same old story as second round proves too much Failure to produce ‘solid pros’ ranked in top 100
At around 8.30pm here on the fourth day, a forehand from Harriet Dart sailed long, ending Britain’s singles involvement in the Australian Open. When you factor in the Lawn Tennis Association’s £64.5 million turnover, it was all too early to be mourning the last night of the Poms.
The worrying thing is that such early wipeouts are becoming the norm. Indeed, this was Great Britain’s worst Australian Open performance in... 12 months.
Last year produced an identical result – a not-so-grand total of three first-round wins – while the 2018 US Open delivered only two.
In that nearly-barren campaign in New York, Andy Murray supplied half the British tally, despite the fact that he could barely walk at the time. Alarmingly, he achieves more on one leg than most of our other players manage on two.
Over the past 2½ years Murray’s career-threatening hip injury has left the dearth of back-up options horribly exposed. Between his breakthrough season of 2008 and the start of his woes in 2017, he began every tournament, on every surface, as a realistic contender.
Yet since his fitness declined, our players have travelled Down Under with the same sense of impending doom as your average Ashes touring party. None of this has prevented the likes of Dart and Katie Boulter from crowing about “strength in depth”, as if there were dozens of Britons earning direct entry into every big tournament. The truth is the opposite. Given the small number of would-be professionals in the UK, we have been fortunate to have possessed a handful of top-class performers since the turn of the millennium, including not only Murray, but Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski and the admirably committed Johanna Konta.
The problem lies more in the “solid pro” category. France has 16 players (male and female) in the top 100. Spain has 14. Italy and Germany have nine apiece. Our tally? Five.
There is very little confidence around the
British game that the
LTA’S latest wheeze – two national academies, based in Loughborough and Stirling – will do much to help. Simon Timson, the LTA’S performance director, said: “Performance development is a long journey and it will take time to see results. We have the right coaches in place with the right plan behind it.” Yet each of the academies has accepted only eight students in the first intake. Given the prohibitive odds against any one individual cracking the big-time, that is simply too few tickets to expect to win the lottery.
Yesterday’s play in Melbourne began with two British women still standing – Dart and Heather Watson. But both were up against seeds and the prospects of an upset felt about as high as those of discovering a long-lost thylacine in the Tasmanian rainforest.
Sure enough, neither player managed to win a set, though Dart could take some encouragement from giving Simona Halep, the reigning Wimbledon champion, a minor scare towards the end of her 6-2, 6-4 defeat. She also chalked up three wins in the qualifying tournament, and must go away as the only player to enhance her reputation.
Asked whether she took any satisfaction from being the LBS – or Last Briton Standing – Dart replied: “I mean, I lost in the second round. I want all the Brits to do really well, and hopefully in the years to come we can all be progressing in the second week and contending for the titles. All of us expect a lot from ourselves. We are competing in a grand slam. There are no easy matches. We are playing against the highest-level players in the world and it’s incredibly tough.”
Earlier, Watson had capitulated in just 56 minutes against 14th seed Elise Mertens, a woman she had beaten in Hobart only a week earlier. “With my movement, I was a millimetre or a second too slow to everything,” said Watson.
“But I remember this time last year I would have been happy to win a single match.”
The poor results of the whole cohort were not hugely surprising, as only Watson and Dan Evans arrived with any form behind them. Konta – the saving grace in an otherwise weak British showing at the grand slams last year – and Boulter had barely played for months, due to knee and back injuries respectively.
Cameron Norrie made a scratchy start to the year at the ATP Cup in Sydney, where he was underpowered and short on confidence.
He looked devastated in the interview room on Tuesday, having wasted a strong position against Pierre-hugues Herbert, but the others generally shrugged off their losses and refocused on the next tournament. Murray’s raging inner fire is sorely missed.