LIFE ANDY AFTER

WHO CAN STEP UP TO FILL THE VOID IF MURRAY DOESN’T PLAY AGAIN?

ANDY MURRAY’S injury woe and retreat from Australia is not the only significant happening for British tennis as the new year gets under way.

Tomorrow Scott Lloyd formally takes up his post as chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, having been waiting in the wings since he was identified as Michael Downey’s successor not long after the Canadian resigned nearly a year ago.

Lloyd, a successful businessman and son of former Davis Cup captain David, is well aware of the ageold problems the British game has had in producing elite players. The uncertainty over Murray’s future because of his hip injury will only focus the mind further.

While Lloyd’s duty is to grow the game as a whole, the fact is that Murray’s headline exploits — along with those of Jo Konta — have disguised underlying problems with the rickety player production line.

As a result the British game and its governing body have had a relatively easy ride of late, but that may be coming to an end.

If the terminal decline of Murray has been signalled — and nobody can be sure that is the case — then British tennis will face the same reality that confronts other nations desperate to find a real champion.

They cannot be manufactured, they tend to fall out of the sky, and Britain has been fortunate that one of them happened to descend from an unlikely source in Scotland.

This is especially true in men’s tennis, where you only need to look at countries such as France, Germany and Italy.

Tennis is a big sport in France, in particular, and the country has been incredibly successful in producing high-class players. It currently has 10 in the men’s top 100 — and that is par for the course.

Yet France still craves a real superstar like Murray to succeed its last male Grand Slam champion, Yannick Noah, who won the French Open way back in 1983.

Switzerland, which can barely raise a quorum of top professionals, has produced two superstars this century — Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka — plus, of course, Martina Hingis.

All that a sport can really do is try to ensure that it produces a steady stream of competitive tour players. Although things have improved in Britain in this regard in this decade, we are still a long way short of meeting that challenge.

Talk of ‘the new Andy Murray’ should be scotched — the 30-yearold Scot is a one-off, and the pressure would be intolerable on anyone burdened with that label.

One of the early landmarks in Lloyd’s reign will be the unveiling in the next month or so of a performance plan, put together by former UK Sport guru Simon Tim- son, the LTA performance director. Designed to invigorate the country’s tennis academies, it has been a very long time coming, but that is because the incoming Lloyd insisted he had input before it was signed off.

At the start of the new regime the wider picture at the top level does not look promising.

There are three male British players, bar Murray, in the world’s singles top 150. Kyle Edmund, 22, is already well set on a prolonged career inside the top 50 but one of them, Dan Evans, will shortly drop out of that bracket due to his cocaine suspension and will return without a ranking in April.

The other, 22-year-old Cameron Norrie, has limited links with the British system, having been brought up largely in New Zealand, but looks an interesting prospect.

Another strong season for Konta covered up the fact that her female compatriots largely trod water over the past 12 months, and the only other top- 150 players are Heather Watson and Naomi Broady.

Junior performances have, in international terms, been poor for several years, and there is not the volume of prospects that other countries can boast.

There are, though, said to be some promising girls at around the 14year-old level and a clutch of decent 16-year-old boys is emerging. One of them is Jack Draper, son of former LTA chief executive Roger.

But there will be no imminent surge and, in a ferociously competitive global sport, it takes a long time and a bit of luck to develop a serious player.

We may one day be able to talk about the legacy of Murray. But, like many things surrounding him at present, it looks very uncertain.