New experiment finally being launched to help develop the next Andy Murray
Regional and local centres will teach young hopefuls National academies for Loughborough and Stirling
During a briefing at Roehampton in March, Simon Timson, the Lawn Tennis Association head of performance, told his audience: “Some people might wonder why we want to change things when British tennis has been so successful in recent years.” A muffled groan emanated from certain parts of the room. For all the brilliance of Andy Murray, there has been little sense that we are living through a golden age. Participation continues to fall, despite the investment of many millions, and the LTA spent the past four years – since the disastrous appointment of Bob Brett as Timson’s predecessor – without even the most vestigial performance plan.
And yet, when you look at the accompanying graphic, you have to admit that, actually, we have had it pretty good. When Murray arrived on the scene – reaching the third round on his Wimbledon debut in 2005 – he was just coinciding with the dying days of the Henman-Rusedski era. When they both retired in 2007, he was left as the lone standard-bearer of British tennis. And how superbly he has fulfilled the role.
The great thing about Murray is that he has pulled up the rest by their bootstraps. Players such as Kyle Edmund, Dan Evans and James Ward have spent off-seasons at his training base in Miami. He texts them after results and chats to them during Davis Cup ties. He has provided a role model.
Murray has won nearly 200 grand-slam matches, but look at the tallies for his compatriots. In 2009, the only other British contribution was supplied by the late, lamented Elena Baltacha, who picked up a couple of first-round wins. But that figure swelled and swelled until the halcyon years in the middle of this decade.
In 2016 – surely the finest season in British tennis history – Murray won Wimbledon and finished the season as world No1, while Johanna Konta reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open. Eight different Britons were represented in a 12-month tally of 46 singles victories at the majors.
But now look at 2018. Murray’s contribution this year has been just a single best-of-five-set victory over the unheralded Australian James Duckworth. In his absence, Edmund has stepped up superbly, reaching the Australian Open semi-final and a new high of No16 in the world. Yet there must be significant uncertainty over Murray’s long-term prognosis. As the man himself admitted after his secondround loss to Fernando Verdasco: “There’s doubts for sure. When you continue to build up and start playing more tournaments, you don’t know how you’re going to respond.”
Our graph shows a distinct dip at the end, reinforcing the impression that British tennis is swiftly returning to life BM (Before Murray). So where next for the national game?
Here we return to Timson, recruited from UK Sport two years ago. His expertise does not lie in tennis but in bobsleigh and cricket, which has caused credibility problems. Where he does have experience, however, is in building development systems. And this coming week, the great Timson experiment is about to begin.
Four years after Brett ripped up the network of LTA High Performance Centres, we are about to see more than 60 new programmes opening. There will be 11 Regional Player Development Centres and 50 Local Player Development Centres. Then, next September, Timson will add two national academies, based in Loughborough and Stirling.
The focus will be on children aged eight to 14, and Timson believes he can create a more streamlined, effective production line than anything previously seen in world tennis.
In his favour is that he has previously achieved the apparently impossible, as the performance director of a British Olympic team that claimed 67 medals at Rio. Against him are all the old hands who say that centralisation has been tried before, and that the very selection process causes more trouble than it is worth.
One thing, though, must be welcomed. Under Brett and his boss Michael Downey, the attitude within the LTA was: “If you’re not going to make the top 100, you can go whistle.” Timson’s model looks more inclusive.
With other private programmes running around the national academies – which are intended to take only eight children in each age group – the LTA hopes to keep more people involved in high-level tennis.
In the words of John Black, Edmund’s former coach who has taken up a post running the Nottingham RPDC: “We need to have a safety net for late developers, or top talents who pick up a serious injury. You look at someone like Jocelyn Rae, who was the best in her age group but ended up as a Fed Cup doubles player after injury problems. Now she’s putting something back into the game as a coach, and that’s what we want to see.”
The overall message is simple. As the post-Murray era draws closer, the cottage industry that is British tennis cannot keep allowing talented people to slip through the net.
‘We need to have a safety net for late developers, or top talents who pick up a serious injury’
Westwood must be the overwhelming favourite to collect the 44th professional win of his career.
What would make it all the more remarkable would be the fact that Billy Foster, his long-time caddie, is taking a week off. Westwood’s girlfriend, Helen Storey, is on the bag and obviously doing rather well.
Such is his enduring global popularity that the Danish crowd would probably have been in Westwood’s corner anyway, but they may have another reason for cheering on the veteran. Because should Matt Fitzpatrick make up the six-shot deficit and prevail, then he could displace Thorbjorn Olesen in the eighth and final automatic Ryder Cup spot to make the team by right on this final Sunday of the qualifying race.
Olesen, the 28-year-old from Copenhagen, shot a 67 to move up to seven under but remains down in 30th and should Fitzpatrick come through for what would be his fifth Tour crown, then Olesen would need to finish in a three-way tie for seventh or better.
Regardless, Fitzpatrick is aware that victory would do wonders to convince Bjorn to award him his second start in Europe colours when the four wild cards are named on Wednesday.
Certainly his round of 66 was most welcome – and not only because it happened to be his 24th birthday. “A 62 should do it tomorrow,” Fitzpatrick said with a smirk.