During the Legends Champions Tour event, celebrated at the traditional Royal Albert Hall in London earlier this month, Sebastien Grosjean–former ATP top five player and current coach of world’s #9 Richard Gasquet–talked to the Last Word on Sports about two issues that might be the cause of the lack of British professional tennis players on the ATP tour.
Great Britain recently defeated Belgium to obtain their first Davis Cup crown in 79 years, but it still does not hide the incapability of the Lawn Tennis Association to create a system that will help produce players at a competitive level.
For a country that hosts a Grand Slam, three major ATP Tour competitions, and the World Tour Final event, Great Britain remains well behind the leading countries in the ATP rankings.
Spain stands at the top of the tennis community with 15 players within the top hundred followed by France with ten.
Great Britain only holds two players between the top hundred, including Slovenian-born Aljaz Bedene, who was granted the UK citizenship early this year.
Without recently added Bedene, Andy Murray would be the only British representation standing inside the ATP top 100, since 20-year-old Kyle Edmund remains outside the selected group as he occupies the #103 ATP slot.
The LTA has failed to produce players even as it stands as one of the richest tennis organisations in the world with a £60m turnover, a £40m National Tennis Centre, and an earning of £640,000.
Sebastien Grosjean, a Grand Slam semifinalist at the Australian Open (2001), French Open (2001), and Wimbledon (2003-2004), and winner of four ATP major titles throughout his career, pointed out his views on Great Britain’s difficulties in producing professional tennis players and why France is one of the world’s leading countries.
Accessibility
The two-time Wimbledon semifinalist believes that tennis is highly accessible in France, even in places where the weather conditions are not suitable. Among other things, he said the following:
“In France, we have a lot of tennis clubs everywhere. In each village, you can find a court where people can go and play.”
“I have a sense that in the UK they have fewer tennis clubs, meaning a lower amount of tennis courts.”
“And I also believe that weather could be a factor that affects UK tennis, but if you have the facilities, this should not be a problem.”
“Because in the North of France where it does get really cold, you have to play indoor due to the weather.”
“But indoor facilities are excellent, and you can find them everywhere.”
“In the south of France it’s different, you can play all year round because the weather is good during the whole year, and if the weather isn’t great, there are enough indoor facilities to play in.”
“I grew up in Marseille, and I played all year long because the weather would let me.”
“Of course, I couldn’t play at six in the morning but between 10 am and 4 pm you wouldn’t have any problems to play, sometimes it gets cold, but you can still play,” said the former top ten.
LTA statistics indicates there are 4,118 places to play tennis in England, Scotland and Wales, including 97 performance centres and 21,186 courts (1,645 of which are indoor).
Meanwhile, France has three times more tennis clubs (8,217), 11,000 more courts (32,387) and five times the number of indoor courts than Britain (8,554).
The difference between the numbers of facilities is astonishing since both countries present a very similar amount of population: France 65.4m while Uk 64.3m.
However, the significant difference in the number of indoor courts between the two countries could prove that accessibility might be having an enormous impact on British tennis, especially in a country that endures rain throughout the entire year while also adding the winter season.
The LTA have received severe criticism from Judy Murray, mother of the world’s second-best player, after the construction of the £40 million National Tennis Centre claiming she would have built “40 centres for £1 million” around Great Britain.
Sport popularity
Grosjean affirmed that tennis is one of the most popular sports in France and considers this is another significant difference with the UK.
“Tennis is probably the second or third sport in the country right after football and maybe rugby, but that depends on the region.”
“Tennis is a tradition for us, I think perhaps in the UK tennis competes against football, rugby, and even cricket.”
“In France tennis is bigger than other sports, tennis is part of us; we like the game of tennis, the technique and everything is part of our culture.”
“And by having tournaments like Roland Garros, Paris-Bercy, and Davis Cup it becomes exciting for the French people, it makes them want to play and enjoy the sport,” said the 2001 ATP World Tour Finals champion.
On the contrary, tennis in Great Britain, even while hosting a Grand Slam plus four major tournaments, fails to be placed within the three most popular sports, trailing behind football, cricket, and rugby while battling against badminton for the fourth slot.
Recent studies show a frightening decline in participation, indicating tennis is far from growing in its popularity within the British community.
In 2008-2009, nearly a million players were participating in tennis activities monthly, but in 2015, it has gone down to 694,000.
On the weekly side, numbers of players have declined from 530,000 in 2008-09 to 384,000 in 2015.
LTA needs to use Davis Cup boost
Grosjean believes that Andy Murray’s success on the ATP tour alongside with the recently obtained Davis Cup victory should help Great Britain raise its popularity among the British community as it did in France back in 1991.
“The Davis Cup victory and Andy’s results on tour should be a big boost to help bring more people to play tennis as it happened in France 30 years ago, ” he said.
The 1991 Davis Cup victory ended the French 61-year title drought, helping the French Federation to increase the sport’s participation numbers that in the future led to two more Davis Cup victories, in 1996 and 2001, where Grosjean played in the finals against Australia.
“Andy is at the top of his game.”
“Winning the Davis Cup, with his brother and team is an amazing thing.”
“I hope the LTA or whoever is in charge use this Davis Cup victory to make more people want to play, it happened for us and we used that energy to boost our tennis, I hope they do that here in the UK.”
“But I also think the federations have to work more with the players to know what they need to do to grow the sport.”
“All the tennis clubs in France work with the Federation and hear the players’ opinions.”
“With the results we have had throughout the years I think the French Federation is doing a good job.”
“I also believe it’s going to do a lot of good if Andy in the futures gets more involved in developing the game of tennis in Britain,” said Grosjean.
Main Photo:
