It's the tennis season again. Well it is if you live in the UK where the whole season apparently lasts only four weeks. The BBC puts enough resources into two weeks of Wimbledon coverage to televise a whole world war while ignoring the sport for the rest of the year. To be fair, the old red button had a lot of the French Open this year but you know what I mean. The problem has always been that we all go mad and dig out our dusty old raquets in late June and after a bit of a bash down the park, forget all about it again until next year. Those cheating foreigners, on the other hand, play all year round! No wonder the Brits are so bad at the game.
Of course we also see a fair bit of the annual Pimms-drinking fest over in West Kensington at Queen's Club, a social (and corporate) event that can be spoiled, it the weather's good, by a few blokes huffing and puffing around the grass. Most attendees though are able to cope with this without being distracted from their free lunch (at least it was free when I went! Plus a free tea in the clubhouse courtesy of some friends who are members. Can't remember the tennis at all.) This year we've already had the latest of our brave young hopefulls come and go. For poor young Ollie Golding it was a bit like watching a Christian against the lions or some kind of freak show, put on as an entertainment for the lunching classes. We all knew he hadn't a hope of winning but it makes us feel good to see a plucky young Brit sacrificed in the interests of proving that for us, it's playing the game and not the winning that counts. Which is a great justification for our habitually dismal results.
For the next few weeks, there is a law that says that all papers must run several articles on why the UK is rubbish at tennis, so I thought I'd get in first. The usual reasons given are: not enough of us play the game, especially at school; poor facilities; elitist tennis clubs that exclude you if you're not the "right sort"; too much dominance of British sport by football, etc., etc. While all these have an element of truth in them, they don't stand up to serious examination. So I've got two other answers for you.
First, we in GB regard sport as a hobby, not a profession. Nearly all sports were invented here, by newly time (and money) rich Victorians who wanted something to do on their lawns except drink tea. This idea lives on deep down in the British psyche and affects our performance in all sports, not just tennis, which is by no means the only sport in which we are woeful under-achievers. Johnny Foreigner has always been the underdog playing catch up and seeking to give us imperialists a bloody nose. Having been duly bloodied, we refrain from trying to compete and rise above all that ghastly winning business, congratulating the little chaps from the colonies and retiring to the marquee for a drink and a chat.
But the other problem is the LTA. Yes I know the poor old LTA is an easy target but there's a reason for this: it's the right target. It is simply incredible that the LTA can pour about £30m a year into the sport and produce no one capable of seeing off those pesky colonials. In no other country does tennis benefit from the kind of cash that flies around in British tennis and in no other country is there such a history of failure. It's time to face facts and admit that there is an inverse relationship between money and results and for the LTA to stop chucking the stuff around.
Let the LTA give its money to charity and let our tennis youngsters devleop a bit of hunger, just like all those Eastern Europeans who have to practice in disused swimming pools (true) using fly swatters for racquets (or something). It is surely no coincidence that it's the Olavs and Novaks who dominate the tennis world and not the Olivers and Nigels. Still at least we beat them all at football. Hang on a minute...
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