There's a very good article by Judy Murray in The Times today, about how difficult it is for women to progress in sports coaching. Worth reading by those without personal experience of being a woman as well as by those more directly affected
'Dr Judy Murray' as she now wishes to be known,since an honorary doctorate was bestowed upon her! In tennis there are five levels in coaching/assisting. In levels 1 and 2 ( coaching assistants) the split is about 50/50 between men and women. Level 3 - ( the first level where the recipient can be called a 'coach') it is about 75/25. By my level ( 4 and 5 then split into 'Club' and 'Performance' categories) 5- Master Performance Coach,it is more like 90/10. Mrs Murray is a good speaker and has some good ideas to grow female participation,her 'Miss Hits' programme is well received. However her main plan is to take over the governing body I believe. It will then be a Caledonian revolution!
Many RD and I will expand tomorrow if I may? I'm totally nauseated by today's performance and can't seem to get out of my chair and put the fox food down and get myself together! ****ing football!
For 2018 I’ll be repositioning myself as a darts fan after the absorbing semi finals tonight. I’ve got my persona (‘OcheDad’) so all I need now is a darts forum, preferably with scope for dallying with classical culture. Any suggestions, most welcome.
Roger Draper was an outstanding administrator in his early years at the governing body I believe. I heard him speak a few times when he was South East Manager or something along those lines.He was articulate,measured and innovative. I knew him a little as a player,he was captain of Surrey Men when I was Middlesex Ladies captain. He was good enough to play third pair for the team and as Surrey had a host of decent/low tour level players (Jeff Hunter,Danny Sapsford ) that was no mean feat. When he began his tenure as CEO he seemed confident and had the support of Stuart Smith as president,who appointed him after removing John Crowther and Derek Howarth as deputy,a fellow Surrey man. After a few years,probably early in Howarth's reign,he lost his way. As we know with WFC,there are many contributory factors in our present decline. So too for Draper I think. I believe he became complacent,especially with Murray doing so well. The media,with that vile plagiarist Neil Harman and Jonathon Overend to the fore,began a vendetta against him and I believe he had some personal difficulties as well. Almost overnight he lost is oration and became dependent on cliches and 'you know' 'at this moment in time' and other verbal junk. I have been told that he worked very hard to lose his Wigan accent and in times of anxiety he fell back upon such sentence fillers. The media were relentless,especially concerning his large salary.When Howarth was followed by Peter Bretherton his days were numbered. He was castigated for the large salary and the amounts spent on 'Performance' players,yet no one seemed to mind when Murray insisted on Brad Gilbert for his coach.The LTA had to pay Gilbert off his £3 million salary when it all went belly up after less than a year IIRC. What surprised me most during this period was his reluctance to take Harman etc to task and fully furnish them with the facts,as opposed to their half truths and nasty innuendos. In his earlier guise he would have dismantled their rhetoric comprehensively. However he was,by this stage,a broken man. Not only did he lose his job but he was seen as unemployable by a large percentage of the sports world. It took him approximately 18 months I think before he became CEO of Warrington Wolves. I'm not sure if he's still there. It is a salutary tale of a man who promised much but was undone by his own ego,some nasty, jealous,ill informed hacks and succumbing to affairs of the heart. Tennis is rarely the problem I believe,but the constant bickering and back stabbing of most players,parents,coaches,clubs,centres and sites means we rarely deliver what we should. A bat and ball Midsummer Murders if you will!
Fascinating & thanks! He was friends with my sister in law a while ago & I met him a couple of times. It didn’t seem to help his cause that Murray was becoming so successful & had very much not come up the LTA route. I know rather better Simon Long who was his Commercial Director. Nice fellow but not a tennis player (although not all nice chaps do play tennis). Breaking through in tennis does seem arduous these days. A friend’s lad is 18 & at tennis school in Nice or thereabouts. A tough & potentially lonely life.
You're very welcome! Just so! Probably the hardest sport to excel at I would argue. The rewards are stupendous but only for the top 60 in the world and it is of course performance related and 'right hand draw' dominant! The 'Murray not coming through the LTA route' is a fallacy I believe,mainly spouted by the good Doctor due, in some part, to her strongly held belief that Jamie was 'ruined' at the Hills Road Academy at Cambridge. Jamie was the better player at a young age,albeit a year older than Andy (funnily enough he remains a year older,even now!) Judy and Andy thought that the coaching he received,by David Ison,dismantled his game. David is/was a sound player and would not have implemented the technique Jamie has today. Nevertheless something went wrong ,as if you examine his technique he has awful flaws in his forehand volley,forehand groundshot/return of serve and serve. What he is,in my opinion,is a superb defensive /reactive volleyer and he has benefited from the 1/1 coaching of Louis Cayer,the respected Canadian doubles coach.Cayer is paid for by the LTA at Judy's insistence,so to say the Murrays have been out of the system is plainly untrue. Moreover Brad Gilbert was funded by the LTA ( see previous post) and the governing body half funded Andy's time in Barcelona. The LTA can be held responsible for many failings but not funding the Murray family is a myth spread by the family and deeply unpleasant portions of the media. I have heard Mr IBB speak of Mr Long I think and in Roger's day there were many people with a tennis background at Roehampton, which would dilute Simon's lack of expertise.Draper was crucified for the NTC at Roehampton too. Sadly today there are few people with any tennis knowledge at Roehampton.Many IT experts, but few who know one end of a racket from the other!
The LTA isn't particularly anti women, it's anti anyone who's not in their select little club. It's very much FA like. Unless it's changed in tbe last 10 years or so, regardless of talent if you're not a favoured establishment player, no matter how good you are you don't get the breaks. It's why all recent UK tennis successes have come from outside the usual LTA camp and progressed privately. Needs a complete restructure.
All the players that have done well have had considerable funding from the LTA,unless you consider the £4m given to the Murray family, in terms of coaches, inconsiderable? That doesn't include the bill for Cayer for 2018. What SHOULD happen is what Henman did with Felgate and many countries do with their pyramid. That is to say set a target for a player,let's call him Meister. Meister is given a target of 200 on the ATP ranking to achieve by December 2018. He will be provided with a coach,travel and accommodation by the governing body. Meister reaches his target. In 2019 his goal is 100,he still receives his coach and travel but pays for his accommodation.He reaches this target and the governing body remove his travel funding and if he reaches top 50 his coach is then removed or he pays for the coach himself from his now considerable earnings. The funding/resources are then recycled to other aspiring players. Henman told the then head of mens performance,Warren Jaques, exactly this.He wanted to retain Felgate but knew he was earning more than enough to fund paying David himself. We did this for a while under Draper but the real problem, as a friend of mine would say is 'LTA - let's try again'! We are constantly changing plans and we never stick with anything for long enough for it to work. Sounds like something close to home?! I would argue that it is the job of the governing body to put in place the infrastructure to help clubs,centres,coaches and players to become elite performers,not to produce them in house. Everyone starts bickering and sniping but then again tennis is full of that. For example: Herts is one of the best run counties in the country.It has many indoor courts;Gosling,Batchwood,Legends and clubs with indoor courts;Harpenden,Welwyn,Berkhamsptead. However it is like a bat and ball version of football. Batchwood hate Gosling and vice versa,everyone hates Harpenden and there are multiple club rivalries and coaching fall outs. This is not the LTA's fault,just people succumbing to most of the seven deadly sins! There are some fine people in the governing body,trouble is most of them are the volunteers and the employed section are now so lacking in tennis knowledge as to be not fit for purpose. And I haven't even started on the LTA's relationship with the AELTC which makes our thoughts on Silva seem infantile in the extreme! No easy task running tennis!
Good to hear it appears to be turning around somewhat. My experience comes from a family mrmber that was county standard and winning rankings tournaments albeit not Hertfordshire. We are talking 25 years ago now though.
