From: The Racketeer 16, December 1995
A Mystery Solved
by Ed Petryczka
TRAVEL ALLOWS one the luxury of seeing beyond one's normal horizons. The big picture becomes clearer when you stand further back. Here is a personal view of British tennis based on 12 years experience both here and abroad.
Australia, on the other side of the world, is the country that most resembles England in tennis terms. Tennis down under is played mostly on grass, with astro-turf as the second surface. Some facilities have 'shale' courts, a poor quality clay court; 'dust' would be a more appropriate description. Techniques are still old-fashioned; the old side-on stance reigns supreme, although not a single player, man or woman, in the world's top 100 plays like that. Tennis in Australia is currently having a mini-boom, success wise. How is that possible, they with 16 million people, and we with 56 million?
The answer is obvious when you're there. Everyone plays tennis so the general standard is far higher. Not only that, but Aussie kids are into many sports and outdoor pursuits, essential in developing co-ordination, fitness and health. Australia is successful despite its courts and techniques, a reflection of the natural level of athleticism in the population. The cry from our LTA has been for a champion first, then everyone will throw away their cricket bats and footballs and pick up rackets. They said the same in Oz. Along came Pat Cash. Did Oz tennis develop further? No! The old styles and methods did not change. Aussies still can't hit groundstrokes, and Cash lost the plot: got too big for his boots and became unpopular. LTA beware! Currently Australia is improving its sports science tennis base and is moving into 'new age tennis'.
'New age tennis' is characterised by studying the methods and techniques of top players and backward engineering appropriate tennis methods for teaching and training. It is radically different from the old-school, sideways on, smooth, slow strokes of yesteryear. 'New age tennis' (my own term) comes from West Germany. The Germanic love of dissecting, dismantling and then reassembling structures (under the tutelage of Richard Schönborn, the head coach of the German Tennis Federation) has made tennis the most researched sport in the world. Statistics, video-analysis, talent searches and specifically engineered programmes based on thousands and thousands of matches, together with state of the art biomechanical tools have produced a system that is very solid and efficient. Compared with English play which is, as already mentioned, grass-based, serve, get to the net (Rusedski, Petchey, Henman, Bates), the Germans emphasise all-court, groundstroke-based tennis. Together with the obvious prosperity of the people, their work ethic has made the Germans the current brand leaders.
Before we move on to the USA, let us look at Sweden and Spain; for their size outstanding contributors to world class tennis. Both have groundstroke-based systems, both are rich and very sporty. In Sweden 85% of the population plays tennis. You can't get a court these days in Spain - everyone wants to play, and it isn't cheap either. At the risk of stating the obvious, a pattern seems to be emerging. Let us ask ourselves: has Wimbledon and its success done more than anything to hold us back from developing the type of game that would allow us to compete internationally? Here I use 'Wimbledon' as a metaphor for tradition.
And so to the US of A, particularly California and Florida 250 million people, 25 million junior players. Prosperous, viciously competitive, and slowly changing its old-style methods for the ruthless efficiency of the Gentian model. The USTA has an enlightened new approach. It sees that a national organisation must work with top players' individual coaches and not supersede them, as was unfortunately the case in this country a few years ago. The USTA has poured millions of dollars into sports science research, tests for its coaches and area training facilities.
Statistically, in America, you would expect to find a few champions; their tennis base is so massive. In the UK it's woefully small. The number of individuals with the 17 or so characteristics of champions is minuscule, so you'd better have a wide base or you have no chance. School sport, specifically tennis is being undermined in the UK. Money is very tight, courts need improving, groundstroke-favoured surfaces need to be laid. New methods have to get down to average coaches and, most importantly, a systematic search, as in Germany, must go on to find highly co-ordinated, above-averagely tall kids to compete at a world level ten years down the road. Not an easy task.
To conclude, tennis is a rich sport, played in affluent countries and areas. The UK is basically poorer and less affluent than successful tennis nations, and tennis is not played to anything like the same extent, therefore it is not catered for. The LTA is filling in the blanks slowly: building clay courts, for example. But we should not expect miracles; nor wonder why we can't produce top-level players.