In a nation with such limited playing resources, the theory goes, you need to put the best players in one place so that they have decent sparring partners to practise with. We are not Italy or the Czech Republic, where every significant club has its own world-class role model – a Flavio Cobolli or a Karolína Muchová – who can give promising juniors an idea of the standard required.
Yet the very existence of the academy feeds what Telegraph Sport previously described, after the last limp British performance at Wimbledon three years ago, as the LTA’s Messiah complex: the idea that they have all the answers.
The LTA might talk about a “performance pathway”, but the truth is that tennis development is more akin to a labyrinth in which every successful player has taken a different route. In a recent conversation with Telegraph Sport, one tennis insider questioned why the majority of academy students are expected to complete the prescribed course, whether they are lagging behind the standards required for a pro career or pushing on so quickly that they would be better advised to leave school early and join the Tour.
One final argument against centralising young prospects is that it disempowers local coaches. “Grass-roots tennis feels very flat,” says one experienced coach who works at a regional centre in the North of England. “The poaching of any half-decent junior player to Loughborough has taken away the incentive for ambitious and talented coaches to nurture talent.” According to another coach with tour experience, “the system stops great coaches developing private businesses and their own careers”. Few of the sources mentioned in this article were prepared to be named, because the LTA is so influential across every aspect of the British game.
Judy Murray, however, was prepared to go on the record. “If we look at the Italians,” she said, “they moved away from a centralised approach some years ago now, and went into investing in coaches and strengthening their clubs, so that you build a bigger player base in local areas, which then means that you have better competition and training locally and parents don’t have to dedicate as much time, money and mileage to making it happen for their kids.
“Talent is everywhere but opportunity is not,” added Murray, who is a highly unusual figure in that she has been a successful player, coach and parent. “At the moment, the prospects for any aspiring junior are determined by their access to quality coaches, quality training facilities and parents who can afford to pay for everything. In Scotland, for instance, we have one RPDC in a country that is two-thirds the land-mass of England. It’s impossible for players outside the central belt.”