Roger Blitz
Parents who believe they have an Andy Murray in the family, take note: the cost of converting your progeny into a British Wimbledon hero is ?250,000. That is the cold assessment of Roger Draper, chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, in the midst of another chequered Wimbledon for the home game.
The clamour for Britain to produce more professionals with the talent of the world number 4, who made it into the quarter-finals on Monday by beating Richard Gasquet in straight sets, will be tempered by Mr Draper?s estimate of the financial sacrifice expected of parents. It is a sum Mr Draper says parents need to budget for over a 10-year period to fund their offspring?s travel, accommodation, tournament costs and equipment needs. Who said tennis was not a middle-class sport?
?The very good news is we are getting more and more people making those sacrifices, and putting things on the line,? Mr Draper says. If so, those parents are badly needed if British tennis is to keep up with other nations churning out top-100 players.
Mr Draper says the president of Ukraine?s tennis federation is bank-rolling his country?s elite players. Li Na?s French Open victory may galvanise Chinese interest in tennis and players from eastern European nations are dominating the Wimbledon order of play in numbers unimaginable a decade ago.
Indeed, the sight of three British women players making it as far as the second round of Wimbledon was an unusual occurrence for SW19 regulars. One mother, watching her eight-year-old daughter hurl herself around the mini-tennis court at Wimbledon, wonders whether the well-funded LTA, whose turnover has grown by a quarter in the past four years, could do more to help.
She says she has spent ?40,000 funding her 14-yearold son?s progress through junior tournaments across Europe, and expects to fork out that amount again in the coming years. ?The clubs have the facilities to produce world champions but they have to fund more juniors playing fulltime, to go out and play in Europe,? she says.
The not-for-profit governing body can hardly be accused of ducking the challenge to create champions. In five years, the number of juniors playing tournaments has increased five-fold. There are 450 ?high performance? coaches.
But elite funding is just one LTA priority. Of the ?65.3m it dispersed in 2010 – ?31m provided from the surplus made by the All England Club?s Wimbledon championship – ?13.4m went towards supporting and developing talent. It spent ?19m on widening participation in the game, ?16.2m on competitions and ?16.7m on administration.
?The main focus is around getting more people playing tennis,? says Mr Draper. He admits to some errors in his five years at the LTA: the organisation failed to communicate its overall strategy; it was slow to improve park facilities, and coaches should have been given better support.
(The LTA has now set up a tennisbased fitness programme to improve their income.)
However, the LTA is now more commercially minded. Its corporate governance is healthy and it is better at making money, through sponsorship and events organisation.
Richard Baker, one of two independent non-executive LTA directors and former chief executive of Alliance Boots, says a sport governing body has a long list of requirements. ?If you get into the trap of trying to please everybody, you please no one,? he says.
But whatever the clamour for more world-beaters, LTA priorities will not change. Mr Draper believes the strategy for elite tennis will eventually work.
In addition, the LTA is not about to fund parents simply because their children are talented at tennis. The available money is being used for bonus schemes and tournament prize money. ?The funding is there, but the players have got to earn it,? he says.
Net gains ?250,000 Cost over 10 years to finance a tennis star 450 Number of UK ?high performance? coaches ?65m Funds that the LTA dispersed in 2010 23,000 Number of tennis courts in Britain
? The Financial Times Limited 2011