More Retirements ?

indiana · Tennis legend

RE: More Retirements ?

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

If I've understood right, Ash Hewitt and George Morgan are now working in the States, involved in the tennis programmes there.

If so, well done lads and hope it's going well.

(If I've got the wrong end of the stick, then apologies but hope things are going well, whatever !).

philwrig · Hall of fame

Coup Droit wrote:
If I've understood right, Ash Hewitt and George Morgan are now working in the States, involved in the tennis programmes there.

If so, well done lads and hope it's going well.

(If I've got the wrong end of the stick, then apologies but hope things are going well, whatever !).

Both retired sadly, but I believe at the same college involved in coaching.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

I think retired is a bit harsh I feel this is just the next step in their tennis careers, they are both continuing along the expected course of committed British tennis players whose talent has taken them into and through the US College system and into opportunities to develop as elite coaches within it.
Essentially they are continuing to pursue plan B and as such have been a great success, their time and their experience on the futures tour is part of what makes them fit for purpose in their new role.
There is the possibility of making a living playing doubles for the most successful British College players but becoming a solvent singles ATP touring player is not realistic as generally the required pedigree as a junior normally takes the player straight into ITF tennis at 17. I watch Cameron Norries career with bitterest as I see him being a player on the cusp of plan A who has chosen plan B

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Well, Ed seems to be managing to be a solvent singles players after doing the college route (as do numerous other non-Brits).

And I don't think Phil meant 'retired' as in 'not doing anything' or 'not doing tennis' - just 'retired from being professional tennis player on tour, trying to make it'.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Point taken. Perhaps it was the use of sadly, as I think the time on tour is what has lead them into their next stage of their professional lives within tennis. James Ward prior to last year was deeply dissatisfied with his standard of living given his ranking, and the general suggestion is those in the top 150 make enough to be satisfied with their lot.

The standard required is just so high in tennis when compared to other sports that I don't feel sad when a player ranked outside the top 200 chooses to earn a living within tennis in a different way. While they try they have my complete support and the more young players we have giving it a go the better but unless you are knocking on the door of the top 250 by 23/24 in the balance of probabilities you are not going to make your fortune in tennis so why not try something else and if that's contributing to the development of tennis as a coach, fantastic.

indiana · Tennis legend

Indeed, this is surely what this thread is about - retirements from the pro tour.

Thanks for the update on Ash and George. All the best to them.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I'm delighted Ash and George are successfully pursuing tennis coaching careers/paths.

Of course, it doesn't bode that well for the UK, or LTA, that not only does our country fail to produce a good crop of new playing prospects each year, or hang on to the ones that it does produce as opposed to watching them drop out, but on top of this it doesn't even manage to hang on to our new exciting coaching prospects . . .

By the by, I wouldn't be at all surprised if George Morgan doesn't try pro-tennis one more time, in a couple of years time. Especially given where he is now and the envrionment he's got himself into. He's still pretty young, and never really managed to give it a proper go, not really, probably to do with confidence etc. And for someone who was WR 6 as a junior, he might be tempted to try again, just to see, and have no regrets . . .

A1 tennis academy · Satellite level

sherbert wrote:
I know when Neil was a junior, there was a select number of players who seemed to get all the money pumped in to them. (Neil wasn't one of them) and now a lot of those players gave up tennis years ago. Like you say - 20 James Wards would be much better than one Andy.

I also think another big issue is the fact that if a player hasn't made it by 21 - they seem to be given up on.

I can't speak for all the players, but I know the decent ones don't necessarily want to be helped for everything - they just want to be able to play tennis without it all having to be about money.

Our top 25 players should not have to continually worry about money .

its very expensive to live and play in GB compared with other parts of the world . we have one of richest tennis federations in the world it really should not be a issue .

There is certainly a ruthless if you have not done it by 21 your out

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Another knock-on effect of the LTA refusing to realise the importance of having a pyramid with a big pool of players is not only, as mentioned before, the lack of 'players giving birth to baby players' but also the lack of belief of parents and/or sponsors, charities etc.

i.e. If you're in a country with 25 players in the top 300, it's far easier to believe that X might also make it into the top 300 and so it's worth putting time and money into. If it's set up so you've only got one or two 'Andy's, the chance of the kid being another Andy is very slight.

As such, French parents, say, and councils and such, are far more likely to help fund their kids' careers when young (and not just the wealthy, but all of them).

This, to be fair, is also partly because parents pay for ALL further studies (no grants except for children with parents on welfare) so parents expect and budget for having to support kids till 25 or so (it's only random where you draw the line - 16? 18? 21? 25? all their lives?). But it does help that tennis is seen as a plausible career path, partly because of the pyramid in place (with coaching as a good fallback plan because so many coaches are needed).

indiana · Tennis legend

I do worry that the LTA may have a lot of folk who know tennis, but a certain lack of logical / joined up thinkers. And the two don't necessarily combine well when trying to be logical about tennis matters.

What is not clear to me is how much of the funding cuts are because of necessity and how much a ( very arguable ) philosophy of 'tough love' ?

The women are showing real signs of establishing more of a core pyrammid, but will the rug be pulled out from under many of them if they haven't 'made it' by 21 ?

I absolutely agree with CD that for quite a number of reasons it helps to have a core of players that others can in the first instance aspire to aside from potential top 100ers or whatever.

christian · Intermediate Club Player

This is one of my big gripes with the present policy, not only is the money there given the amount made via Wimbledon for instance, but the insistence by Downey and many before him that if a player hasnt made top 100 by 21 they may as well give up. It is patent nonsense anyway as proven by many players who develop later. Just absolutely sick of yet another round of tough new policies that achieve sod all but pander to the view that comes around every Wimbledon that the players are spoon fed and need some tough love.

Otto · Social player

The LTA say their mandate is to have 'more people playing tennis more often', at participation and elite levels. So their wish, and for everyone else is to have as many top 100 players as possible right? Also the LTA agree that in Western Europe, the countries with significant numbers of top 100 players have a large group of players 500-100, and a considerably bigger group 1000-500. We have these groups of players in roughly the same proportions but much smaller. I think to make each of these groups as big as possible you need the biggest domestic tournament structure possible to support the numbers. this means that the 26 year old player that is 600 and probably won't be top 100 has a very important role to play in British tennis. In my experience the LTA don't agree.

EddietheEagle · County player

The averaged cost of an LTA employee was £49,000 in 2013. There were 324 of them that year accounting for £16,900.000 in LTA expenditure. Cut that number of employed staff by one hundred (easy when over 200 of them aren't needed anyway) and you have £5,000,000 for a prize money pot. Support tournaments on a matched expenditure basis with clubs and you then create a £10,000,000 prize pool potentially for British tennis tournaments. We'd have every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Martha) going up to the loft to find his (or her) racquet. We'd have the best tournament structure in Europe, if not the world, with players flooding to play in this country rather than the other way round.

You can adjust those figures up or down. The point is that we do have the resources to change the way tournament tennis is structured in the UK.

paulisi · Tennis legend

49K - that seems very high. A lot of the jobs advertised recently were in the 18k-20K mark.

Seems like a lot of the money is going into the marketing budget to get more people to play in order to get the Sport England funding increased.