A winning mentality: why British tennis players should look to Spain for inspiration

Another TCS article. This was written as a companion to an article about the current 'golden age' of Spanish sport, hence all the Spain references! I think it still works as a stand-alone piece - the main point about the state of British tennis is certainly still valid. First published 28/10/10.

Kazakhstan. Not exactly a tennis powerhouse, you would imagine. And yet this country has three times as many men in the top 100 as Britain. Three, to be precise.

It’s much the same story in the women’s game. Russia is unsurprisingly ahead on numbers, producing  17 of the current top 100 women. Even somewhere like Romania, that giant of the game, can manage ­five. And what about Britain? How many of the top 100 women can we lay claim to? Yep, you guessed it – one.

So why don’t British players perform better? And what can be done to make sure they do?

Put simply, British players just aren’t very good at winning. Sounds pretty obvious, I know, but bear with me – what I mean is that Brits just aren’t as good as other players at coping with the high-pressure environment of professional tennis. It’s what I’ll call here a “winning mentality”, and it’s something that a lot of British players don’t seem to have. 

It isn’t lack of funding. British players aren’t exactly short of training facilities. Indeed, the LTA provides a £40 million state-of-the-art centre at Roehampton. Britain’s elite players also receive some of the most generous funding in the world, including £15 000 in travel expenses and around £16 000 in coaching, sports science and other bene­fits. Clearly, lack of ­ financial support isn’t the problem.

Neither is it lack of talent. Some of the current British senior players were among the world’s best as juniors, with Jamie Baker (current British number four and world number 293) reaching number six in the world junior rankings.

But all too often this doesn’t translate into success at a senior level. Somewhere along the line, something in the coaching setup must go wrong. So how can we put it right? To ­find out, we need to turn our attention to a country that no-one can accuse of lacking a winning mentality – Spain.

Spain have more men in the top 100 than any other nation, with a total of 14, half of whom are in the top 25. Of these seven, ­ five attended specialist tennis academies as children, including world number seven Fernando Verdasco who left school at 11 to move to an academy in Barcelona.

Of course, there are always exceptions – at 14 Rafael Nadal had his funding cut after his family refused to send him to Barcelona to continue his training. But then, not everyone’s lucky enough to have an uncle who’s not only an ex-pro, but happy to coach them for free.

So is this the solution – should promising young British players be packed off to Spanish academies? Well, it certainly seems to have worked for one Brit who has been notably absent from this discussion so far. In 2002, a 15-year-old Andy Murray left Scotland and moved to Barcelona, where he trained at the Sánchez-Casal Academy.

But this isn’t a sacri­fice that many parents would be willing or able to make. So what if institutions like these existed closer to home, so that players could enjoy their advantages without having to travel thousands of miles?

Having juniors training together and playing against each other regularly, rather than separately with their own coaches as now, could help to foster that competitive instinct, that winning mentality, that is so crucial when they make the step up to senior level.

Centralised, co-ordinated training like this could also help to create the culture of success that is currently so sadly lacking. Success is catching, but so is mediocrity, and it’s the latter that is currently prevalent in the British ranks. To reverse this trend, it’s clear that a serious shake-up of the current system is needed.

Sending young players to academies would essentially mean expecting them to behave like professionals. Isn’t this unfair? Shouldn’t they have a few years to enjoy their sport before they have to think about playing professionally?

Unfortunately the harsh truth is that tennis, like all professional sports, is a young person’s game. Most players turn pro between the ages of 16 and 18, and the early 30s is a typical retirement age. So in fact childhood years, and particularly the teens, are crucial in laying the foundations for future success.

Maybe academies aren’t the answer. But the current system clearly isn’t working, so perhaps looking to countries like Spain that are enjoying so much success is Britain’s best hope of sharing it.