Why United Kingdom cannot produce high quality female tennis players?

6344 Views 144 Replies 66 Participants Last post by cake, 10 d ago

Perun

Discussion Starter · 12 d ago (Edited)

I mean ... tennis is a popular sport in this country, Wimbledon is the oldest GS tournament and they have success on ATP tour but their best female players that were not de facto imported like Konta who did not learn tennis in the UK are at best scrubs. Raducanu won a GS but did nothing after that and that success looks like a fluke. And she was born in ... Canada, but still more of a home product than Konta.

I've seen people complaining about the amount of injuries and it indeed stands out to me.

But is that relative lack of contemporary success the result of poor training, the sport being less popular among girls or players careers not being handled well especially when it comes to conditioning/fitness/injury prevention issue?

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samn

· #2 · 12 d ago

I don't know if tennis as such is all that popular here. Most of the interest and attention is focussed on the two weeks of Wimbledon, but otherwise tennis seems to hardly register on the radar of the average sports fan the rest of the year. And I suspect some of the coverage of Wimbledon has more to do with celeb-spotting and the royal family than it is about the actual tennis itself.

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guitarra

· #3 · 12 d ago

Maybe this is the reason?

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FitzWilton

· #4 · 12 d ago

366 days of rain per year doesn't help.

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maloofhoof

· #5 · 12 d ago

UK does have Hannah Klugman and other promising juniors

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samn

· #6 · 12 d ago

FitzWilton said:
366 days of rain per year doesn't help.

It doesn't rain that much in London where many of the training centres are. London gets only around 100 or so days a year with rain and surely the LTA has more than enough money to build indoor facilities to be used on those days when it does rain.

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CamdenRadu

· #7 · 12 d ago

We can:

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cricketbat

· #8 · 12 d ago

guitarra said:
Maybe this is the reason?
View attachment 267499

Nice of you to post a pic of your family day out @guitarra , did you get ice creams

Seriously though, players come in phases, Andy Murray, Emma, Draper will go places, and some really good youngsters looking pomising.

But yes, we are football obsessed and like a ruby murry and chips.

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Frainbart

· #9 · 12 d ago

There are probably several factors, but one thing to consider is that the professional tour is incredibly tough. I think the British girls (in a general sense) are simply too soft, both physically and mentally, when compared to other countries.

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guitarra

· #10 · 12 d ago

Another reason (not an obvious one) may be lack of clay courts.

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Radfan

· #11 · 12 d ago

Czechia need to send help to uk tennis. They seem to have the recipe.

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Wasabi.

· #12 · 12 d ago

Emma's at least a top 20 talent if she can stay healthy and she even trained through the LTA. Even then we don't have that many talented female players and I think it's because of lack of availability of tennis courts and how expensive it is.

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cricketbat

· #13 · 12 d ago (Edited)

Frainbart said:
There are probably several factors, but one thing to consider is that the professional tour is incredibly tough. I think the British girls (in a general sense) are simply too soft, both physically and mentally, when compared to other countries.

Remember Tennis is an individual sport, if you compared to football, if you are a top 100 player in football in the world you would be celebrated - but in Tennis thats not enough. Not everyone can be best in the world at anything.

How many Polish footballers are best in the world ? I can only think of lewendowsky as that level, see what I mean, in 10 years there maybe 10 contenders and a Messy type.

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swimmer_kid

· #14 · 12 d ago

They got unlucky Robson was plagued by injuries. At the minimum she could have been solid top 20 for many years, possibly reach the top 10 and win a major. But that is the problem when you rely on one player to fly the flag.

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aca99da

· #15 · 12 d ago

Quite a few of the posters in Emma's Empire are ladies. Maybe some of them can start playing tennis and become really good at it. 😀

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Perun

Discussion Starter · #16 · 12 d ago

FitzWilton said:
366 days of rain per year doesn't help.

You certainly have quite a lot of indoor courts though with carpet or HC surface.

ArcticRedBear

· #17 · 12 d ago

They are generally poor at producing world-class athletes and national teams in different sports, not only tennis players. They don't exist in world sports or at least they are performing below potential that they have (I mean, population size, economy size etc.) and except for football ofc.

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whyyousayvamos

· #18 · 12 d ago

it’s not exactly the most accessible sport here. it’s mostly a sport for posh girls, and they’re not exactly known for their work ethic

sport isn’t really a priority here in general. even football is predominantly for the armchair fans and kids playing FIFA rather than focusing on the game itself at grassroots level

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Varak

· #19 · 12 d ago

CamdenRadu said:
We can:

View attachment 267501

Oh hey, I recognize her, that's the Romanian-Chinese-Canadian girl who won the USO once.

Rule Britannia!

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AdeyC

· #20 · 12 d ago

ArcticRedBear said:
They are generally poor at producing world-class athletes and national teams in different sports, not only tennis players. They don't exist in world sports or at least they are performing below potential that they have (I mean, population size, economy size etc.) and except for football ofc.

In the early 80's we had 4 in the top 40 - Barker. Wade, Durie and Hobbs - so it's not impossible.

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