Coaching must take blame for Britain's world-class failure

Wimbledon's multi-million profits and a stack of imported foreign teachers reap the net result of precisely nothing

Observing the fuss created after the advent of Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski, a former member of the British tennis hierarchy remarked that, "The Lawn Tennis Association think they've cracked it. But what have they produced? An accident and a foreigner."

While grateful for the disparate schooling that enabled Henman to become the shining light of an Oxfordshire tennis dynasty, and for the decision by Rusedski, a son of Montreal, to take advantage of his mother's Yorkshire birthright, we have no idea who next will fill our courts.

The LTA, having shown down the years that Wimbledon's millions cannot buy success, have just banked £25.6m, the latest pre-tax surplus from the All England Club Championships (£6.44m down on last year's donation). Since 1981, when the Wimbledon surplus exceeded £1m for the first time, a total of £420.55m has been transferred from the lawns of SW19 to the vaults of Barons Court. This arrangement between the partners in the world's most prestigious tennis tournament was once described by a colleague as a classic example of the law of diminishing returns.

Two main reasons are cited for Britain's shortage of world-class tennis players: not enough people play, and those who do play are let down by the general standard of coaching. "A player takes a coach to shorten the learning process," says Bob Brett, an Australian whose clients have included Boris Becker and Goran Ivanisevic. "It's the same thing with having coaches to teach the coaches. You shorten the learning phase. You don't make as many mistakes."

Brett, who started his coaching career 28 years ago as an apprentice to his compatriot Harry Hopman, the master mentor, is turning his training techniques to coaches as well as players at the Bob Brett Elite Team tennis academy in Montreuil, France. His five-month course for coaches costs £3,600, excluding accommodation, and up to 24 applicants will be selected for each course.

By basing his academy in France, Brett is on fertile ground. The French Davis Cup team is preparing to defend the trophy in Paris next month, and five Frenchmen figure in the world's top 50. "In France," Brett says, "three million play tennis and the culture of the clubs is very important for the development of young players. The infrastructure is amazing."

Patrice Hagelauer, an architect of the current French tennis system and a former mentor to Yannick Noah, Henri Leconte and Guy Forget, was appointed the LTA's first director of performance three years and eight months ago. After studying the state of the nation's tennis and warning that there would only be clubs for pensioners here unless attitudes to junior development changed, Hagelauer put together a £5m per year performance plan. He recently appointed two overseas coaches, Carl Maes, of Belgium, and Zdenek Zofka, of the Czech Republic, at two of four new regional academies, and was a keen advocate of the LTA's plan to build a £39m National Tennis Centre in Roehampton.

Hagelauer's critics argue that standards have not improved and attitudes have not broadened. Henman (No 8) and Rusedski (No 31) are the only British men in the top 100, only two British women are in the top 200, and the coaching is largely déjà vu.

"There are issues Patrice goes through today," Brett says, "and what you see is possibly a misconception in that British tennis always has very good young players. If you look at the statistics over the last 10 years, how many British juniors were in the International Tennis Federation's top 50? One or two out of 500. The problem seems to be at a much younger age, and also in getting the numbers playing the game."

Brett is certain that the lack of technical skill being taught at an early age handicaps players trying to make the transition from junior to senior competition. "It's a similar problem to what I see in Australia," he says. "Coaches are responsible for the development of the player. Nobody else is responsible for that. And the technical evolution of the player from Great Britain and Australia is not the same as it's been in France. The programmes have really advanced in France.

"In Australia, a lot of the guys from the 1950s and 1960s, when there were so many players and they were all technically good, didn't seem to recognise that the game had changed after topspin started to play a greater part. They thought, and wrongly, that, 'No, what we've done, this is the secret of our success. We're the best, and this is it'. There's no room for that attitude in coaching. It's always a case of looking to see what somebody else does better. The ideas that you have as a coach come from watching other players and come from watching coaches do their work."

The 6ft 4in Michael Stich was a comprehensive player. Best known for defeating his German compatriot Boris Becker in the 1991 Wimbledon men's singles final, he also won ATP Tour titles on the various court surfaces. Stich resigned as Germany's Davis Cup captain two months ago after his decision to recall the 35-year-old Becker was shouted down by younger players, Tommy Haas and Rainer Schuettler.

Stich's light-hearted suggestion that he might come to Britain if we need his experience resulted in some useful publicity ahead of his scheduled appearance in next month's Honda Challenge seniors event at the Royal Albert Hall. He also made an interesting point about the development of players: "I can't speak for England, but in Germany I find a lot of the time the problem is that those coaches who are great coaching juniors are not also made to be great coaches of professional players. That transition is very difficult. You need to find a coach who fits the character of the player. A lot of players get so much help to become good juniors that they forget that in the end it has to come from within themselves if they want to become good professionals."

Darren Cahill, who helped make his fellow Australian Lleyton Hewitt the world No 1, is now responsible for fine-tuning Andre Agassi's game as the 32-year-old American gilds his hall of fame. Writing in the ITF Coaching and Sport Science Review, Cahill emphasises the importance of versatility. "When asked what type of player you coach," Cahill said, "the answer should never be as simple or general as, 'Well, my player's an attacker, he plays serve and volley' or 'I coach a baseliner'. It's about establishing the potential for and limit of future growth in your player."

Although both Hewitt and Agassi are counter-punchers, Cahill shares Bob Brett's concern with regard to the decline of net play. "Over recent years this part of the game seems to have been increasingly neglected, with very few players feeling comfortable around the net," Cahill writes. "This is in spite of the fact that life can be made much easier for most baseliners if they venture to the net occasionally to knock off the easy volley."

Belgium, in the form of Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin, has made an impressive contribution to the well-being of the women's game at the top level, even though America's formidable Williams sisters have developed a habit of crushing the opposition. Ivo Van Aken, Belgium's Fed Cup coach, another contributor to the ITF Review, writes: "Although we are seeing more and more women serving well, I am positive that many girls would be able to serve more effectively if they had had the right programmes in terms of co-ordination, technical and tactical training from the very beginning: in other words between the ages of six and 13."

The least the LTA can do is embrace progressive coaching schemes and training methods from within and without, whether they originate in Paris or Pott Shrigley, and hope to produce a few accidents by design.