It’s been a rather disappointing day at The Bolton Arena today as the standard of tennis was not what I expected. I was last here for an U16 Winter Grand Prix event 4/5 years ago and the standard then was much higher than what I witnessed today.
I know it’s a difficult time of year being just after Christmas but I was amazed by the poor entry and the amount of withdrawals for an LTA Grade 2 event (only Nationals is a higher grade). One of the boys that I spoke to was 17th alternate 5 days before the event and was comfortably in the draw – out of a possible 24 players in the qualifying the boys had 22 and the girls had 18. I often hear a lot of parents complaining that their son / daughter does not have a high enough rating to get into the “bigger” events – it’s definitely not the case in this event.
In the boys event there were 19 matches with players rated between 6.1 and 7.1. Only 3 of these matches went to 3 sets and 12 out of the 19 (63%) were won without dropping more than 5 games. I would have thought that for this level of event the standard ought to be much better or at least a little more competitive.
The girl’s event was even more disappointing, they only managed to fill 6 out of a possible 8 boxes meaning that there were only 18 out of a possible 24 players. The ratings ranged from 6.2 – 8.1, 11 out of the 18 matches (61%) were won without dropping more than 5 games and not a single match went to 3 sets.
During the day I was getting Twitter updates reporting that it’s only the second time since the ATP rankings began in 1973 that Britain will end the year with only 1 man in the top 200. We’ve had some fantastic results on the junior circuit recently, notably George Morgan and Josh Sapwell who won their respective age groups at the Orange Bowl, but surely to be successful at a senior level we need to increase the numbers competing and to do that events like this should be full. This isn’t the LTA’s fault either, the event is scheduled, maybe it’s not at the best time of the year and the weather isn’t helping, but it’s on and it should be full. We shouldn’t have to reward the better players to get them to play in these events, if there are 24 players in the qualies and 32 in the main draw we should at least have the top 60-65 U16 players competing – the last entry in the boys has an U16 ranking of 180 and the last entry in the girls is ranked 984!
One thing that stood out more than the standard was how quiet it was on the balcony today. None of the parents or coaches seemed to be encouraging their players and no-one seemed brave enough to be the first to do it! Again, I know it’s cold and it’s 2 days after Christmas but if the players are struggling then the coaches and parents can play a small (or in other countries a huge) part in their performance.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and the main draw will be of a U16 “national” level.
