Opinion: Tennis Scotland and the new National Tennis Academy

In August this year, the Lawn Tennis Association and Tennis Scotland will make their biggest investment in Scottish Tennis for a number of years, opening the National Tennis Academy in Stirling.

This will be one of the two new academies in the UK, with the other being at Loughborough University.

The new academy will be opened in partnership with the University of Stirling and Dollar Academy.

The University of Stirling already has an established tennis programme with their women’s team winning the British University Championships two years running with current tour pro Maia Lumsden in their ranks.

The partnership with Dollar Academy will give eight of Britain’s top young players the chance to combine their studies with training at the academy.

The coaching set-up at the academy has been specially chosen to try and develop the young players and give them the best chance for a prolonged and successful career in the sport. The lead coach will be the Brazilian Leonardo Azevedo and he will be assisted former British Davis Cup player Colin Fleming and Spaniard Esteban Carrel.

The first batch of successful applicants, aged between 13-18, will be starting in August.

But does this investment go far enough?

The LTA's player pathway plan (Image via the LTA)

The two academies are part of the LTA’s ten-year plan for performance tennis in Britain. They describe it on their website as “The new player pathway provides a clear route from beginner’s mini-red to major tournament success to support high potential junior players from the age of seven, playing the sport locally, into the world’s Top 100.”

The plan was launched last year, at least a decade after tennis in Scotland had started to gain popularity after the success of Andy Murray. Now with his career winding down, the authorities may have left it too late to capitalise on his success and build the building blocks in place to allow young players to try and emulate him.

Another aspect of the sport’s development that the National Tennis Academy fails to address is the grassroots of the game. The difficulty is in getting young people to play tennis instead of some of the more established sports in Scotland.

One problem with this is the accessibility of a sport like Tennis. According to the LTA’s website, there are only 6 places in Edinburgh that someone could turn up to and play tennis for free and the cost isn’t even factoring in things like rackets and balls.

Most courts in Scotland are either pay to play or part of a club set-up in which memberships aren’t cheap.

All of these places are outdoors, meaning that there is a lack of indoor facilities in Edinburgh and the trend is the same across the country. This will make it very difficult for many people to take up the sport and continue playing it throughout the year even if they want to.

This shows the issues that exist in expanding tennis in Scotland as there are simply not enough facilities for a large number of people to the sport all year round.

While the National Tennis Academy in Stirling may help produce the next Andy Murray, it doesn’t address the problems that effect the grassroots of the game in Scotland.