The Future of British Tennis

With five boys junior players inside the top 100 is there to be a big resurgence in professional tennis from the Brits?

With Oliver Golding winning the US Open gold it brings the debate about the future of British tennis back. Britain has had a slump ever since the great champions of decades and decades ago and with Football taking control over most of the British kids sporting life tennis has taken a big back seat.

There have been a few players that have to take tennis in Britain to another level, for example, Greg Rusedski, Tim Henman and Andy Murray but even though we have had at least one player near the top of the game there has been a huge deficiency in the depth of British tennis, our British No2 is ranked 141st in the world in the moment which is quite disapointing.

But some believe that our wait for a big depth in British tennis is over as 5 different junior players are inside the junior top 100. Those players are Oliver Golding ranked 2nd, George Morgan ranked 8th, Liam Brody ranked 10th, Kyle Edmund who is ranked No27th and Luke Bambridge who is ranked 90th.

For the first time in a long time we saw three semi-finalists from Britain this year at the US Open. Even for a tennis rich country like America or Spain that would be incredible but for a country like Britain who hasn't seen a grand slam winner in 1936. Even Liam Brody who didn't quite make it to the semis in New York still made it to the Wimbledon final this year so he is also a terrific prospect.

I think that the most important thing about the great coming of this batch of British teens is competition. Competition is the thing that drives people to become better. With competition comes the determination to improve and do better than you friend. A great example of this comes from outside tennis. Middle-distance running actually.

Think back to the days of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett if you can. They pushed themselves to the absolute limit. They both pushed each other on. In a 10-day period in 1981 they also traded the world record for the mile between them three times. Coe at one point held the 800m, 1500m and mile world records at the same time, while Ovett subsequently became both the 1500m and mile world record holder.

Now think today with apart from our very own Mo Farah the best in the field are the Kenyans and Ethiopians. How did it change to be this way? Competition. Once one got good others wanted to emulate him and so on until there is about a group of five (like todays British juniors) who are ruling the world of middle distance running.

The reason why there has been a huge lack of British tennis is the lack of competition and luckily today is looks as if that problem has been stopped. Here are now a series of players that are looking to make on the big stage so look out for a batch of home grown young talent coming through the ranks and making it into the top 100 at least.

For once you are allowed to expect something from the world of British Tennis.