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Mini-Tennis

Is it as successful as we are led to believe

by Adrian Rattenbury

Mini-tennis in this country has now been in effect for a number of years. The concept of the system has been embraced by many clubs and coaches throughout the country and it is said to have increased the number of players entering the game. The real question about mini-tennis though is quite simple – does it work ? How we decide if a system is working or not is surely based on results. The idea of mini-tennis is that it will help us generate better players in the long run that will help meet the target set by LTA Chief Executive Roger Draper of 5-6 British players in the top 100 within 5 years, a target that is raised even higher by the LTA Head Coach of Men’s tennis Paul Annacone who wants 4-7 players knocking on the door of the top 20 within the same time frame.

Based on these targets it would be normal to go and research the top tennis playing countries in the world, the ones who are not only producing world class players now but have done so over the past 10 years or so and where better to start than Spain. Spain has produced 28 top 100 players on the ATP Tour in the past 10 years more than any other country including 2 world number 1’s, a host of top 10 players and a number of Grand Slam title winners. Currently Spain have 44 players in the top 500 of the ATP rankings more than any other country.  They have also consistently produced world class players on the WTA Tour with 2 world number 1’s, Grand Slam title winners and currently with 45 women on the professional tour.

Although France are currently doing very well in ATP ranking terms Spain has still produced almost twice as many top 100 players than France and France have never had a world number 1 in the past decade nor a Grand Slam title winner. Argentina are also very strong in the world game both in the ATP and WTA rankings but have not yet proved their success over time. There really cannot be any question over Spain’s dominance in world tennis in the past decade.

How does Britain fair against these statistics? Well we have 8 players in the top 500 on the ATP and 11 in the top 500 of the WTA. Combining ATP and WTA ranked players Spain have 70% more top 500 players than Britain. So the lack of success for British players is obvious so is mini-tennis the answer ? Well we are told by the LTA that mini-tennis is the answer but why? Again we are told that it is based on the successful Belgium system. So lets look at the success of Belgian Tennis currently they have 10 men and 5 women in the top 500, less than Britain! We are also asked to take into consideration the success of Holland and Canada who have 7 men and 7 women and 4 men and 4 women in the top 500 respectively again less than Britain! but maybe it is unfair to assess the success of mini-tennis against Senior world rankings and we should look more at Junior world rankings.