LTA seeks best way of tapping into Andy Murray’s powerful brand

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/jun/13/lta-andy-murray-brand-tennis-michael-downey-bob-brett

Version 0 of 1.

On the eve of his return to Wimbledon as champion, Andy Murray should not only be the face of British tennis – which he undeniably is – he should be inspiring unprecedented interest in the game, and the evidence for that is less obvious.

Responding to widespread concerns that the Lawn Tennis Association has missed the boat with Murray, Michael Downey, who succeeded Roger Draper as the LTA’s chief executive six months ago, admitted on Friday it had yet to agree with the player the best way to use his success over the past two years as an engine for promoting the game.

The LTA announced on Thursday that weekly participation was up year on year by 3% from 423,400 in April last year to 434,600. Monthly participation is up year on year by 10%, from 766,500 in April last year to 840,600.

That is the good news. The not so good news is that the LTA is no nearer to nailing an agreement with this country’s best player since Fred Perry on how best to use his inspiring victory to encourage young people to play tennis.

“I haven’t spent an awful lot of time with Andy,” Downey admitted. “I met up with him at the Davis Cup [in Naples]. I wanted to hook up this week and we haven’t. We want to go into discussions with Andy, but it’s all about how to use his brand. His name’s out there. We got great participation numbers yesterday, and I’m sure Andy had something to do with that.

“But the key, with Andy’s approval, is using his brand in a way to help a young prospect to come up and say: ‘I want to be the next Andy Murray.’ But there’s got to be a strategy behind it, to say, what’s the best way of using this powerful brand called Andy Murray?”

Asked why so little has been done with Murray in the 12 months since he won Wimbledon, Downey said: “He did, and we expect him to do very, very well. He’s not going away. But it’s also about using him in a way that can make a real difference, growing participation or helping on the high-performance side.

“If I was Andy Murray, I’d want to know that too: ‘Have you researched that in a way that’s really going to make a difference? Because if I’m going to make a time commitment to help the sport in this nation I want to know that I’m going to be used in the right manner.’

“I wasn’t around a year ago, so I can’t talk about a year ago. And I’ll also say that we’re a little short of senior staff right now. We also know that Andy has had his own priorities, coming off surgery, looking for a coach, all those things. But we also believe that he’s not going away. He’s a brand. It’s no different than Coca-Cola or Highland Spring or whatever; you want to use that brand for the best benefit. If I’m Andy Murray, that’s what I want to knowtoo: that you’ve actually thought this through, because my time’s valuable and I want to make a difference.

“I haven’t had a discussion with Andy about that, at all. I’ve raised it with his agent to say we think it’s a valuable tool, and it’s also about tennis in Great Britain. It’s not about the LTA. It’s about promoting why people should play tennis in Great Britain. The brand is tennis. The brand is not the LTA.”

If that sounded vague, British tennis, nevertheless, made a significant appointment on Friday when it handed responsibility for seeking out the next generation of players to the 60-year-old Australian coach, Bob Brett, an appointment that has been greeted with general approval.

Brett, who coached Boris Becker and Marin Cilic and was among candidates to work with Murray, is the LTA’s first director of player development. Downey said that Brett – who worked with him for seven years when he did a similar job as a consultant to the Canadian federation – would have as his core responsibility the development of high-performance coaches and promising young players.

“We need to change,” Downey said. “That doesn’t mean you’re throwing the baby out with bath water and a lot of that change is cultural, more than anything else. That’s at the heart of it: what does it take to help a kid exceed expectations? That’s what Bob’s about. He knows that not every prospect out there is going to be an Andy Murray. But if we help others exceed their expectations, we’ve done our job.

“But we cannot grow participation on our own. There 24,000 courts in this country. We have to work with other people. We have to facilitate. That’s going to the success formula: working with partners. Bob wants our national coaches once in a while going into a school, into a park. It’s good for them to do that. It’s about giving back.”

Brett, who starts work in September, has just finished a 60-day review of the LTA and agreed to a full-time job after “looking under the hood” of British tennis, Downey said.

He will be on a regular employment contract, with no fixed term, and would “start when the sun comes up and leave when the last kid leaves the court”. One of the key areas he will address is “mental toughness”, which Brett thinks is lacking in a lot of young players.

He will not exclude “difficult parents” from the discussion. “Back home in Canada, Bob used to say: ‘The last person a young player talks to is one of his or her parents.’ So, If you think you’re going to get in between the kid and the parents, it’s probably not where you’re going to be helping them. We’ve got to learn to work with them.”

The tone of his remarks suggests the LTA will continue the drift away from the previous regime’s dependence on expensive international coaches, such as Brad Gilbert and Paul Annacone, and look more closely at the grassroots, working with independent clubs and coaches.

“Bob sees it as a challenge,” Downey said. “That’s why he wants to take it on. But he also knows it’s not something that can be done on a part-time basis. It says a lot about him. It’s about coming back to basics. He thinks we’ve got too many bells and whistles. It’s about attention to detail, hard work and commitment. He, like many other coaches around the world, knows what it takes to get there.”

Downey refused to put a time-scale on the success or otherwise of his appointment. “I think we’ve learned a lesson about making grandiose statements about where we’re going to go as a sport in this country,” he said, in reference to the repeated claims by his predecessor, Roger Draper, which flew in the face of all the evidence.

“What he wants to do is evolve the culture of high-performance tennis in Great Britain. How you define and measure that is going to be tough to do.

“It’s very difficult to predict when a player is going to have a breakthrough. But it’s going to take some time to get the fundamentals in place.”

The Great Britain Davis Cup captain Leon Smith said: “Look at the men’s side. The rankings don’t lie, with only Andy in the top 100. We’ve got to continually strive to get more Tour players on the circuit. I still believe there’s a chance for Dan Evans and James Ward [who went out after one win apiece at Queen’s this week]. I think Kyle Edmund’s got a good chance of getting there. He’s on the right track and got the right attitude to do it, as well.

“We’ve got more guys inside the top 250. We’ve got to get more Challenger level players, which seems to be the case now. We’ve got to get that group moving forwards. And obviously the Davis Cup is better than it was three or four years ago.

“Bob will bring a level of expertise that we don’t have currently. But I think it would be wrong to think that Bob will come in and work with Dan, James and Kyle and wave the magic wand. It’s not about that. It’s about trying to change the culture, getting down to the high-performance centres, working with the 10, 11 and 12 years age-groups, to make a difference with the coaching at that level.”