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IT’S TIME FOR BRITAIN TO SHOUT... ROGER & OUT

There is a clamour for Mr Draper to be booted out after the Davis Cup disaster lin Lithuania

Sunday March 14,2010

By Jim Holden

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WHEN even Tim Henman condemns the state of British tennis as “unacceptable” you know the reality is bleak and shocking.

He could hardly say otherwise after the GB team lost to Lithuania in the Davis Cup and now stand on the brink of relegation to the lowest rung of the international game alongside San Marino and Andorra.

There is no greater shame, no deeper seam of humiliation to be mined. As John McEnroe would say, this is “The Pits”.

Yet what was the practical response of Henman, a wonderful player who enjoyed a long career at the top of world tennis, a man with a fine reputation and much political clout within the sport?

Would he be galvanised by the crisis to stand tall and help inspire a revival of British tennis?

Dream on. Henman remains content with a relatively idle life on the golf course and a touch of bland TV commentary when the mood suits.

“I’m enjoying my family and my golf and not having any structure to my life,” said Henman, almost in the same breath as he damned the state of his sport. “I’m sure at some stage I’m going to get more involved and give back to British tennis, but at the moment I wouldn’t want the commitment or the responsibility.”

‘The country is full of public tennis courts lying in disrepair while Mr Draper has sanctioned the spending of £18m a year on an elite performance programme that delivered defeat to Lithuania’

Well, he always was a modest maestro.

Such reticence is typical of British sport, the fact that former stars of intelligence and influence prefer to live on easy street rather than get their hands dirty trying to improve the games we play (Seb Coe the honourable exception).

We see it everywhere. Look at cricket, for example, where an insightful army of former England captains fill the TV and radio commentary boxes while the ECB appoints the little-known Peter Wright, who never played in the first-class game, to become chairman of the crucially important Cricket Committee.

It is a dispiriting contrast to other nations. Michel Platini became manager of the French national football team and is now the president of UEFA.

Franz Beckenbauer won the World Cup as manager of Germany and became organising chairman of the 2006 World Cup.

In Britain, we make do instead with chaps like Roger Draper, reportedly paid upwards of £300,000 a year as chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association.

On the LTA website it boasts that he is one “of the new breed of sports leaders who are applying direct experience of competing as an elite athlete to achieve a radical improvement in the way sport is run.”

Many years ago Mr Draper was a successful captain of the Surrey men’s county tennis team. That’s admirable, but would you call it elite sport?

He also played for the British Universities rugby league team. That’s good, too, but was it really elite level competition?

It’s now four years since his appointment to run the LTA, a job he began by brutally clearing out the existing top staff and appointing new people of his own choosing on extravagant salaries.

Mr Draper swiftly set out a Blueprint for British Tennis and was asked what he hoped to have achieved five years down the line.

“It’s about winning,” he said. “It’s about getting more players in the top 100 in the world. We’ll have lots of warriors on the ground competing. We’ll have lots of players on track for the top 100 between the ages of 14 and 18. And we’ll be winning Slams and other events.

“I always talk about Trafalgar Square. We’ll know when we are in Trafalgar Square. We’ll know when we’re winning Slams; we’ll know when we’re winning Davis Cup matches.

“There’s no reason why we can’t turn round the perception that we’re a bunch of losers, to become a bunch of winners.”

These are the exact words. His words. Read them and weep.

Is it any wonder there is a clamour for Mr Draper to be booted out in the wake of Davis Cup disaster in Lithuania?

Today, four years after Mr Draper took office, the second best British men’s player is Alex Bogdanovic, ranked 155 in the world, but not selected for the Davis Cup because he’s considered too flaky under pressure.

Lots of warriors? Or a bunch of losers?

And Trafalgar Square? Well, the prospect of celebrating Davis Cup triumph with an open-top bus parade ending next to Nelson’s Column is cloud cuckoo land.

The nearest British tennis gets to Trafalgar Square is the evocative photographs of Fred Perry (the last British male Grand Slam winner in 1936) housed in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery just round the corner in St Martin’s Lane.

Remember all this when the LTA media spin goes into overdrive highlighting some mild improvement in the rankings of women players and the fine potential of junior champ Laura Robson, whose formative tennis education came in Australia.

Should Roger Draper go? Of course he should.

The country is full of public tennis courts lying in disrepair while Mr Draper has sanctioned the spending of £18million a year on an elite performance programme that delivered defeat to Lithuania.

Even dear old diplomatic, I’d-rather-not-get-my-hands-dirty Tim Henman can see that’s unacceptable.

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