Consistency of coaching is essential

Published on Saturday 13 March 2010 21:03

AS ANDY Murray settles into life at the BNP Paribas Open, he could not be further away from home. Out in the Californian desert, the skies are blue, the sun is warm – as Murray's sunburnt forehead will testify – and, despite the recession, the place just oozes money.

The retirement resort of Indian Wells is a green haven in the desert, a mass of golf courses and country clubs planted in the sand. This is where elderly golfers come to die and the peace and quiet is only disturbed by the gentle purr of a Jaguar or Lexus carrying its passengers to a leisurely nine holes before lunch.

In such an environment, Murray's deep and measured baritone can be heard for miles. He is hoping it will be heard as far as Roehampton in south west London, the nerve centre of the Lawn Tennis Association. And after last weekend's pitiful Davis Cup defeat in Lithuania, those nerves are jangling.

Trying to look decisive and forceful, the LTA immediately launched an inquiry into what went wrong in Vilnius. Yet any casual observer could see the problem: the British team was simply not good enough to beat three Lithuanian teenagers.

Outside Fortress LTA – or the National Training Centre, as it is also known – the critics are gathering and are demanding sackings: a sacrificial lamb must be found and offered to the baying hordes. Inside the LTA, they are lowering the portcullis, manning the ramparts and preparing for a siege.

Murray has seen all of this before and he is sick and tired of it. He is the country's best player and may, one day, become the world's best so he knows from experience that it is possible to carry a British passport and succeed in tennis. Taking himself off to Spain as a teenager and learning how to play the game "properly" (as he puts it), he saw what other countries were doing to produce players and thinks that Britain could follow that lead.

"I think we need to have a system in place where all of the coaches are teaching the same way," Murray said. "I think in terms of our players having an identity, if you said, 'what does a British tennis player play like?', you could say serve and volley, but it's not really the way tennis has gone. I don't see many coaches teaching serve and volley now.

"You look at Spain, they are all great from the baseline, big forehands, move great. The Americans tend to be big serving, big forehands. The French play with a lot of flair, play kind of slightly different tennis. In France they have French coaches, in Spain they have Spanish coaches and in the US they have US coaches."

The LTA, meanwhile has tried a host of different tactics to produce players. They have employed coaches from Sweden, Belgium and America; under the previous regime, they tried to adopt the French model, and they have juniors training in America and France. But, as last weekend's Davis Cup result proved, none of these ideas has produced a handful of players capable of beating mighty Lithuania over the course of five matches.

"We need to have a way of teaching the same way – we can't have, like, ten different nations having their input into how the kids play tennis," Murray said. "Then you have to have the people in place that are going to teach them how to teach the kids how to play tennis. They need to learn how to play the game properly.

"You can say we need to have more kids playing the game, but our results in juniors are great. We have really good results in juniors. I think the problem is kids don't actually learn how to play tennis properly. You need to have a structure and an identity of how all the kids are going to play and everyone has to teach the same way, I believe."

Murray, of course, has the luxury of God-given talent to help him on his way to the top but the Scot is certain that good coaching, hard work and application can produce better British players – and more of them. He was a brilliant young talent as a teenager, but it took three years of graft in Spain to turn him into a hardened professional.

"I think talent does get you so far, but I've worked incredibly hard," he said. "I have a good heart. I try. I work really hard. I fight hard on the court and I learned. That might not necessarily have been one of my best strengths when I was younger: I was always competitive when I was young but when I was losing, I didn't always compete as hard as a I could have done.

"But over in Spain, I practised with guys that were older than me, bigger, stronger, better players, and if you don't work hard with them and you don't try hard in practice, then you're not allowed back. They just don't want to hit with you. I was 15 years old and at the age where you can learn those things. I've seen guys that even my coach at the time said 'he's not very good but I can make him a good player by teaching him to play this way' – and he did it every time. He taught them the way to play the game, made it simple and that was that."

Murray is hoping that his run through to the latter stages of this tournament will be fairly simple, too. He's in the same half of the draw as Roger Federer and so is scheduled to meet the Swiss in the semi-finals, his first chance for revenge since losing to him in the Australian Open final. Last year, Murray beat Federer in the semi-finals here before losing in the final to Rafael Nadal. But from there, he went on to win the Masters title in Miami the following week – and as a result he has a barrow-load of ranking points to defend in the coming three weeks.

Points to defend, honour to be avenged and British tennis to sort out – it's going to be a busy month for Murray.