Sporting News and Events

Roger Draper has been appointed as the Lawn Tennis Association’s Chief executive. The Association has recruited some of the world’s best coaches and the support staffs by spending millions in the past three years but the recent humiliation faced by the British Team in the Davis Cup has raised a lot of questions. In the year 2006 wounds were inflicted by Djokovic and now it is Ukraine’s World No. 125 Sergiy Stakhovsky and his three team mates winning 4-1 from England. They are all ranked over 200. There is no doubt that with the pull out of Andy Murray from the Davis Cup was a major setback to England, but the entire struggle and comprehensive defeat of England has been extremely disappointing.

Saturday Colin Flrming and Ross Hutchins lost to Sergei Bubka and Stakhovsky and World No. 192 Josh Goodall in his second singles also get defeated to Ivan Sergeyev who is World No. 398 7-6, 6-3 while there was a face saving by Chris Eaton when he won 6-3, 4-6 and 7-6 by defeating Illya Marchenko.

Roger Draper however feels positive and says that though it was terrible to have lost these matches but was now more convinced about success. His main reason for feeling highly optimistic was the introduction of the new support system for country’s top competitors. Last year a financial company Aegon had entered into a contract with the LTA for a 25 million pound sponsorship deal, which not only provided for players and coaches, but also gave the team access to state of the art tennis shoes and rackets.  All thirty six players, which also includes 15 junior players have got a “Team Aegon” performance related contract.

Draper is convinced that soon there will be a continuous flow of talented juniors entering the senior level while player director of LTA Steve Martens is confident that this new support system will increase the standard of the present elite players.