Ex-coach Calls For LTA To Be Disbanded

A former Lawn Tennis Association coach has called for the British tennis governing body to be disbanded following the latest Davis Cup loss at the weekend.

In the wake of Great Britain’s 4-1 loss to Ukraine, Mark Petchey has called wholesale restructuring of the sport’s governance in this country including disbanding the LTA.

Said Petchey: ‘We are not allocating the resources well enough, we need to disband the LTA. You can’t disband the entire set-up but you can streamline it to a point where you have 10s of millions of pounds available to put into a club structure that we currently don’t have.

‘The new set-up should include a group of about eight people who decide how best the money should be spent.

‘Tim Henman needs to be on that; David Lloyd, as a great businessman, needs to be there; and Judy Murray, who has done an unbelievable job with Tennis Scotland, also needs to be there.’

Petchey was also critical of bonuses paid to the head of women’s tennis, as well as the annual salary of the LTA’s chief executive Roger Draper.

‘The bottom line is, if you speak to the players and the clubs, everybody is struggling.

‘But despite that they still paid a bonus to the head of women’s tennis for £25,920. I think the priorities now are completely out of whack for what needs to happen.

‘The head of women’s tennis has had bonuses that totals more than my club needs to resurface their courts. The chief executive’s salary is reported to be more than the whole of Tennis Scotland gets. How can it be that one person gets more than one nation?’

Petchey was men’s national team manager before leaving to coach current GB number one Andy Murray.