Scottish tennis looks set to bid farewell to two of its key assets this summer, with Dunblane star Andy Murray slated to play his final Wimbledon just weeks after the National Tennis Academy in Stirling pulls the shutters on its flagship juniors programme that will see all operations moving to Loughborough in England. A ruling made in 2022 to not extend the five year deal put into action back in 2019 will see no central hub for junior players in the country that produced the first homegrown men’s Wimbledon champion for 77 years.
It can only really be described as a half-decade of failure, a continuous fumble of a miracle opportunity. Just two Scottish participants have passed through the system and this is cited widely as the reason for the closure. It begs the question of whether Scotland is set for success in tennis post-Murray. Plans for reinvestment in alternative areas with the hopes of growing the sport have remained typically vague and issues clearly stem from the lack of any real identity around Tennis Scotland. The total reliance on the overarching governing body of the Lawn Tennis Association means that all programmes are first filed through England before steadily being cast up North and unpacked in areas not properly planned for. It paints a half-hearted effort and this is reflected in the Academy.
Stirling University Tennis Centre provides fantastic indoor facilities and has done since the childhood years of the Murray brothers. The Centre was, is, and will remain a solid place for play. What it won’t be able to provide is blueprints for juniors despite having had the greatest professional the United Kingdom has ever seen grow up not five miles away. Referred to as a National Tennis Centre, the courts are not owned by Tennis Scotland. Rather, they have a block-booking with the University in order to hire the courts. Hardly a secure long-term agreement built for tennis success but it’s been this way since the courts opened in 1994. In 2019, the LTA took ideas familiar to them in England and attempted to adapt them around already rooted foundations present in Stirling and the result is an Academy that never stood a chance. Nothing made it uniquely Scottish because it was programmed for England and while many will argue there’s not much difference, two Scottish attendees in 5 years suggests otherwise. English players made up the majority of the graduates and the first and only Scot in the initial intake, Matt Rankin, was offered his place a week before opening to satisfy potential critics. The second and final Scot, Charlie Robertson, was brought in last year. Prior to that, his family spoke to The Times, criticising Tennis Scotland for the lack of support offered to the parents of promising junior players and suggesting that court time at Stirling was now difficult to secure due to the Academy takeover. Murray had to briefly step in, offering Robertson’s team the use of his outdoor courts at his Dunblane hotel as Tennis Scotland rushed out an invite amidst a fresh wave of negativity. Robertson has, just this year, made good progress, qualifying for the main draw of the Boy’s singles at the French Open. Go to the press or be forgotten appears to be the primary takeaway.
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Academy players were accommodated at Dollar, a nearby boarding school, and were taxied to the University. English coaches dominated the staffing numbers too, taking away places that had been held by Scottish coaches with knowledge and insight of how to properly teach the sport in this country. Young Scottish kids hoping to play on indoor courts were turned away in favour of coaching sessions for juniors from elsewhere. Tennis Scotland – having placed a joint bid worth 500 thousand pounds a year with the University to host this Academy and now handcuffed to a system not their own – could only really sit back and watch.
There’ll be some that say “well, perhaps Scotland simply didn’t have the tennis talent necessary for the Academy!” and those people would be correct. For the Academy to have ever been an actual functioning success story for Scottish tennis, it would have needed to open amongst a plethora of talent desperate for just a hint of structure. But there was no plethora because the initial necessary work to achieve that would have needed to be put into motion 10-15 years earlier when the Murray brothers were in their ascendancy. There was no dire need for an Academy at all. Two Scottish juniors making it through in the lifespan is embarrassing predominantly because it demonstrates the more significant overarching failure to engage children in the game within this country while the Murray brothers were winning. There was no audience for the show. By opening in a Centre designed to help fledgling youths not yet at the level required, any potential died before it ever really got a chance to live.
Announcing closure three years in and two years in advance ultimately makes sense when there’s so little commitment from the start. History has a way of repeating itself; English forces advancing into Scotland will ultimately always have trouble in Stirling. It didn’t have to be this way. Murray was born in Scotland and trained in Spain and won big in England. There was opportunity (near two decades of it!) for collaboration to properly understand and then apply the diversity of the Murray DNA into a national tennis strategy for Scotland but this would have required a flexibility to plans and the LTA have long held firm to traditional setbacks. Murray need not have been an anomaly to be whispered about in the future amongst aged Scots that were young when he won.
Embed from Getty ImagesWhat will be remembered the most as the Academy wraps up is how predictable this truly was. One look at the opening year is enough to recognise that too-little, too-late is a mantra followed deep at the heart of the politics in British tennis. Murray won the last of his major titles in 2016 and had already retired once at the Australian Open 2019. The Academy was set-up with the aim of piggybacking on success that had seen its best days three years prior. Before that, there’d been Wimbledons and Olympics Games and Davis Cups and opportunities. Limping away with all of that silverware and any last vestiges of hope to capitalise on his playing days, Murray will know he did all that he could and that any attempt to follow in his footsteps would have needed to be set in motion years ago. As Scottish tennis waves goodbye to its greatest ever ambassador, it does so while falling backwards into irrelevancy.
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It’s often unfair to blame individuals in situations such as this one because there is rarely a clear-cut answer. Having said that, it’s always worth looking at who is making the most in the midst of failure. Every year, Tennis Scotland CEO Blane Dodds can be found at a rented apartment in Wimbledon that he refers to as “Scotland House”. In the two week run of the tournament, he invites sponsors around for nights of drinks where he gives out VIP access tickets to representatives. What this achieves, exactly, is unclear, but the entire thing is supposedly written off as “business entertaining”. It is here, one would imagine, that Dodds talks repeatedly of participation numbers skyrocketing and how successful the Scottish schools initiative has been. These are the most important days in the calendar for the growth of Scottish tennis and so you can be absolutely certain that Dodds will only ever be doing the minimum expected.
Where this leaves Scottish tennis isn’t all that far from where it was prior to Murray’s prime. There are courts and there are people willing to play on them. When presented an opportunity, the Scots – as dour as we are portrayed – will always play ball. But what’s the plan and where’s the strategy? There’s more money amid high playing numbers consistently cited by Tennis Scotland, seemingly neutralised by those in charge of distribution South of the border. Formerly free public courts are freshly painted but gated, locked and charging for entry. These are face-lifts with nothing much beneath the surface. Platitudes and gift-aid.
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