Tennis New Zealand Has a Wicked Slice and Dice and Spin

Written by: Bob Larson Tennis on 17th December 2013

Tennis New Zealand Has a Wicked Slice and Dice and Spin

epa03766282 Marina Erakovic of New Zealand serves to Laura Robson of Britain during their third round match for the Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, in London, Britain, 29 June 2013. EPA/KERIM OKTEN |

Editors note : We are commenting on this for a few reasons. The organization has decided to cut all players currently in the program that are over 24 years old. We guess they don’t understand the current ATP top 100 players. 30 players over 30. The three men’s players mentioned as being involved in these choices should be ashamed of their actions. LAN was a so so player most if his career. Brett had a super Wimbledon one year but wasn’t outstanding for very long. And Onny is a nice dinosaur. All nice guys but lack vision. Help all your players! Especially the talented and deserving Marina Erakovic.

Tennis New Zealand is putting a large chunk of developmental money into juniors and is now shying away from paying veteran pros. According to the New Zealand Herald, since 2007, Tennis New Zealand has invested more than $2 million in 40 to 50 players of all ages. The organization wants to produce top-level pros but the only notable player currently in their ranks is world No. 46 Marina Erakovic.

Four juniors — Finn Reynolds (13), Rosie Cheng (15), Macsen Sisam (13) and Valentina Ivanov (12) – will be funded up to $50,000 each annually. The goal is to produce players ranked in the top 150 by 2020.

“We need to focus almost exclusively on juniors,” said former ATP top 50 player Brett Steven, who is also a Tennis New Zealand board member. “That is where we can make the greatest degree of difference. In the past, we haven’t found out early enough with our players that they didn’t want it bad enough. [This way], we’ll get the highest bang for our buck. It will always be a big task, as tennis gets more and more global, but we need to do something different.”

However, another top former NZ touring pro, Onny Parun, likes the strategy but doesn’t like who is employing it.

“I agree that they should take a punt on young talent and it looks like a step in the right direction,” he said. “However, I would question what the Tennis NZ board has been doing. It’s the first decent decision or initiative the board has taken in the last decade. What the hell have they been doing? Even Brett [Steven] has been ineffectual among that group. There isn’t much hope for New Zealand tennis with the current board in place.”

Parun also doesn’t like the selection panel for the targeted players, which includes former Davis Cup captain Marcel Vos and teaching pro Lan Bale. Tennis NZ chief executive Steve Johns oversees the panel.

“Important decisions like that should not be made by those guys,” Parun said. “They have already been involved and haven’t pushed the envelope enough. They have been part of our spiral into absolute oblivion over the last few years. They have already had a chance to make a difference and they haven’t. We have a CEO with a surf lifesaving background who admits he knows very little about tennis. You need to have a feel for the game to be in that job and understand the mindset of a tennis player.”

Interestingly, the juniors will train in the United States and Europe in order to get better competition. They will be able to retain their current coaches but Tennis New Zealand will oversee their progress, too.

Tennis New Zealand has junked a system that it used in the early 2000s, when it introduced a player transfer-funding scheme, where if pro players met certain ranking targets they would be eligible for grants and funding. But Steven says it worked against them

“People learned how to game the system,” says Steven. “It promoted what we called ‘tennis tourism’. You could play a B2 tournament in Fiji or Darwin against nobody, pick up ITF ranking points and bank your check. It didn’t encourage the development of good players. Tennis NZ got nothing out of the system and just became an ATM machine.”

Steven added that new ideas and programs must be put in place to stop the nation’s slide on the worldwide tennis scene.

“We need to do something to arrest what has been, apart from Marina, 10 to 15 years on the slide,” he said. “We have invested a lot of money into a lot of players for little return. [And] there is not a lot of hope with what we have out there at the moment.”

Topics: 10sballs, Atp, Marina Erakovic, Sports, Tennis, Tennis New Zealand, Tennis News