• British Tennis

Lawn Tennis Association asks UK Sport for helping hand

Richard Bloomfield recently labelled the current system in place 'rubbish' © Getty Images

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The much-maligned Lawn Tennis Association has called on the help of UK Sport as it seeks to overturn decades of underachievement by British tennis in time for the 2012 London Olympics.

The LTA has been heavily criticised in recent times for, among other things, failing to produce a host of recognised British players breaking through at the top level.

Consequently, they have acquired the help of UK Sport, who are responsible for investing around £100 million of public funds each year in high performance sport, to incorporate their Mission 2012 programme.

It is hoped the template, most famously used by Dave Brailsford's British Cycling programme - which yielded no less than eight golds in Beijing - will help Great Britain to at least fourth in the medal table in two year's time.

"There are some people who think that if you stick money into sport you'll see performance come out the other end," said John Steele, the UK Sport chief executive, in The Guardian. "You can think of lots of examples where money has been put in and performance hasn't followed. In the current economic climate, part of our job is to make sure every pound spent, we derive maximum value from it."

Steele, who is switching to Rugby Football Union, expects tennis to be included in the Mission 2012 programme - where sports are pushed to focus on 30 different areas of preparation, training and performance - from the next quarterly update. In its latest progress report, UK Sport totalled that the 27 Olympic sports and 18 Paralympic sports considered were on track to reach targets of fourth place in the Olympics medal table and second in the Paralympics.

The move by the LTA may stem the flow of criticism it has come under over the past few weeks. Last month Tim Henman, who is a member of the Wimbledon committee, blasted the players for failing to take responsibility but also felt the LTA was not doing enough to help groom players coming through.

"We'd love nothing more than to be able to look at a long list of up-and-coming players who deserve a helping hand, but we just don't have that. It's not an English thing because we compete as Great Britain in tennis, but it is something that makes me very sad," he said.

Meanwhile, three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker was shocked that not one Englishman was in this year's singles draw.

"It's shocking and there's no excuse for it," Becker said. "This country has the greatest tournament of all. Somebody must be doing something wrong. It's a popular sport in this country but it's an elitist game. The image of tennis needs to change a bit. It's football, football, football and I wish, sometimes, it could be tennis."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.