Mark Petchey willing to replace Roger Draper as LTA chief

Former British number one Mark Petchey would be willing to replace Roger Draper as Lawn Tennis Association chief - and for "substantially" less money.
Draper received a £640,000 salary last year, despite Sport England criticising the LTA's plans for participation.
Petchey, who used to coach Andy Murray, admits he would relish the job - if he was allowed to do it on his own terms.
"If the LTA board agreed with my vision for British tennis, it's a job I would want to do," Petchey told BBC Sport.
"This would be a massive 24/7 job, but seeing British tennis succeed has always been a passion of mine. And I would do it for substantially less than Roger received this year."

Draper - who received a £200,000 bonus as part of his salary package - was heavily criticised when Sport England announced before Christmas that it would be giving the LTA only one year's grassroots funding.
The number of people playing tennis once a week had fallen from 487,500 in 2008 to 445,100 in 2012, and Sport England chief executive Jennie Price said: "We need to give them a year to step up their game and prove they can deliver."

Petchey, 42, who reached number 80 in the world as a player and coached Croatia's Silvija Talaja to the world's top 20 and Slovenia's Tina Pisnik into the top 30, and also had a spell coaching current British number one Murray, believes British tennis needs to be "turned on its head".
"Very basically, the LTA needs to focus on grassroots, not the elite end of the game," he said. "The lion's share of its money should be directed to the bottom of the game rather than the top.
"So that means investing in clubs and coaches, building more courts and indoor courts and broadening the participation base, looking at schemes like tennis for free. It also means improving the links between local clubs and schools.
"France, Spain and Germany all have a very good club structure but there aren't enough people playing the game in the UK. The salary bill at the LTA is huge and millions have been pumped into performance tennis, which hasn't provided value for money."

The LTA had an average of 311 employees in 2012, spent £13.2m on salaries and more than £600,000 on pension and insurance costs. It also spent £12.3m on performance tennis.
"This is a long journey though - from here it would take about 15 years," warned Petchey, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa and spends his time commentating for television and coaching his two daughters, who are aged 14 and 11.
Draper has been chief executive of the LTA since 2006. Only the LTA board has the authority to replace him and an LTA spokesman said there was "absolutely no prospect" of this happening.
The spokesman added: "Our focus is participation and the majority of our investment is into the grassroots.
"We've done a lot of work in building club-school links through our clubmark, mini tennis and Aegon Schools programmes."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/20899357

Found this just now, interesting stuff, thoughts?

Forget Petchy! I would do the job.

any other pointless ideas? OHHHHHH NO HE DIDDDAAANNTTT

Why not just replace Roger Draper with Andy Murray's mum. At least she has got the experience of getting a promising junior player into one that is a major winner/serious contender for titles on the senior men's tour.

I'd be up for the job, sounds like the Chelsea managers job. Go in for big money, do good (or rubbish it doesn't really matter), and either get fired with a big payout, ala Chelsea, or never ever get fired and get more money no matter how much I failed to live up to promises, ala Draper

falzy21 wrote:I'd be up for the job, sounds like the Chelsea managers job. Go in for big money, do good (or rubbish it doesn't really matter), and either get fired with a big payout, ala Chelsea, or never ever get fired and get more money no matter how much I failed to live up to promises, ala Draper

More like the FA chairman's job in which the lucky guy still keeps his job regardless of whether England reach and win the final of the world cup, and he can if necessary direct all the blame away from himself by sacking the manager who was charged with running England's failed world cup campaign.

Petcheys policy is spot on. One thing people seem to be missing in the knee jerk rejection is he would have firm, provable success criteria - facilities built, participant data.

The call for Judy Murray is misguided, basically adhering to the policy that says the point of tennis is to have a Slam winner, when participation must be the objective.

Good luck to him, he's exactly right.

i liked his "manifesto" so to speak, obvs i don't know enough about the lta but at least he is offering a good plan of action, something the CCN movement in cycling is still lacking in to an extent despite pulling in some big names.