What's wrong with Australian golf and tennis?

The dramatic loss of backyard tennis courts paints clear picture as well. It seems to be more tennis courts means more participating. More participation means more champions. This is one simple solution as well as the others that I have mentioned. Local tennis courts and access of them are very important. Underfunding for more tennis courts including more tennis centres are creating problems as well. we need to spend money and lots of it to be a force in tennis again and tennis courts need to increase.

Clay courts may hold the key to one of the solutions to what is wrong. You look at the tennis scene and most of the best players have been brought up playing on clay courts. However this is only part of the solution. We need have more challengers and future tournaments in Australia so that young players have a more balanced playing field to Europeans where tennis is predominantly played. This would give them points without having to leave Australia so that when they do leave Australia they would at least have picked up points beforehand and it would make everything so much easier. Also the very few challenger/ future tournaments played in Australia are held in unusual places and should be played in more central locations. Why not use Sydney Olympic Park, Melbourne Park and Brisbane Tennis centre as options and increase the number of challengers and future tournaments. The reason why Europeans are dominating tennis is because of access of competition but if Australia has more challengers and futures we will be bringing some of that competition over here (hopefully). Also it is not just an Australian problem. No one seems ready to challenge the top players in the world so the grand slams are won by the usual suspects. But this does not hide Australian tennis inability to be competitive. Also if you look at the men's world top 10 there are 7 countries represented so it is global now. However Spain seems to dominate tennis despite how competitive the game, although Spanish tennis appears to be in some trouble as the good players are all close to 30 years of age. Ditto for France as well. Also there are 13 countries in the top 20. There are 34 countries represented in the top 100 as well. Also some matches at the Australian Open with Australian men ended up in a 5 set loss suggesting that we do not push hard enough- in another words we are soft and don't have that fighting spirit that Lleyton Hewitt does. I am convinced that if our players did we would see Matt Ebden, and John Millman in the second round. Instead they loss in the first round in 5 sets. Also James Duckworth loss 12-10 in the fifth set in the second round. There is a pattern forming and it is not pretty. We need to match the same intensity as the European players and fight for every point like it is match point. Otherwise the near misses and close losses will continue and we will still be seeing the likes of Duckworth hovering around the 200 mark. And you wonder why they do not make their breakthrough. Australian players need to decide do I want to play tennis and work 10% harder than Europeans and join the workforce. This sport involves slogging it out and training day and night if needs be to challenge the best. Also tennis Australia does not market tennis enough. Outside the Australian tennis summer and you would not realise that tennis exists as you never really hear about it. I think that the hot shots is a step in the right direction with participation growing. That is the key as if more plays tennis the greater chance of producing champions. It needs a complete overhaul to start producing champions and the grassroots is where it needs to start from. Otherwise year after year we will wonder when Australia will start playing Davis Cup again and when several Australians will challenge Grand Slams like Spanish players

It sounds to me like the administration has let the sport down and need to pick up the slack and get back on the ball.

That's a fascinating point about the US and Oz. Trying to think of other countries..

Great advice, when people talk about Sydney they don't realise how damn hard it is to do anything. Took a couple of kids surfing on Saturday at Manly and the parking meter was $10 per hour! All back street parking spots were taken, and there was bumper to bumper traffic crawling along the beachfront, so expensive day out. Week before I was in Port Macquarie, had a great surfing lesson, walk to beach, perfect conditions, friendly, lots of space. No wonder Sydney people aren't happy.

The only way for this to even be remotely true would be if every other country was still wrestling crocodiles and drinking beer for breakfast.

Yeah could do better But on the other hand-only two countries have produced both male and female major winners in both tennis and golf in this millennium one is the US ...and the other is .....Australia Our breadth of sport plus so much talent going into solely or mainly domestic pursuits will always be our undoing in these matters . Remember for much of the world only activities noticed by the rest of the world count . Thank God we're not like that

Time to leave Sydney by the sounds of it, it ain't like that elsewhere in Oz. In Victoria, I have never paid for tennis court hire. There seems to be courts all over the place and empty. Coaching would cost you money.

Plus on top of that sledgehammer, car parking costs, or transport costs like the kid catching a taxi,, or a bus or train or you having to pick them up , time is money ,petrol costs etc. Plus the cost of clothing, shoe, tennis equipment eg tennis rackets, ball,s bags, re-stringing, physic, health insurance, drinks and refreshments, and costs of entering tournaments , and needing to if your want to get good have coaching 2-3 times a week. The sport can easily become a $10,000 a year habit, for the kid with the parents footing the bill. Oh and that's on top of real world stuff, like owning a car, petrol costs, paying mortgage or rent, food, health insurance, clothes, electricity, phone, water rates, council rates, taxes, a family holiday once a year , and on and on, Oh should i drop in the private school fees, if one has any dough left. Oh wait we can;t do that, coz we have to pay for the kid;s tennis costs. chicing, chicinin, chiding $$$. Forget it with golf and tennis , I can think of $10,000 reasons why.

As a parent of a boy who is keen on tennis, it is an expensive sport and court access is hard to come by. Unless you are in a paid program it is very hard in Sydney to get court time. Have a look around and you will see most courts are used by over 40s. Young kids can no longer hop on a bike and have a hit at the local court. So the typical kid doesn't get a go - but playing cricket, or any football code is free. Kids who play tennis must have helicopter parents are willing to drive them around and pay good money for coaching, or take on the coaching role as per Tomic senior, in otherwise we target a small minority. However, the situation is different in regional areas, where kids can get court access and affordable coaching. That is where our next generation of champions will come from - there are some excellent tennis programs in the regional areas. I have seen better qualified coaches, better organisation, and better quality juniors, as well as far more equitable participation in regional areas. Typical costs (Sydney): 1 hour coaching $70 to $100. 1 hour court hire: $15 - $25. So not taking into account tournaments or competitions a kid playing 5 hours in Sydney with 1 hour coaching is looking at $200 per week.

David, I'm sure you are not sexist but could you please include the stats for womens gold and womens tennis. They are equals after all.

Interesting. South Africans have won 25 Majors from a small playing pool but have only had a few really good tennis players.

Globalisation is part of the answer. I think Aussie kids have got soft. But neither is the full answer. I believe Johnno's other point is very significant - poor administration. both sports were harmed by their administration developing hubris & taking their eye off maintaining the excellent systems that had allowed both sports to prosper in the first place. The Australian sporting market is continuing to shrink down to a handful of sports. Corporations lack moral fibre. They are pouring their sponsorship dollar into AFL, NRL & A-League, because its easy 7 doesn't require thought or risk. Also BBL, which they don't bother to refer to as cricket. We're a nation of dunderheads, we just don't know it yet..... ;-)

Viscount, I know you're looking for a rise, but you're actually right. The diggers of the two great wars would be turning & squirming in their graves to see what little good they fought for back then.

"Greg Norman’s British Opens were 1986, and 1993. "- Wayne Grady won the USPGA in 1990. - Ian Baker-Finch the Briish Open in 1991. - Steve Elkington the USPGA in 1995. - Geoff Ogilvy the US Open in 2006 when both Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie imploded on the 72nd hole with double bogies. That translates to Australians winning just six grand slams in the last 52 years" Parking the David Norman stats missing how was 1986 52 years ago??????

That 4 Corners report was shown to be flawed and full of bias as a result of the ABC's link to McNamee through the Hopman Cup and McNamee's personal vendetta against certain members of Tennis Australia's Board and many of the inaccuracies have since been adressed by Tennis Australia But as everyone said the main thing is Globalization. Roswell didn't play many Swiss superstars and Goolagong didn't have many Belgian or Chinese foes. That isn't to say both sports couldn't do things better, but then everyday i read on this site, what the NRL, FFA, ARU etc could be doing better... The other factor, is that Grand Slams make up a very small sample of the total tournaments played - in both sports. In golf we have had regular success on the PGA, European and, less advertised Asian tours.

Not only has sport changed across the world (now Europe and Asia play too) but sport has changed dramatically in Australia. You simply don't see the number of tennis courts that used to dot the suburbs and the country towns. In today's professional era, millions go into funding sports academies across the world - Australia has fallen behind larger more financially powerful countries...and so we should given our size. As others have said, we'll never scale the heights of the glory years but that doesn't mean we can't do things better. Bernard Tomic is a perfect example of what is wrong with the young, sponsored athlete in the professional era.

I think you've missed my point Kevin, or I've missed the sarcasm in yours. I was making a comment on the fact that of the 5 or so articles David writes for this site every week, an average of 4.5 contain zero insight and are painful to read. But you might have a point about the greens!

The pathway in tennis if you want to get good is your parents take you to tennis school in Florida at 30k a term. There or Geelong Grammar school. End of the day you HAVE TO do the 10,000 hours or you just won't cut it. The top players all have!

Larry I sense your right, can we talk about the fact that greens have been cut to low for the last 15 years, and thus allows no play for winds in big tournaments when they hit excess of 65 km per hour? These courses built on Sydney's coastline are designed to be played on during gale forced wind , but year after year tournaments are ruined by Suspended play because the greens are unplayable