Category: tennis

“I think we spend too much money on useless things for players in this country”: Former Wimbledon finalist Marcus Willis on state of British tennis

By Nathan John @University of Gloucestershire

Embed from Getty Images

The former Wimbledon second round finalist who now works on a building site after retiring earlier this year, spoke of the future of British tennis, his own career and on facing the legendary Roger Federer on Centre Court.

Having put the racket down for the final time earlier this year, Willis now plies his trade as a brickie, but is looking to return to coaching tennis once covid restrictions have been lifted later this year, saying “I’m looking at getting back into the tennis world very soon maybe to do some coaching, but that will have to wait until the restrictions are lifted on what we can and can’t do”.

With arguably the highlight of his career coming in the finals of Wimbledon 2016 where he faced Swiss legend Rodger Federer in the second round, Willis spoke of his surprise qualification to the tournament and of facing his sporting hero. “Honestly, it was pretty surreal to even be playing on centre court, it’s something every aspiring tennis player wants to do. In terms of Federer, I wouldn’t say I was blown away by him but he did the basics very well and once he gets on top of you he’s relentless”.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

When asked about the current state of tennis, the brit was adamant that this period of success for the world’s top three (Federer, Nadal and Djokovic), over the last ten to fifteen years is an anomaly for the sport, claiming “I don’t think we’ll see domination in the sport like this again for a long time”.

In particular, he was critical of the approach towards player development in Britain, speaking out about the treatment of young players from his own personal experience of rising through the ranks. “I think we spend too much money on useless things for players in this country, and that’s down to the LTA”. This, he stated, was a major reason for the lack of successful British talent that is seen amongst Tennis’ current top ranks.

Willis believes that a large part of this domination by the world’s top players is down to a financial undertone by the different grand slam competitions themselves. Stating the reasons for this underlying need for revenue, he explained “It’s purely financial as these tournaments like Wimbledon, Roland Garros etc. want to see these big players succeeding, it’s good for tourism which boosts their sales; everybody wants to see a Federer or a Nadal play”.