When will we see Irish players on Wimbledon's Centre Court? What happens in schools will be vital, writes Des Allen
Fresh from a visit to Wimbledon last week, I am happy to report that those young men and women wearing the predominantly white clothing are very much like you and me! Admittedly most are tanned and toned to perfection, and many have adopted a type of arrogant look while off court which at once indicates wealth, privilege and self-absorbed status within the top 100 of the sport of tennis.
But there was absolutely no evidence of bionic arms, or advanced genetic engineering of knee joints. In fact, after a couple of hours of the coma-inducing Saffin v Philippoussis festival of serving, one could only conclude that the normal pace of human evolution has slowed somewhat in men's professional tennis.
The man of the moment in this game - despite being beaten this week - is, of course, Andy Murray. Those who know tennis have long recognised 18-year-old Murray as a prospect. He won the 2004 US Open Junior Championships, and his early development was supervised by his mother, one of Scotland's top coaches. After winning a handful of matches at Queen's and Wimbledon over the past two weeks, Andy has now inherited the crown of thorns which is the expectation of British success at Wimbledon and which has blighted Tim Henman's otherwise exemplary career.
But wait a minute. Murray is a Celt, born and reared in Dunblane in Scotland. In demeanour, height, build, even skin tone and hair colour he is remarkably similar to any of the half-dozen exceptional athletes who will feature in a championship-winning Kilkenny minor hurling team.
Admittedly, he weaves his magic with a strung racquet rather than an ash stick. But he is from the same gene pool, more or less, as these Kilkenny lads, and I have total confidence in our ability to mould such exceptional young Irish athletes into exceptional tennis players over the next five to seven years.
The formula for success in producing top-class tennis-players is distinctly long-term in nature and in reality very much lacking in the guru factor. The process requires extensive national-level talent-identification programmes coupled with the best coaching, sports science and fitness training that properly resourced programmes can provide.
Getting back to Andy Murray, he is probably nearing the end of an apprenticeship designed to produce top professional players. He has worked at this since he was eight and will have spent at least 10,000 hours to date on the training courts. That equates to an average of three hours a day hitting tennis balls every day of the year, and then you must add the countless hours of conditioning and fitness training, not to mention the weeks and months of travelling and competing.
Tennis Ireland, as the national governing body for the sport in Ireland, has been running elite developmental programmes of this nature for four years now. A small group of 10 players, the pioneers who took the leap of faith at the start, are now achieving significant tournament success right across Europe at under-14 level and the Taoiseach will open a new national training centre to facilitate these programmes on July 11th at Dublin City University.
A truly remarkable partnership has developed between Dublin City Council, Tennis Ireland and DCU in providing the infrastructure necessary to deliver these programmes. The council provided the site for the training centre at Albert Park in Glasnevin, while DCU and Tennis Ireland have collaborated closely over four years to develop the all-important expertise in tennis-specific sports science.
The provision of an €800,000 capital grant by the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism towards the construction of the training facility has allowed a consolidated approach to the development of our sport to be centred on the Glasnevin campus.
Most importantly, the Glasnevin programmes are supported by many hundreds of young players in equivalent regional programmes.
Why then are we so confident in the future success of these programmes? We know that our model is based in generic terms on the approach taken by comparable but successful European tennis nations. The fundamental elements of the Belgian programme which produced Clijsters and Henin-Hardenne are now at work in Ireland.
Talented Irish players will no longer opt to take the US scholarship route which in recent years (and with one or two notable exceptions) has produced considerably more stockbrokers and accountants than tennis players.
Few, if any, of the current world top 100 players have come into pro tennis via this route. Instead, young Irish players will develop their tennis careers and complete their education in an academy in Ireland, knowing that their peers in the top tennis countries are working in precisely the same way.
How soon can we deliver the goods?
Success comes a little easier in the women's game, and I have great hopes for a 12-year-old girl from Greystones. Like many of her male counterparts she has begun to achieve the essential early-career tournament success in Europe which is the foundation to a career in professional tennis.