Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Lithuanian laddy is serving at 4-3 up in the final set of the whole match.

The whole place (which looks like a suburban leisure centre packed out with about 1,000 people on temporary seating) is going absolutely mental.

If Britain lose this, it will be 2013 at the earliest that we're playing World Group tennis again. The LTA must be so proud of all their investment in and management of the sport.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

And Lithuania win it. Red, Gold and Green everywhere - it looks like the Stretford End.

Great Britain have now lost, in succession, Davis Cup tennis matches against Austria, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania.

Next up is Turkey. Lose that, and GB will be in the same division next year as Andorra, Luxembourg, San Marino, Moldova and Monaco. Some of those nations must hold their home matches in somebody's garden.

[Seven Saxon Kings]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

Pathetic performance, and pathetic from Lloyd as well - the dogmatic refusal to pick Boggo, even though he is easily our #2 player and a class above a mug like Evans. Boggo might have failed, a lot, in the DC and at SW19, but most of those failures were when he was in out of his depth. Lithuania would not have been that.

I strongly considered going to this - in the end I couldn't find anyone to come with me. Looks like a cracking tie and atmosphere missed.

We don't need to worry about playing in a garden though - the third tier of the E/A zone is so low that they don't even hold ties, just a one week tournament in one of the countries. If we go down, we may well even get to host it.

So, Turkey then. Marsel Ilhan is ranked #121 and way too good for whichever fuckmuppets Lloyd puts out and I'm amazed he did so badly in Ireland. He'll win both singles matches and although we should win the doubles, we'll still probably find a way to fuck up one of the singles matches against their #2 despite having a plethora of higher ranked players, just as we did against Poland and Lithuania.

At least Murray made the right decision not to waste his time on this shit.

[Bored Of Education]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

The LTA must be so proud of all their investment in and management of the sport.

I am, by no means, an expert on tennis but I have always been quite impressed with the work that the LTA does with grass roots coaching and I just don't understand what is happening with British tennis.

There are thousand of kids playing tennis and it is quite easily accessible nowadays and it seems like a sport that children are genuinely into.

There must be some serious fucking up going if the ECB can get kids playing cricket and moving up through the ranks and the LTA can't do the same with the kids that are playing, from what I can see, everywhere

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

They had a magazine piece about this on breakfast news and one thing about getting into tennis that I'll admit hadn't crossed my mind, was the sheer commmitment required from both player and especially parent to rise up the ranks. Unlike in team sports and some other events like athletics, where fixtures are on specified days (usually weekends) and can be planned in advance, tennis tournaments tend to be three-or-four day long affairs (for juniors) and because they are knockout, parents could face travelling to say Nottingham of a Wednesday, not knowing if their prodigy is going to lose in the first round, or be in the final on Sunday. That's quite a commitment to have to potentially make with no guarantee of any real success, when the events at the 16-year-level that are really going to determine the wheat from the chaff are held all over the place. And then woe betide junior actually qualifies for the junior levels of the ATP tour, you'll then be looking at funding participation in events all over Europe, similarly mostly without any significant prize money.

Golf has always had similar "entry level" issues, but most pro golfers don't start their careers until they've left college and are in their twenties (Ricky Wilson being golf's latest such prodigy). If a tennis pro isn't in the world's top 32 by the time they're 21 then they're pretty much not going to make it, at least to the very top, because when they start playing the main tour proper they'll always be facing top-ten seeds in the first round of every event they enter.

Probably explains more than at first glance why most of the tennis stars Britain has produced to date are either from within the tennis "scene" to start with, or from very well-off families - it's not the entry costs into the sport, it's the direct and indirect costs of progressing.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

Of course, all of these factors are true for every family in country in Europe, not just Britain, so it doesn't help explain our comparative standing. But maybe other countries have a far better system of selecting, and supporting, any obvious talent at an early stage.

[Seven Saxon Kings]

Lithuania beat Great Britain at tennis

Thankfully, Lloyd has walked.