OFFICIALS at Tennis Scotland and the LTA will sit down this week with Leon Smith to thrash out a deal which will see the Glaswegian Great Britain Davis Cup captain also assume responsibilities as Scotland's national coach.
The 39-year-old - Andy Muray's first coach - will retain his Davis Cup role, where he has been phenomenally successful, winning nine out of 11 ties and taking Britain from the brink of relegation into Europe/Africa Zone Group III and into successive World Group quarter finals. The latest of these comes against France at Queen's Club immediately after Wimbledon finishes.
Smith, whose day job as head of men's tennis at the LTA has effectively been sidelined by the appointment of Bob Brett and imminent arrival of a new performance director, will be predominantly based in Edinburgh, but to alleviate concerns about the amount of time he will be spending away from Scotland, Fed Cup captain Judy Murray has also agreed to spend more time on coach education days in the country. She and Kris Soutar, who already run a Tennis on the Road programme under the auspices of Tennis Scotland will increase their involvement on a consultancy basis - meaning that for a large part of the year, both Britain's Davis Cup and Fed Cup captains will not only be Scottish, but based in Scotland.
The post of national coach, once held by Judy Murray herself, has effectively been unfilled since Karen Ross replaced Ellinore Lightbody in 2010, before focusing more on disability tennis. Part of a performance review undertaken by Tennis Scotland, in addition to being a figurehead for the sport in this country, the job involves taking a management role in the career of the sport's most promising young players such as Ali Collins, Aidan McHugh and Ewen Lumsden, and piecing together the various pieces of activity currently being headed up by performance coaches Mark Walker in Dundee and Toby Smith, Leon's brother, in Glasgow. After fruitful meetings last week, Tennis Scotland chief executive David Marshall, chairman Gordon Baker and LTA chief executive Michael Downey are scheduled for further discussions on Thursday with an announcement planned before the end of the tournament.
Jamie Murray, who has emerged as one of Tennis Scotland's chief critics, said such an outcome would make it all worthwhile. "From what I hear, there are some meetings in the next week or so with a view to some changes happening, which will be good if it all comes off," he said. "The way I will look at it is that everything has happened for the best. If I hadn't said anything about it, just kept schtum, and done nothing about it, then nothing would really have happened. Hopefully some changes are made and some of the right people are brought in, which helps Scottish tennis to move forward, which is all everyone wants."
Further discussions are also planned on the subject of promising Dunblane kid Ali Collins. Much like Andy Murray, who moved to Barcelona when he was a teenager, the 15-year-old is planning to continue her development at the the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Naples, Florida, although the LTA have offered a funding package which includes only four multi-week trips abroad. The Murray family have offered to underwrite her development, and the World No 3 said it was important she gets the chance to train where she wants.
"I know my mum has helped her a little bit and has talked to me about her a bit," said Andy. "Last I'd heard was that she wanted to go and train overseas. That wasn't necessarily being supported. I don't know the exact reasons why that is. I hope she gets a chance to go train where she wants to because we obviously have the funding to be able to do that in this country, and not everyone works well in the same environment."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article