Scottish Tennis Chief Says Scotland Deserves Additional Funding
Tennis – , says Scotland deserves to have more funding in addition to the new indoor facilities planned on the back of Andy Murrays success. The LTA has recently decided to base one of the two British academies in Stirling, which is a welcome move according to Dodds but he believes more should be done to capitalise on the success of the Murray brothers.
Speaking to BBC Scotlands Sportsound, Dodds says, We are way short of where we should be for indoor and outdoor courts. If you compare us to England and the rest of Europe, we are about 1,000 courts short of where we should be per capita.
If you look at indoor courts, providing that all-year-round tennis that is absolutely vital if we are going to be world class, then we have 109 indoor courts in Scotland, which is one per 48,000 people. In England, its one per 24,000 people.
Dodds continues, Even from a participation point of view, we can see what Andy and Jamie have done for us. Membership at tennis-club level has nearly doubled over the last few years and its a massive growth.
Thats against the trend overall in Britain, so something is happening here in Scotland that perhaps deserves more funding. Dodds says he plans to return to the LTA and SportsScptland for additional funding.
I think the 15m has been a massive step forward, which were grateful for. It is the biggest capital investment weve ever had. But our starting point is a pretty low base in terms of indoor courts and facilities, so theres a lot to catch up on and nows the time to do it.
