Peter Williams: Early Davis Cup exit points to gloomy future

Onny Parun is right. New Zealand tennis is headed for oblivion.

But that's hardly news. It's not oblivion in the literal sense of the word. The game itself will never actually be wiped out. There's too many nice suburban clubs with green painted courts and Porsche Cayennes in the car park for that to happen.

But in this land of Anthony Wilding, Kathleen Nunnely, Chris Lewis and Marina Erakovic, tennis is on its way from being a sport to a pastime, a hobby game where participation will be more important than excellence.

The inability of our best male players to beat the Philippines last weekend and move to a higher level in the Asian Zone of the Davis Cup was no great surprise. No New Zealand man is ranked inside the world's top 300 players and the prospects of that happening again aren't flash either.

It's not as if we're short of facilities. I drive past both the Parnell and Gladstone tennis clubs regularly. Both look to be fine multi-court facilities. Problem is, those courts are empty more often than not.

SPARC boss Peter Miskimmin reckons there are over 300,000 tennis players in the country, although only 45,000 are members. That seems a healthy enough number, but the vast majority of both casual and club players are just social. That's fine. It's a great game for keeping the body in shape and maintaining hand-eye sharpness.

But unless there's a sudden emergence of a world class, home-grown star to inspire a younger generation of children to bid for international glory, the landscape is unlikely to change.

But is New Zealand actually any different to the rest of the English-speaking world? The game was once dominated by Australians and Americans, but look at our western neighbours now.

The prime of Lleyton Hewitt and Pat Rafter is a fast-fading memory and the era of Rod Laver and John Newcombe is ancient history. In America, Andy Roddick is fighting a lone battle to maintain any US male ascendancy and there's not much female star quality below the Williams sisters. Andy Murray is Britain's only hope.

So why has top-level tennis been taken over by Europeans and South Americans? I imagine it has plenty to do with a coaching system from pre-school years, plenty of intense youth competition with neighbouring countries and, especially in the women's game, a large number of dominating parents who sacrifice all to put their daughter into American coaching academies at a young age in the hope of producing a ripened champion by the age of 20, a la Sharapova.

There's nothing to stop top-class tennis players coming out of this country. We have facilities and coaches, the two international tournaments each year attract some of the world's better players and there's no shortage of the game on TV to see how good Federer and Serena Williams are.

But while there's no inspirational local figure to provide a lead, I suspect the main issue is one of commitment. There just aren't enough players and their families willing to meet the expense of both time and money to try and become a world-class player when the odds of actually making it are not that high.

Most of the moaning this week appears to have come from coaches complaining about New Zealand Tennis. I suspect the task of producing world-class players is beyond both.

Until some naturally gifted athletes are prepared to work seriously hard at the game from a young age at the expense of almost everything else, and with significant family support, there will be no Wimbledon players from this country.