Roger Draper said yesterday that it was time to “dispel the myth that the LTA should be responsible for producing tennis players” and for that statement, there ought to be loud and profound support.

For too long, the governing body has seen itself as the ultimate high-performance club, to the extent of paying large salaries to foreign coaches to come over to join the exercise, thus perpetuating the myth that it was the LTA’s overriding responsibility.

One would hope that the chief executive’s comments on the BBC’s Sportsweek programme yesterday will lead to a dismantling of performance objectives and concentrate the resources, given to the LTA by Wimbledon, where they need to be concentrated. Coaches across the country need to be released and inspired to spread the tennis gospel free of the dead hand of the LTA’s doctrinaire approach.

Facilities need to be built so that children can pick up a racket, be enthused about the game and, from then on, can afford to travel to play in competitions. More tournaments need to be staged rather than — as is the vogue — cut back. Then, and only then, might the sport prosper.

“I know of very few [countries] where the federation produces players,” Draper said. “The role of the governing body is to provide the environment in which players can flourish.” With that, though, he continued the trend of target-setting for the production of players that he had said ought not to be the LTA’s remit. And he said that the previous targets announced by Stuart Smith, his president, two years ago were “the wrong ones and had been set by the previous regime and we needed a cold, hard look at where we were”.

Yet the previous LTA regime, in which David Felgate was the director of performance, made it clear that they were not in the business of public target-setting, though they did lay down internal ambitions for players who received financial incentives if their rankings improved. Not once did the “old” LTA say we can have five players in the top 100 by 2010, which was yesterday’s newest target.

Draper stoutly defended the decision to offer Paul Annacone, Tim Henman’s former coach, a 32-week deal as the head coach of the men’s game. “The value we get from him is fantastic and he is working not just with the current crop but with youngsters like George Morgan, who won the Orange Bowl earlier this year.”

However, would it not be a good idea if the LTA announces before the end of this Wimbledon the criteria for any player who wants a wild card into the 2009 championships, so that everyone knows where they stand? This year’s arbitrary cut-off of 250 on the ATP Tour, below which no player could be recommended — announced three months before the championships — did no one any favours and became another embarrassment the sport in this country can ill-afford.