IF YOU have even a passing interest in tennis, you will know that the Wimbledon men’s singles final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer earlier this month was one of the most exciting and compelling ever, and that it should have generated a huge amount of new interest in the sport. You will probably also be aware that the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is one of the wealthiest sporting bodies in the world, benefiting from a £25m-plus annual injection from the profits of Wimbledon.

What might not be so well known is that the LTA spends a large part of that fortune every year hiring the world’s most expensive coaches in an attempt to find that elusive Wimbledon champion. It has been happening for years and it doesn’t work. Two weeks ago I called for councils to make their tennis courts available to children without charge. It is a campaign that is being supported by The Sunday Times and I have been inundated with emails of support and people venting their frustration at the way tennis is administered in this country. There are more than a few within the higher echelons of the game who want the LTA money to be spent more responsibly, and to see much more money going into the grassroots of the game.

Not long ago, Brad Gilbert was paid a reputed £750,000 a year by the LTA to coach Andy Murray, making him the only player on the ATP Tour to have his coach paid for by a nation’s governing body. At the time there was talk from Murray about him paying back some of that money. Murray and Gilbert went their separate ways at the end of last year, but not a penny has gone back into the LTA’s coffers thus far. Gilbert now coaches Alex Bogdanovic, who was ranked just outside the world’s top 100 not too long ago but just before Wimbledon had fallen to 271st, under the guidance of a coach who is costing the LTA a small fortune. This is not meant as a criticism of Gilbert or indeed Bogdanovic, who recently won a Challenger event in Canada and is hopefully going to climb back up the rankings.

The star-studded coaching team amassed by the LTA goes beyond Gilbert. There is Paul Annacone, the former coach to Pete Sampras and Tim Henman; Carl Maes, who guided Kim Clijsters to the top of the women’s game; Nigel Sears, an Englishman who has worked with Amanda Coetzer and Daniela Hantuchova; Steve Martens, the former Belgium Davis Cup captain; Jens Gerlach, coach to Anastasia Myskina when she won the French Open; and Martin Bohm, who once worked with many of the top Swedes and Greg Rusedski.

How much is this lot costing? Educated guesses put the figure at more than £2.5m a year, but little is spent on the bottom rung of the British tennis ladder. It is also worth noting that Max Clifford has recently been hired to “keep ‘good news’ stories about British tennis” in the newspapers. Nobody from the LTA or Tennis Foundation will tell me what he is being paid, but press speculation puts the figure at as much as £250,000 for a year-long campaign.

What would happen to British tennis if we spent this money in a different way? This is what the charity I helped to set up, tennisforfree, believes it could deliver for some of the fees discussed above: for the £250,000 being paid to Clifford we could operate free coaching on Saturday mornings in 18 local authorities for 52 weeks of the year. This would include offering free equipment and balls to participants. We could be bringing as many as 680 players a week into the game. With this £250,000 we would also persuade councils to make 2,000 courts free across the country.

With Gilbert’s salary alone, we could create and develop 60 tennis communities that would introduce about 7,320 adults and children to the sport over a two-year period. For this money we would be supplying each community with three qualified coaches, as well as mentoring and training members of the public to become tennis coaches/assistants/leaders. For £2.3m (less than we estimate the bill to be for a handful of LTA elite coaches) we can create 180 tennis communities that would introduce around 21,960 adults and children to tennis over a two-year period. This would expand to an estimated 540 new people per week after the two years.

One of the emails I received was from our women’s British No 1, Anne Keothavong, who put up such strong resistance to Venus Williams at Wimbledon. She wrote: “I grew up playing tennis at Highbury Fields and Hackney Downs park and one of the reasons I was able to spend so many hours on court was because it was free; well, most of the time. This was due to the caretaker being too lazy to get out of his hut to kick us off the tennis courts. Tennis is an expensive sport and my parents didn’t have a lot of money, so if we’d had to pay for every hour I spent on a park court then I doubt I would be where I am now.”

Tony Hawks is a comedian and author, as well as a former Sussex county tennis player (www.tennisforfree.com)

Your points of view

Many council courts have been left to go to ruin while football has been promoted. There aren’t enough indoor courts in Glasgow. On the positive side, at Giffnock Tennis Club, to which I belong, the courts are full of young boys and girls - 100 turned up the other night for coaching. Even if a third of them stick at it, that will be fantastic. Marjorie Macfarlane

I want to know how the LTA manage to spend such massive amounts achieving so little. My daughter Margot is a tennis player whose doubles ranking has risen swiftly to 451, but she is thinking of quitting because she gets no support except from us, her parents. She sees a handful of ‘elite’ players being sent around the world with a coach, a physio and accommodation paid for, while the other 20 or so British world-ranked girls are ignored. Margot has been entirely self-motivated, which is just one of the things that makes the present situation so disheartening. Anthony Carter

I am a passionate tennis fan. I work in the sports marketing industry and was a tennis coach. My dissertation at university investigated why tennis has developed in the UK the way it has - one of the primary findings was that it was promoted at a local level as exclusive. Tim Stemp

Having indoor facilities during the winter for children is also a key factor in changing the culture. I am heartened by your commitment and want to offer my support. People need to work together to change a system that obviously does not work.Aubrey Barrett, Chiswick

I have been county secretary of Norfolk LTA for 2½ years and believe county associations can play a major role in getting more people to play the game. If we embrace fresh ideas and work together we can fill the National Tennis Centre with world-class prospects. Richard Palmer, Norwich

Twenty-five years ago my son went to rural France on a school exchange. When he returned I asked him what he found to do and he replied that he played tennis all day. In that small village there were several courts and a coach came regularly. Any promising kids were swept off for more coaching. Sheila Pike

As the father of two young kids who are just starting out on the tennis court, I am staggered by the bizarre state of affairs concerning public court availability. While visiting my brother in Buckinghamshire the kids wanted to play tennis but there were more padlocks than players on the courts. Matthew Fernandez, Hampshire