Even the doctor has had one headache too many. The LTA's Head of Sports Medicine cleaned out his desk and dusted down his examination table last Friday because of what is termed 'changes in how the governing body plans to deliver sports physician services.' An aspirin is an aspirin is an aspirin, or are we missing something?

The revelation in The Times on Saturday morning that the LTA had, for the second year running, paid at least one high profile member of its coaching staff a 20 per cent bonus even though, in the same breath, it confessed that its (unspecified) targets for players in the top 100 had not been reached, was the latest in a troubling sequence of events since the National Tennis Centre became the £40 million hub of the sport in Britain 18 months ago.

It has been hard to keep up with those coming in, those going out and those stuck in the lift between floors. In the 30 months since Roger Draper, its image-conscious chief executive, began to administer the organisation, various heads of performance, operations, finance, coaching relations, men's tennis and medicine have left the LTA, there is an admittance that targets (which shift like Saharan sands) are regularly missed, junior competition is all over the place and now the governing body is said to be resistant to the ideals of an independent coaching body which offers those feeling isolated by the system, a package of services to enhance their livelihoods.

There was a time when British tennis was run by blazered Bufton Tuftons and cried out for modernisation and efficient practice; now the desire of the LTA to 'organise into the optimum way of serving our key stakeholders to efficiently and effectively deliver real benefits to British tennis in 2008 and beyond' (the words of Stuart Smith, its departing President, not mine) has a distinctly hollow look.

For if the evidence of the bonuses paid to the head of women's tennis are true - and The Times has seen the letters - it is snouts in the trough at the top while the man-servants are stuck with a pay freeze and seriously lack for motivation. When Smith said at last year's annual meeting that the head of men's and women's tennis were now 'firmly on an equal footing', he could not have conceived that a year down the road, one (Paul Hutchins) would have been asked to step down and the other (Carl Maes) would be in receipt of a second 20 per cent bonus when he had not achieved whatever his target was. This is a shambles.

Remarkably, the letters sent to Maes on November last year and a week ago are, but for a platitude or two, absolutely identical. There must be a copy tucked somewhere inside a desk at Roehampton which reads "whilst we did not meet our targets for players in the top 100, we have made good progress in the number of players we have on track and in the number of juniors competing" followed by a blank space for the amount of the bonus.

The LTA now spends as much on 'support services ' as it does on tournaments. There are row upon row of lovely computers at the NTC, but computers do not win Wimbledon titles. To change that, of course, and justify its desire to be seen as the Highest Performance Club in the land, the governing body needs to cherry pick as many of the country's best players to hone their crafts at HQ. And so they make sure the current High Performance Clubs send them their stars, these clubs having persuaded the smaller ones to part with them, leaving the coach who spent hours in the cold and damp working with the player in his formative years to feel as if all that time and effort was worth very little.

Over the next couple of days at Bisham Abbey in Buckinghamshire - once the hub of the junior development of tennis - around 250 coaches will attend the annual conference of tenniscoachUK, a body seeking to "enable the rest of the British tennis to work together" for its overall betterment. At the last count some 25 tennis organisations had pledged their support for its ethos.

The leadership of tenniscoachUK met the LTA a couple of months ago to expound their ideas and came away with negative vibes. "We are clearly a body they want to see the end of," the Net Post was told. "And that only makes us more determined to achieve what we want to achieve." The LTA regarded the outcome in a different light, saying they have spoken to over 500 coaches at seven nationwide forums and are doing all they can to 'professionalise our coaching industry and grow our market. And we are listening to what coaches want, rather than telling them what we think they want," Gary Stewart, head of coaching relations said. It will be interesting to spend a few hours in the company of these coaches in the next couple of days, and hear what they really do want. The Net Post will be there.

Last week, came an announcement that the All England Club and the LTA had reached the end of their joint management of the championships, an agreement first signed in 1922 and might have continued deeper into the future had Wimbledon wanted it to. They did not. From 2013, having agreed to sell their 50 per cent share of the All England Club Ground Company (worth £55 million) back to the Club, the LTA will receive 90 per cent of Wimbledon's annual surplus each year until 2053. Rather more tellingly, the break will allow Wimbledon to run the Championships the way it sees fit, without any encumberances.

The ills of British tennis will be the LTA's concern and the LTA's concern only. And here is one to be going on with. There was a junior event for age groups including U10s staged in Sussex a couple of months back, which involved a shortened scoring system in a round robin with different coloured balls. Just as the tournament was about to start, the referee received notice of a withdrawal by the Sussex LTA office for an 8-year-old who couldn't play because the wrong coloured balls were being used. The referee rang the family because the kid wanted to play, the parents wanted him to play and the coach wanted him to play. The referee was happy for him to play but Sussex LTA insisted the answer was no. "Phase one of the world going mad," the referee told the Net Post.

This would be another one for the LTA doctor, if he hadn't just shut the surgery.