Middle-class heroes can lift our game

Far from mocking Tim Henman's middle-class pedigree, Britain should exploit the social group that is 'the greatest single asset we have in this sporting nation'.

Ian Wight, the long-time director of the Stella Artois championships, Britain's most successful tournament after Wimbledon, last week unexpectedly made the role of the gently nurtured a burning tennis issue. He unashamedly trumpeted the virtues of the middle classes in a trenchant and provocative speech whose subtext seemed to be to discomfort Roger Draper, the man installed earlier this year to revive the British game.

'We excel at middle-class sports in the UK and tennis is a middle-class sport. Let's exploit it,' said Wight. Draper's response was equally blunt. 'The problem is tennis is largely dominated by the middle classes,' he told Observer Sport, 'and we need to get more people involved from disadvantaged backgrounds.'

The least contentious of Wight's views was that tennis was more available to the middle classes because it was expensive. 'Balls, rackets, courts, clothing, shoes all cost money,' he said. 'Transport is another expense both in real cost and in time, the most precious commodity next to money a parent can offer.'

What made Wight's comments particularly provocative, quite apart from the basic theme, was including in the same passage the observation that tennis 'is also a complex game to learn'. This introduced the implication that the better-off tend to be better equipped mentally. 'An intelligent player will, over time, win out,' said Wight. 'So let's think about finding kids who are bright enough to excel at the technical and tactical aspects of the game. Let's put brains before brawn. The former is a god-given gift, the latter can be developed.

'We have in Tim Henman the perfect example. How many of us shook our heads wisely as Tim developed in his late teens: too frail, not enough muscle - well, we got that one wrong.'

Wight's speech indisputably had the merit of enlivening the tennis writers' annual dinner in west London. The man who stands down as the director of the Stella event next summer after serving the tournament since 1978 gave the first hint that he had Draper, sitting well within range at a nearby table, in his sights when he upbraided him for having used the words 'city boys and posh totty' in remarks about the Stella.

No matter that Draper, the chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association, had been referring to the disappointing demographic of the crowd who attend the event at the exclusive Queen's Club in west London, Wight clearly saw it as a slight on the tournament itself - and the middle classes? He objected that 'a single, beautifully polished soundbite be used to disparage' the championships.

Draper made his 'posh totty' remark in October when launching his - or, strictly speaking, the LTA's - big policy document, Blueprint for British Tennis, which the quietly combative Wight also objected to and prompted his offering the middle class as the solution to Britain's tennis woes.

'All the talk around the LTA blueprint has been of increasing numbers of participants,' said Wight. 'The more kids we have playing, the more champions we will produce. And yet, in the men's game at least - and truly the one I'm qualified to talk about - it is the kids developed outside the system that seem to flourish.... So my proposition is this: let's invest in fewer youngsters, let's give them more support, more coaches, more money, more overseas training camps.... If it fails, it fails. It can't be any less successful than the current system.' And this, he added, led him on to funding and the great boon that is the nation's middle class.

Draper countered: 'There's plenty of talent out there but we're not good at spotting it and we're not good at nurturing it.' He said that targeting the middle classes was fine if the aim was to maintain the status quo, but the game needed to reach out beyond this group.

Piotr Unierzyski, an associate professor at the University of Physical Education in Poznan, Poland, who has made a worldwide study of social trends in tennis, said that, anyway, it was no longer true that tennis was a middle-class sport. 'On the contrary, typical middle-class kids are focused on education and fun, so do not want to suffer [the rigours of top-class tennis].' He added that a study of 38 of the world's top 120 male players showed that only 37 per cent qualified as middle class on the basis that both parents went to university.

It may also be worth remembering that Britain's last Wimbledon champion, Fred Perry 70 years ago, was the only son of working-class parents from Stockport.