Britain's Naomi Cavaday Retires Aged 22

British number five Naomi Cavaday has retired from professional tennis at the age of 22.
The Kent-born left-hander reached a career-high ranking of 174 last May, and is currently 231st in the world.
from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/13244304.stm

Current rankings for British Ladies:
90. Elena Baltacha
96. Anne Keothavong
127. Heather Watson
221. Katie O'Brien
231. Naomi Cavaday
254. Melanie South
256. Laura Robson
273. Naomi Broady
285. Lisa Whybourn

LTA boss Roger pleads for more time to raise the British game:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/draper-pleads-for-more-time-to-raise-british-game-2264807.html

Draper was making some kind of sense until....""Freddie Flintoff wasn't produced by the ECB and Wayne Rooney wasn't produced by the FA," he said.

How wrong is that, both those entities gave both those players the opportunity, through facilities and youth coaching, to realise their potential.

If he really believes that the LTA have absolutely no bearing on the production of raw talent, he's definitely in the wrong job.

It has always amazed me that Draper has never asked for input from David Lloyd or Tim Henman as Henman was a product of British Tennis and could certainly help shape the LTA as it is a sham at the moment.

David Lloyd should have Drapers job, but of course his outspoken ways against what the LTA stands for, pretty much sealed off that line of work.

I think his brand and club infrastructure has done more to bring tennis to the masses (that can afford it) than anything the LTA has done in recent years, and Tim Henman, although has been doing some appearance work for the LTA, hasn't really been able to influence anything that Draper decides.

At least Cavaday recognises the need to turn her career around into something more worthwhile, a very brave decision on her behalf, looking at that list of top British women, she isn't that bad.

But what does that say for the confidence of any of them, what are they fighting for and do any of them really believe that they can break into the top 50?

Crucially, what is the LTA doing to bolster their confidence and their belief ?

(maybe giving them higher ranked players/competitions to compete in ?)

Roger Draper wrote:"I've always said it takes 10 years to transform a sport"

Really? So, er, the '5 year plan' thing..................... did someone else invent that?