Felgate widens Bates' role to include women

David Felgate began his shake-up as the Lawn Tennis Association's director of performance yesterday. He appointed Jeremy Bates, the former British No 1, as his right-hand man, announced that Alan Jones, Jo Durie's former coach, would be leaving to set up a private training squad, and declared that the long-serving Mark Cox's role as director of national futures programming was now redundant.

Bates, promoted to head of performance, will have day-to-day responsibility for men's and women's national training and for the performance of head coaches at the LTA's centres of excellence and academies. Felgate is seeking a new head of men's training to take Bates' place.

"I am maximising Jeremy's abilities," Felgate said, "by extending his influence to women's tennis and under-14s tennis, out on the court. Alan Jones is setting up a private squad, working with all age groups. We've known each other for years. He can't wait to get started. Alan will also continue working with Elena Baltacha."

Cox, a former British No 1, was responsible for training players aged from nine to 13. "Mark Cox's role no longer exists," Felgate said. "His job has gone. He could well move to some other aspect with the LTA." Felgate has decided to integrate the training of young players into his overall planning and will appoint an under-14s performance manager. "Somebody who can go around the clubs and counties and academies, check their ego at the door, and work with the coaches," he said.

Martin Bohm, a coach from the Swedish Tennis Federation who helped nurture Thomas Enqvist and Magnus Norman, among others, has been hired to coach Alex Bogdanovic and Martin Lee. "But this is not only down to LTA funding," Felgate said. "The players will be putting their own money in it as well, as their ranking goes up.

"We're criticised for giving too much, and we're criticised for not giving enough. Everybody wants to know, 'what's the LTA going to do for us?' That applies to players and coaches. We want to know, 'what are you going to do for yourselves?' "

Felgate added that, where merited, the LTA would help a player to pay for a coach, partly to get the coach on court with the player, "so he doesn't have to coach a housewife". Funding will be provided for private coaches as well as LTA coaches. "It's not a monopoly," Felgate said. "We couldn't care less which systems they come out of. We only care about the players reaching their goal."