Wimbledon’s over; those thousands of television viewers inspired by the sight of Roger Federer or Serena Williams sweeping majestically around the Centre Court have made their annual pilgrimage to whatever tennis court they can find and after discovering the game is not as easy as it looks have  gone back to the golf club — or the couch.

Meanwhile, despite the vast sums of money spent on genuine attempts to increase the national player base, Britain continues to lag behind France, Spain and Germany in the number of players of all levels participating in the sport as well the number of players capable of reaching a top one hundred ranking on the ATP or WTA tours.

Outside of the LTA, you can count on one hand the number of people who have invested time and/or money into providing the kind of facilities required. David Lloyd was obviously one of them as, in a different way was the singer Sir Cliff Richard who funded promotional tours all over the country. But a lesser known tennis devotee is Keith Sohl who built the impressive Sutton indoor tennis facility, just outside London two decades ago and has seen it grow into one of the few places where youngsters can develop career prospects in tennis, either as a pro player or in any of the sports-oriented jobs that are now affiliated to the game.

Sohl and his team, headed by former British No. 1 Jeremy Bates, are doing their best to buck the trend by creating a junior program which is attended by 1,000 kids a week. For 11 to 16 years olds there is a Junior Academy where pupils attend after school on week days and all weekend if they wish. Uniquely, there is a Junior Gym where the weights and equipment are tailored to the strength of the children using it and there is a scholarship program for 12 to 19 year olds who can take school classes in a variety of subjects.

Then there is a High Performance Club for young players who show a real desire to follow a pro career and are thought to have sufficient ability to succeed. The numbers are not large, about twenty at the moment, as Bates is not into creating unrealistic dreams.

The Sutton Academy is one of twenty High Performance centers in Britain to receive funding from the LTA but finds some of the rules laid down by the game’s parent body somewhat restricting. No child under ten, for instance, is allowed to play on a full-sized court unless he or she is approved as “exceptional” by the LTA. So all the kids have to play mini tennis. Is this the way to go? Several experts doubt it. In France they have courts of varying size, increasing in size as they kids grow older.

This particular subject opens up a larger debate over the benefits of youngsters playing with and against adults. During Wimbledon I was chatting to some of the Aussie commentators and Fred Stolle was recounting how he used to play at his local tennis club in Sydney every weekend, joining in doubles matches with his Dad and other adult members.

“That’s how I learned to play,” said Stolle. “You got to learn pretty quick, faced with adults who can hit a ball.”

Bates agreed. “That’s exactly what I did,” said one of Britain’s more successful players. “I was lucky enough to play at a club where they tolerated kids joining in adult matches. But the problem is that, in Britain at least, this is often still not the case.”

Bates is totally frustrated on another front, too. He may have teamed with Anders Jarryd to win the Seniors event at Wimbledon this year but finding any other competitive tennis in his age group in the London area will prove impossible until the annual seniors event at the Royal Albert Hall rolls around in December.

“There just isn’t anything else,” Bates told me. “If I want to play some competitive matches, I would have to go to Germany or France. I could play in leagues there most weekends in the year.”

But not in Britain. The situation has become so frustrating for David Lloyd, whose brother, John, is still the country’s Davis Cup captain, that he has quit his role as leader of  three major centers, insisting that he cannot run them on $146,000 a year. Lloyd has received grants from the LTA totaling $2.28 million so far but his request for an increase has been rejected.

“I asked for a total of $570 million for the three centers instead of the $440,000 I have been getting,” he said. “I’m sorry if I have let people down. I have never quit on anything in my life but dealing with the LTA is impossible. It is like having a communist state in a capitalist world. No business in the world I’ve come across works the way the LTA does. Every area of Britain is different and has to be treated differently.”

There are those say Lloyd, who founded the David Lloyd Clubs in Britain and has real estate interests in Barbados, Australia and other parts of the world, is rich enough to cover any shortfall. His retort is an offer to run British tennis for free but the LTA won’t let him near the place. That is hardly surprising. The LTA CEO Roger Draper would be crazy to let the fox in the chicken coup because he would be the first to lose his feathers but it is difficult to see how any real advances can be made in the current climate.

Dave Sammels, a former British player and coach who now works for the Monte Carlo tennis Academy, told Neil Harman of the London Times, “British tennis is currently low on trust and high on cynicism which is sad because there are so many committed and capable people who love the sport working there.”

Sammels believes throwing money at the problem is one way to go and you can read about his ideas in Harman’s latest Net Post column at www.thetimes.co.uk/sport/tennis. But, in the meantime, as Andy Murray gears up for another assault on the US Open Series with some more training stints at Miami University where Alex Corretja has re-joined his coaching team, Harman and others have observed the results at the Los Angeles Open with a certain amount of frustration.

Doesn’t Britain have a 22-year-old like Carsten Ball who is capable of bursting through a draw and reaching the final of an ATP event? I’m afraid not. There are a few youngsters starting to make some sort of an impression at Challenger level but that is as far as it goes.

In the juniors there were some encouraging results last week, notably from Emma Devine, a 14-year-old Scottish girl who won a Tennis Europe Under 16 event in Brussels. Should the LTA feel pleased about that? Well, sort of….except that Emma has spent the last nine months training at Justine Henin’s 6th Sense Academy in Belgium. Now where was it Murray trained? Ah, yes, Barcelona.

Everyone connected with British tennis should be hoping that, some day soon, a tournament winner emerges, having been raised at the splendid LTA Headquarters opened in 2007 at Roehampton. It was ushered through its growing pains by the then President of the LTA, Stuart Smith, who has just been elected to the ITF Board of Directors. Smith had a vision and at least made the building work. But until Britain starts producing players in numbers to even start matching those of Spain, France and Germany, the criticism will continue. Because you can’t argue with results.

Currently Spain has 14 players in the top one hundred on the ATP ranking list. France has ten and Germany nine. The United States doesn’t have too much to boast about but at least it is competitive with eight.

Britain? Just the Great Scot.