Huge Gilbert salary part of £4.5m ranson LTA lavished to produce British flops

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Gilbert's £750,000 salary, which has been scaled down to a 20-week commitment for next year, contributed to a £1.8million rise in spending on top senior players and juniors.

The salary of Andy Murray's former coach Brad Gilbert has been scaled down to 20 weeks next year

The total was more than £4.5m, with the LTA's legion of high-profile part-time coaches, such as Tim Henman's former mentor Paul Annacone, contributing to the sum.

But chief executive Roger Draper, speaking at the annual meeting yesterday, wants their employment to be a temporary measure.

He said: 'It's certainly a strategy that we want to move away from.

'We have very few coaches who have operated at that world-class level and we want the likes of Paul and Brad to improve the skills of our guys so that in five years we have British full-time coaches.

'Coach support in this country is not generally good, which is why we have so many foreign coaches working across all sports.'

With only three active men inside the world's top 300, LTA president Stuart Smith conceded that British rankings were at an all-time low.

But the message from the governing body is that it may take until 2012 before the next generation come through and a substantial improvement is seen.

It was also revealed that there is an element of doubt over whether the season-ending Masters Cup event featuring the top eight players will be coming to London's 02 Arena in November 2009, as announced. The Chinese, who currently host the tournament in Shanghai, have an option to retain it until 2010, although the chances are that it will end up moving to London on schedule.