You're losers - and we will use our cash on kids, LTA tell our flops

Annacone warned: 'This is Wimbledon and if you are a professional athlete and confronted with adversity it's about accepting the challenge. If you can't, it's better off doing something else.' Meanwhile, the rain allowed Tim Henman just two games against Feliciano Lopez and they will resume today at 1-1. Kate O'Brien, the last remaining British woman, takes on Michaella Krajicek.

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Britain's belly-aching first-round losers have been warned their funding may be slashed in the wake of the latest Wimbledon rout.

Their Lawn Tennis Association paymasters are ready to skip a generation and focus resources on younger players instead.

The opening salvoes of the Championships have brought even more embarrassment than usual to the LTA, with only Tim Henman and Kate O'Brien winning a singles match.

But the response from the authorities this time has been less a consolatory arm around the shoulder and more an instruction that the players should look at themselves long and hard in the mirror.

It has been a dismal few days for the sport in Britain, with the annual blame game spiced up by the suspension of Davis Cup coach Peter Lundgren for being worse for wear when addressing a training conference last weekend.

His subsequent absence from the matches of his two specific charges, Alex Bogdanovic and Josh Goodall, were cited by them as reasons for underperforming in straight-sets defeats.

The LTA's outspoken chief executive Roger Draper has decided attack is the best form of defence, and yesterday there was also little sympathy from the mild-mannered figure of Paul Annacone, Tim Henman's coach and the governing body's head coach of men's tennis.

Annacone said: "This is Wimbledon and if you are a professional athlete and confronted with adversity then it's about accepting the challenge that's put in front of you.

"You can hand the blame over in order to deal with it or make excuses, but in my mind it's about competing as best you can and if you can't do that you're better off doing something else."

Annacone, the former world No 12, stopped short of threatening totally to cut crucial financial and training support for what looks like a lost generation but emphasised that there could be a shift of resources.

He said: 'We want to get the best out of the guys in their twenties who are ranked outside the top 100 but we have got to look at how we manage the coaching staff.

"The fact is that, realistically, I can have a much greater impact on the promising 14-year-olds we have than I can on somebody who is 23.

We might have to look at how we spread things. It could be 80-20 to the younger ones, or maybe 90-10. The problem is that Wimbledon is right now and we all want winners, but there may have to be some patience shown."

Paul Hutchins, head of British men's tennis, was also upset that Goodall had publicly blamed Lundgren's suspension for his defeat against Feliciano Lopez.

Hutchins said: "There is this blame culture going around British tennis and there are certain people who love to blame the LTA. I'm getting pretty tired of it, of people thinking they expect the LTA to be their lifeblood. They expect the LTA to pay for too many things and they expect the LTA to do too many things.

"However, it was Josh who didn't go to see Peter at all at Queen's Club when Peter wanted him to come there and practise and train, and Josh and I have had a few ups and downs recently.

"Not only with Josh — but we can't start blaming other things for the defeat."

Among long-term observers of British tennis the eyes roll when one hears mention of promising 14-year-olds for they seem to be a perpetually promising group in the 'jam tomorrow' world of the LTA.

Annacone is aware of that but insists there are around five boys of that age with the basic talent to make it — and a handful of girls as well.

To try to maximise that talent the LTA used to devise vague five-year plans that were about as much use as those employed in the former Soviet Union to build tractors.

The broad strategy now revolves around the controversial £40million National Tennis Centre at Roehampton which is being staffed by some of the best — and most expensive — coaches in the world game.

The trouble at the moment is that it looks like the best university in the world but one that has almost no students of any calibre to fill it.

Draper himself voted against its construction when he was at the LTA prior to leaving for Sport England and coming back again.

But having seen it go ahead anyway, he has opted to fill it with highly paid Belgians, Swedes, Americans, Canadians and even a few Brits to try to stop the best teenage players dropping into the usual black hole once they leave the juniors.

In fairness, the atmosphere there is much more positive than it was in the previous drab offices at Queen's Club, which seemed to be peopled largely by Sloanettes looking for a suitable spouse.

So repeated have been the failures of the LTA that it is difficult not to be cynical about how it will work, but the new regime deserves to be given a chance to turn things around.

With his self-confident manner, Draper, an Olympic standard namedropper, is himself something of a target but should be commended for his determination at least to shake up the British system.

His idea of tackling clubs that do not promote junior tennis by stripping them of their Wimbledon ticket allocation is a particularly good one.

In the meantime, these may be worrying times for the British alsorans in the 100s, 200s and 300s.

One can only hope a way is found to harness the genuine ability in Goodall and the especially gifted Bogdanovic, otherwise there is the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. m.dickson@dailymail.co.uk