Lawn Tennis Association chief executive Roger Draper enjoying heady days following British successes on court When Andy Murray and Laura Robson won medals at London 2012, we saw thousands more tennis members signing on at clubs and many more people going to our All Play website to look for a court to play on. Demand for a court doubled during the week of the Olympic tennis tournament. After so many thin years, 2012 has delivered in spades. Jonny Marray's shock win in the men's doubles tournament at Wimbledon kicked off a glut of success that also included Heather Watson's maiden WTA title and Murray's breakthrough at the US Open. In April, Sport England cut back the LTA's annual funding by £530,000 after figures suggested that the number of people playing tennis once a week had fallen by almost 30 per cent between 2009 and 2011. The LTA still attracts plenty of criticism, and there are those who will point out that the teenaged Murray did most of his training at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona, while Watson went to the Bolletieri Academy in Florida. But it is also true that Robson spent a significant part of her development working with Martijn Bok at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton, while Watson made use of the expertise of Andrew Fisher - who was working on the LTA's talent ID programme at the time - during some of her summer breaks from the USA. "We take it for granted what these two have done," says Iain Bates, the LTA's manager of women's tennis, but it's not easy to fly through the 200s and the 100s on the rankings like they have. There has definitely been a feel-good factor around British tennis since the Olympics and it just seems to be getting better. I don't know if it's a coincidence but at junior level Jazzi Plews, who's the top 14-year-old in the country, has just won two tournaments back to back in Brazil and Gaby Taylor has won one in Morocco. Maybe they have been inspired by what Laura and Heather have done.