A dream team of the country’s most renowned tennis coaches have launched a performance programme in Northwood and believe their no-nonsense approach to nurturing young talent can launch their players on to the world stage.

Junior Tennis Coaching (JTC), which has been based at Northwood’s Health and Racquet Club for 18 months, has assembled together three of Britain’s leading tennis taskmasters including Tim Henman’s ex-right hand man David Felgate, once world number four Jo Durie and Durie’s former coach Alan Jones, who has guided 31 British players to the main draw at Wimbledon.

The programme, which currently oversees the eating, sleeping and training of 15 players aged 13 to 19, is financially backed by Clive Sherling, a former board member of the Football Association who quit his post two years ago.

Dabbling in the world of tennis, Sherling agreed to support one of Felgate’s current tutees, Donna Vekic (currently ranked 83 in the world) and from there Felgate spelled out his vision: a high-performance tennis programme committed to developing not just world-class tennis players but well-rounded individuals.

It’s a vision, Felgate says, that’s based on hunger, hard work and above all honesty.

“I personally believe this is the way forward for British tennis,” said the former LTA Performance Director.

“In the last 20 years there are too many people who say ‘I was a player’ just because they went and got one point and put their name on a list.

“I think that’s where coaches in this country have a huge responsibility to give a little bit of honesty because there are clearly coaches telling players they’re good enough and they haven’t got a chance.”

Sherling plunges annual “six-figure sums” into the programme which currently boasts 12 able-bodied tutees including Croatians Vekic and Borna Coric (ranked four in the ITF Junior rankings), as well as three wheelchair players including Brit Andrew Lapthorne, runner-up at the Australian Open.

It’s primarily a British programme aimed at nurturing British talent but the coaching team believe maintaining ties with the higher-profile international players like Vekic and Coric will only benefit their home-grown tutees.

Selection is based on word of mouth and a trial process but solid top-spin forehands are far from the only thing Felgate’s coaches look out for.

Durie said: “We very much look at the character of the person we’re dealing with first and foremost because there’s a lot of different technique in tennis.

“What drives the tennis is the personality – we look for strong personalities, people who love tennis, people who want to learn and improve and work hard.”

It’s a criticism regularly levelled at Britain’s budding tennis stars that too often privileges are not matched by practice.

JTC’s students enjoy the privileges of quality coaching, free courts and gyms, personal trainers, teachers and a shared house at a cost of £20 each per night (Sky Sports not included).

But four hours on court and four hours of study each day, as well as being on the road for up to 20 tournaments a year, means will-power and a hunger to succeed are essential.

“Coaching hunger to players is the easiest thing in the world – you just deny them very early on,” Jones said.

“I’m a bit like marmite, you either like me or you don’t but every player I coach knows very clearly if they don’t apply, it’s goodbye.

“We fall in love with people who have a bit of ability in this country but what you’ve got to recognise is tennis is a brutal, warrior, gladiatorial sport and we too often sprinkle gold dust when we should be asking for pounds of flesh.”

Hard work on the court though is balanced by a commitment to academic study and JTC hires eight teachers in a variety of subjects to tutor the players in classrooms provided on site.

Sherling insists his time in football revealed to him the dangers of directing a youngster’s focus on a playing career in sport too hard and for too long.

“We owe it to them that they have as broad an education as possible so they can achieve as much as they can both in tennis and educationally,” he said.

“I’ve seen too much in football where players are encouraged to go on and on and they’re thrown out on to the streets with no education and no skills.

“So we made it very clear that we have to have a strong educational resource as part of what we offer.”

The LTA’s attitude towards a project run by three of its former employees (Felgate, Jones and Durie) seems to have been cautiously supportive but Sherling, who will meet LTA Chairman David Gregson in three week’s time, insists JTC is evolutionary not revolutionary.

“We think we work in a complimentary way to the LTA. They have their way of doing things - it suits many but there are a number of people who prefer an alternative path through the tennis world,” he said.

“I’m a novice in tennis, I would be the first to admit that, but from the outside it seems to me there is room for more than a monolithic approach and people like us working alongside the LTA may be a model which they might want to look at.”