THE reasons why Britain will never produce a Wimbledon winner have been served up by the top dog at a heavyweight Government think tank.

Carshalton economist Dan Lewis is used to tackling weighty subjects such as government finance policy and global energy resources.

But now he has produced a meaty 35-page document claiming to have smashed the factors behind the nation's failure to produce top quality tennis stars.

In a familiar scenario, hopes rest solely on Andy Murray to become the first British men's single champion at Wimbledon since Fred Perry triumphed in 1936.

Mr Lewis said: "Andy Murray is the best player we've had since Fred Perry – but it's no accident he was trained and made in Spain.

"There's simply not the infrastructure here, and the way things are today we will never produce a champion."

In his day job as the chief executive of the Economic Policy Centre, Mr Lewis is more used to brandishing complicated theories and knotty calculations than a tennis racket.

But by applying these weighty formulas to the tennis court, the 39-year-old has pinned down not only why Murray is destined to fail, but also why there is no future champion waiting in the wings.

Mr Lewis, a former pupil of Wilson's School in Wallington, added: "I've been playing amateur tennis for 25 years and it's been at the back of my minds for ages – and it's got to the stage where I can do something.

"There are two weeks of the year when everybody is quite interested in tennis and now is the time to act."

His heavyweight document, entitled Rethinking Tennis for the Big Society, is split into four sections outlining The State We're In and Where It Went Wrong, before setting out a vision of what needs to change to produce a champ.

It concludes 61.5 million people in the country do not play tennis – as opposed to 437,500 that do – and brands the status quo "unacceptable".

Mr Lewis argues the sport is concentrated in the hands of the few, and calls for a grassroots overhaul of the Lawn Tennis Association.

He added: "Here in Sutton we're only a few miles from Wimbledon and the one thing this area has is a lot of tennis courts – but they're very old, they were founded in the 1930s when the suburbs were booming.

"What we're lacking is park tennis, we need to lower the barriers of entry.

"We have falling participation and entry and the two things are linked.

"We have failed to address why tennis isn't growing.

"It's high time for a radically fresh start.

"The Williams sisters could never come through in Britain because the barriers to entry are too high."