The Death of American Tennis Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

By now you have heard the news that American tennis is dead. Our men and women performed terribly at Wimbledon this year, Andre Agassi is retiring, Lindsay Davenport will soon follow, and the Williams sisters have better things to do. Like the Australians and Brits before us, Americans will soon cede the sport of tennis to an army of French, Spaniards, Russians, Croats, and Eastern-Europeans. Even Frank Deford, our country’s most esteemed sports writer, recently wrote an obituary for tennis in the States.

Earlier this month, the mood was somber inside a small conference room at the All England Club, where Patrick McEnroe, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert (via telephone from Colorado),and several United States Tennis Association officials huddled to lament our recent performance and announce the first year-round, residential training program for its top 20 juniors at Evert’s academy in Florida.

“We know we’re not doing well,” King said. “We want to win.”

But how bad off are we in America? Amid all the panic, it’s worth taking a closer look.

We expect a lot of ourselves. Pete Sampras is the greatest champion in the sport’s history, John McEnroe perhaps its most gifted player. There’s Agassi, a man who reinvented the groundstroke, Jimmy Connors and King, competitors to rival all others, and Evert, whose smooth swings still epitomize technical perfection. And that’s not mentioning the likes of Arthur Ashe, Tony Trabert, Althea Gibson, Jim Courier, Michael Chang, and on and on and on.

That said, it’s unreasonable, in a world where so many athletes have so many more opportunities than they once did, to expect America to have Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang, Todd Martin, the Williams sisters, Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, and a half dozen other players kicking around the top 100 at the same time. In the last 15 years, this country has overachieved in tennis by leaps and bounds, and we are now returning to a norm.

No American men are winning Grand Slam tournaments these days, but neither are any men not named Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal (combined, they have won the last six majors and eight out of nine).Yet Switzerland and Spain, their respective home countries, are hardly tennis powers (yes, Spain has toprated academies and some fine players, but none of them are female and among the men, Juan Carlos Ferrero has faded, Carlos Moya is old, and Fernando Verdasco and Feliciano Lopez are too busy wooing women).

So many words have been written about the Argentines, for so few victories: David Nalbandian (continues to choke on major stages), Gaston Gaudio (one-Slam wonder), Guillermo Coria (too small, can’t serve), Mariano Puerta (drug cheat), Guillermo Canas (drug cheat), and Juan Ignacio Chela (former drug cheat, now mediocre player).Croatia has Ivan Ljubicic, Mario Ancic, and several top juniors — and only one Grand Slam title by Goran Ivanisevic. Russia’s men are nothing special (repeat after me: S-A-F-I-N), and in terms of titles, its women have fallen far short of expectations.

While America lacks men and women ages 20 to 23 to rival the likes of Nadal, Marcos Baghdatis, Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, and Nicole Vaidisova, a few 18-and-unders stand out. Among the boys, there is Sam Querrey, a 6-foot-6-inch Californian with a monster serve and strong forehand, and Donald Young, whose parents may yet look brilliant if his recent drubbings at the hands of grown men eventually pay dividends. Among the girls, Alexa Glatch stands six feet tall and recently won a tournament after returning from a broken wrist.

***

At the huddle in London, a gentleman by the name of Paul Roetert had the lowest profile, but he was the most important person in the room. Roetert, a native of the Netherlands, has a Ph.D. in biomechanics and runs the USTA’s player development program. He keeps careful count of how many junior boys are ranked in the top 1,000 of the ATP, and how many junior girls are ranked in the top 750 of the WTA. From 2002–05, he said, those numbers increased each year. He rattled off the names of several young teens — Madison Brengle, Grace Min, Jamie Hampton, Rhyne Williams, and Chase Buchanan — who are progressing nicely.

“We do have some very good players in the pipeline,” Roetert said. “Especially the 13, 14, 15-year-olds. We’re very deep right now.”

Creating a year-round training program at Evert’s tennis academy to aid these and other prospects is a wonderful idea — unassailable, really. But the greater challenge is making sure that the talent pool that yields those 20 players increases in size.In the last few years, the number of people playing tennis in America has increased: 1.1 million more people played in 2005 as compared to 2004, according to Franklin Johnson, chairman of the board and president of the USTA.The problem is that too few of those people, and especially juniors, do not continue playing. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has studied this extensively, concluding that the initial difficulties posed by tennis — one cannot walk on the court and immediately start rallying — turns people away.

To counter this, the ITF has developed a program that starts children playing tennis with lighter rackets and softer (and sometimes slightly larger) balls that do not move as fast or bounce as high, so tikes aren’t swinging at objects 10 feet above their heads. Courts can be divided up into smaller courts, too — as many as six per court. Roetert said the USTA plans to begin its own version of this program next year, though with greater emphasis on playing points and games (he believes juniors drill too often and compete against each other too little).

“Other countries have done this,” Roetert said. “Justine Henin came through that program, Kim Clijsters, Roger Federer. As you can tell, some of those players actually have one-handed backhands and are able to swing the racket in a proper swing pattern.”

Last week, Querrey spoke to reporters via telephone after losing his second-round match at the first tournament of the U.S. Open Series hardcourt season, in Indianapolis. He said he played tennis, soccer, basketball, baseball, and football from the time he was a child, until about age 14.

“At that point I guess I was the best at tennis out of all the sports, so I just kind of stuck with tennis,” he said.

For the USTA, that’s the goal: Get kids like Querrey hooked on tennis early, so when it comes time to choose, they feel compelled to stay in the game. If people like Roetert can convince more of the country’s best athletes to toss footballs and basketballs into their closets rather than tennis rackets, 10 years down the road the reaction to the awful Wimbledon of 2006 will seem like nothing more than a little bellyaching.

tperrotta@nysun.com


The New York Sun

© 2024 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use