U.S. Men’s Tennis
In light of both Andy Roddick & James Blake failing to reach the finals of Indianoplis this past weekend, I’ve decided to unload all my thoughts regarding the future of our country’s male tennis stars. We’ve got our current stars, Blake and Roddick, who look as though their best days may well be behind them. Then we have our future stars, Sam Querrey and Donald Young, who have not quite lived up to their hype, Querrey’s upset last week of Blake notwithstanding. There are a couple other young U.S. kids on the horizon, not quite as highly touted as Querrey and Young. One would be Kellen Damico, who made the Semi’s of the Roland Garros Jr. tournament, and will attend Texas in the fall. Then we’ve also got the countless 13-16 year olds training at various sites throughout the country that you or I have never heard of. After much deliberation – we are not in trouble at all.
I think both Roddick and Blake have another couple years of top 10 caliber play in front of them. They work and train as hard as anyone else on the ATP Tour, and that ethic combined with their talents should be enough to keep them around the upper echelon as the next few years go by. I also think that two or three years from now, as they start to become less of a threat at Grand Slams, Querrey and Young will become more and more of a threat. Even thought Querrey had a tough run of seven or so losses in a row, I don’t think anyone doubts his star quality potential. And then there is the case of Donald Young. Imagine for a second that you had never heard of Donald Young until right now, and I told you he won the Australian Open Jr. Title in 2005 when he was only 15. Then I told you more recently he won the 2007 Wimbledon Jr. Title, and the following week won one of the tougher challenger events in California. And, that he just turned 18 last week. I would hope you might think this kid has a promising future.
Unfortunately for Young he received millions of dollars from Nike a few years back, and with that a boatload of expectations. He played in a bunch of ATP events last year, too early for him, lost all those matches and with it some of his confidence. He is now back on track and coming up the way most players do. I realize I’ve touched on Donald Young before, but as you can tell I am a big supporter of his and want to ram it down everyone’s throat not to give up on him yet. Bottom line, am I guaranteeing Grand Slam titles for Young, or any other American in the future – no, but we will compete.
We are also incredibly spoiled, as we got used to dominating tennis. In the 90’s we had Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang, Martin; the 80’s featured McEnroe and Connors, not to mention Tim Mayotte; and before that we had the likes of Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. Tennis is not like football, we are not the only country who takes it seriously. Other countries are simply producing more top talent than we are right now. I did a bit of research, and decided to compare how many people the following three countries – US, Argentina, Russia – have in the top 100 currently, and how many they had in 1995. I did not choose them at random, they were chosen because it seems to be that Argentina and Russia seem to fill half the draw at each Grand Slam. As of right now, the tally is as follows – Argentina (12), Russia (8) and the US (8). At the year end rankings of 1995, here was the tally – Argentina (2), Russia (3) and the US (13). What does that tell us? To be honest , nothing really. It’s not like it was a scientific experiment. The conclusion I draw is that these types of things tends to run in cycles, and right now we are headed downward, but just one decade ago it looked like Argentina and Russia were more or less off the tennis map, and today they comprise 20% of the entire top 100. So let’s everyone just calm down.
August 1st, 2007 at 11:22 am
I’d agree that we’re not in trouble as far as tennis talent goes, however, I’d say that we’ll certainly have to change our mindset in the future bc we may very well never dominate tennis as in the past. The game has been globalized drastically in the past decade and only continues to do so with greater pace each passing year…
Blake’s days as a top ten player are long gone and the rumors and rumblings going on down here in Fairfield, CT are that he’s just got too many outside committments now and isnt putting the practice time in these days…
Roddick i’d make the case is about as good as he’s ever been (even when he won the US Open, although I’ve never been a big Roddick fan), he’s still top 5 in the world it’s just that two guys named Federer and Nadal have come along to push him from the top echelon…
I dont think Querrey will ever be a consistent top ten player, with the way the game is changing, I just dont know if he’s athletic enough to consistently grind out matches (unless he can consistently throw in 9 aces in a row)…
Young to me is at best a guy who might crack the top 50, but will mostly hover between 75-150, just too small to be consistently up there.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I think you are leaving Querrey and Young a little short, especially Young. Again, I’m not claiming these guys will be consistent Grand Slam threats, but to put Young’s ceiling at 75-100 is rough, I mean look what Vince Spadea the gladiatea has been able to do with a relatively “weak” game. And Querrey had 10, not 9, aces in a row, which is absolutely absurd when you stop and think about it.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:36 pm
One thing I think is important to mention is that in American Tennis is around the 12th most popular sport. In South America and throughout most of Europe and Russia tennis is the #2 sport, second to soccer. If your a great athlete growing up in the states there is a better chance you would get pushed into basketball, football, baseball, and now even soccer way more than tennis. I don’t think it is as much a problem of accesibility, as I see a ton of empty tennis courts everywhere I go, but more a question of popularity.
I bet there are more young great athletes playing tennis in Spain now than there were a few years ago. Rafa has made it cool in Spain to be a grinder. We will see see a group that grew out of his success in a 5-10 years, just as he grew out of Moya’s success. I assume the same may happen on a smaller scale from Roddick and his success. I think we somehow need to capitalize on the current success of our current players to popularize the sport amoung those athletic enough to succeed at a very high level. How do we do that?
August 1st, 2007 at 2:54 pm
The bottom line is Andy Roddick and James Blake will never be what Mark Philippoussis is on the “Ago of Love”; and that is a closer! Andy got lucky one year and then the field got better. United States tennis will make a comeback once Federer retires and Nadal quits tennis and starts making work out videos with Chuck Norris.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:25 am
True Vince Spadea has had a very nice career but you would have never said we’re banking on Spadea to lead to an American charge (I could see Young having a career like Spadea), getting into the top 50, but having a hard time staying up there consistently (i’ll also admit that i havent seen him play in a while, maybe his game has stepped up)
10 aces in a row in simply ridiculous (my apologies for being off one) – if i was Blake I’d of simply grabbed a chair…I dont think i’m leaving Querrey short, i think he can be a top 25 type player – again though due to tennis never being on TV, i havent seen him play this year yet…
I think there’s tons of kids that play tennis, just not as their main sport – tennis from a social aspect maybe as popular as its ever been, there’s tons of kids playing (take it from someone who runs summer tennis camps), however i dont think there’s much you can do to promote tennis anymore than the USTA already does, it’s just a matter of getting lucky and have a tennis family who’s son happens to be a great athlete and bc the family loves tennis the kid plays and becomes something special…it’s sort of a defeatist argument, but i just dont see tennis becoming a big mainstream TV popular sport in the US, there’s way too much for everyone to choose from, globally its more popular than ever…
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:19 am
If Chuck Norris played tennis instead of making movies we would not be having this conversation.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:50 am
“Thank you Chuck Norris”