Will Americans ever dominate the tennis world again? Or, more to the point, is it even possible for one nation to dominate the game anymore?
It must be said that the situation looks less than rosy on the women's side. The Williams sisters, too often sidelined with injuries of late, can't seem to commit. And Lindsay Davenport, likewise plagued by recurring injuries to her wrist, back and thigh, is clearly due to retire soon. There's a Frenchwoman perched atop the rankings for the first time since Suzanne Lenglen dominated the ladies game; a bevy of Russian and eastern European bombshells, led by the leggy Maria Sharapova, are hungry to assume the mantle; and the friendly Belgian rivals, Kim Clijsters and Justin Henin-Hardenne, are capable of stepping up when it counts most—in the Slams.
On the men's side, it would seem to be all Federer and Nadal. Or is it? Two U.S. players are among the eight-man delegation heading to Shanghai for the year-end Masters Cup. Andy Roddick, ranked #5 in the world, and James Blake, ranked #8, enter the tournament with a full head of steam, having played superb hardcourt tennis over the past two months. Both men are very dangerous when the bounce is true and the footing sure. Outside the top-10 are a handful of American players, including Robby Ginepri, Taylor Dent, Mardy Fish, and the young up-and-coming Sam Querrey. While the current crop is nothing like the class led by Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier, with Michael Chang, Todd Martin and Malivai Washington representing in fine fashion, Americans today possess the top-ranked and history-making duo of Bob and Mike Bryan. The last time the U.S. produced a doubles team as dominant as the twin towers was in the 1970s and 80s when John McEnroe teamed with Peter Fleming for some 70-plus titles and several Slams.
Roddick, with his bunker-busting serve and huge inside-out forehand, is a threat every time he steps on the court, as is Blake, whose athleticism and forehand rank among the very best. And the Bryan brothers are simply unstoppable when rested and hungry. In short, despite not boasting the top singles player, the U.S. men's squadron looks pretty lethal to this observer.
Having said that, and having paid my respects to the current class, once we look beyond our veteran tour players there may be some cause for alarm. Except for the steady progress shown by Sam Querrey, the U.S. doesn't have much to pin our hopes on among the underclassmen. Donald Young, highly touted since he was a 14-year-old Orange Bowl champion, has had little success adapting to the big guns on the professional tour so far. This may change, but not unless he makes some fundamental changes in his game.
What has gone wrong between the Sampras-Agassi class and the Roddick-Blake class? Aside from natural talent, the main difference has been that the crop of players coming out of the training centers in Europe, South America and the former Soviet Bloc nations have simply gotten better and better as we've continued to pin our hopes on a select one or two stars from the junior or college ranks. Roddick was the world's top-ranked junior player, so expectations for him were naturally quite high. Federer was also a world #1 junior, as was Baghdatis and Gasquet. But what of Nadal? Davydenko? Ljubicic? Or Nalbandian, Robredo and others? (Check out this list of ITF year-end world champions from 1978 to 2005.)
What has gone wrong, and what continues to go wrong, is that we continue to let our juniors develop their skills and compete regularly on the hard courts that dot the American landscape. While some privileged few practice on composition courts at country clubs, the vast majority of their playing time is on hard courts — a painted asphalt-rubber mix, to be exact. Until we find a way to develop our youngsters' games on the slower surfaces, particularly the crushed red brick, American juniors will struggle to develop the stroke proficiency, movement, endurance, tactical acumen and heart to compete with those who spend five to six hours a day on the gritty, slippery stuff. And those who somehow manage to do so will be the exception rather than the rule.
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4 comments:
Hey Don,
Some great stuff on your blog, keep it up.
I have been thinking about the American tennis player development and the European development and I wanted to look at it from another sports view.
Being a former wrestler and coach thats a natural for me so I began to analyze the American hard/fast court tennis development process to the Euro clay,dirt/slow court tennis development process and relate thAt to wrestling in the USA and to wrestling in Europe.
There are some basic similiarities between the differences in development of wrestling in Europe and in the USA and USA tennis and Euro tennis development, lets look at some:
1. US catch as catch can freestyle wrestling is fast and rewards risk taking. It is free flowing and exciting.
2. European Grec-Roman wrestling is all upper body, no grabbing of the legs or tripping over the legs. It is much more reliant on out positioning your opponent inorder to be able to execute a throw. It is slower and involves much more hand and arm jocking to gain inside position from which the wrestler gets an opponent off balance to then take the risk and execute the throw.
In the European wrestling, particularily Greco-Roman, the rules and officiating have had to be developed to encourage risk taking as it is not inherient in the techinque itself. In the US catch as catch can or freestyle wrestling the rules developed to keep the wrestlers from injuring themselves. As the names appear to suggest the catch as catch can and freestyles of wrestling are much faster, more risky and to me more exciting; while the European Greco-Roman style is more technical, slower and more cautious and more restrictive.
Do you see the similarities between the US tennis style developed on hard fast courts vs the European style developed on a slower surface where you must rely on getting your opponent out of position well before you take the risk and go for the exciting winning shot and the US wrestling style vs the Greco-Roman?
When you look at the similarities between the US tennis and wrestling styles and the European tennis and wrestling styles they are on a parralel path in my mind and I think that says something about the differences between us and the Europeans.
Watching James Blake beat Nadal at the Master's Cup showed me these differences very clearly.....Blake explodes and takes great risk, attacks and charges, goes on the offensive as soon as possible while Nadal tries to set everything up so he has a great chance of success then attacks.......Of course on the faster indoor courts Blake has the advantage and is right to be offensive minded.
TWR
TWR,
Your last statement says it all. The fast indoor hard court, with its true bounce and sure footing, tilted the balance in Blake's favor. The same could be said for Roddick, even though he lost a nail-biter to Federer, which he had in the bag. The American players, brought up on the faster hard courts, with their free-swinging, risk-taking style of play, do perform better and achieve better results on the hard and indoor surfaces. Of course, we're not the only ones to do well on the faster, true-bounce surface, but the difference in the results on these versus the red clay or the grass surfaces is telling. As for the excitement factor, I can't say I wholly agree with you that the European style is not exciting, certainly not when you look at Federer. Leaving him oout of the equation, in general the European and South American stylists value patience and tactical advantage more than they do the slash-and-bash approach. Again, though, as more hard (meaning, Rebound Ace) and indoor surfaces are put into the tour schedule, you'll see more and more players adopt an all-out aggressive style. Ljubicic, Ancic, Tursunov, Gonzalez and Baghdatis are prime examples of this. Yet, they all have benefited from learning to hold in the reins a bit and wait for their opportunities. And the Europeans, particulary guys like Robredo, are learning to swing away a bit more than their natural instincts would normally let them. Guys like Nalbandian, Davydenko and Hewitt need to adopt a slightly more aggressive style if they hope to continue to get results on the faster surfaces going forward. Federer, of course, can fine-tune his game to fit all surfaces, but even he could step it up a notch to avoid some of those close shaves, like the Roddick match he stole. Overall, I think wrestling and boxing and chess offer some great comparisons with tennis, and I appreciate your analysis of the Greco-Roman style versus freestyle forms, which do seem relevant to this discussion.
--Don
Absolutely. And I agree that developement on a slower surface is a good thing and would teach our players to be more patient and understand the percentages better. I also think it would help develop their strokes more fully as the softer surface steals some of the power from their strokes.
The trick will be to develop the players game who grew up on clay to learn to become aggressive and attack on the faster surfaces....I agree that is easier to teach and learn than the strokes.
The other day I played a young sixteen/seventeen year old court rat at one of our local park tennis facilities. He was all semi western and western grip, typical young player today, hitting off his back foot, open stance, heavy topspin and not much else. We just hit, but I could see his frustration when I fed him anything other than a hard heavy topspin ball(which I can't hit anyway using my continental grip)and when I hit him slice he just hated it. The other tactic I used to test his metal so to speak was to hit him deep then short stuff. Having loaded up on his back foot he was not ready to have to come forward to hit a low short ball, which I would sometimes follow in and then crush the easy floater he often put up.
When we parted he said to me that my forehand cross court shot was awesome.....now its far from awesome, but, its pretty flat and I take it pretty early so the time he gets to set up and hit it is quite a bit less than what he is used to.....so to him it was an awesome shot. I alos think that is what makes Federe so great, he understands that you can hit a shot with as much effectiveness not by crushing it but by taking it early and flattening it out some, the result is the same, less time for your opponent to react.
TWR
You are spot on there, TWR! Federer's ability to take the ball early and flatten it out some definitely takes the wind out of the sails of opponents hoping to get in a groove and set down a solid back leg from which to launch their topspin rockets. Agassi may have been the best at it, taking after none other than Jimmy Connors. So, there is a tradition of top players (maybe the best players) attacking with court position and spin variation versus simply attackingby punishing the ball. Personally, I'd rather punish my opponent for hitting loopy stuff than try to crush every ball. As you say, you can achieve the same result -- take away your opponent's time. And in tennis, time is the most precious of commodities! Thanks for sharing your thoughts....
--Don
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