This post will definitely illustrate that I am more blogger than expert on the topics I write about more often than not. I am fairly young, 25 years old, and didn't get into tennis until I was 17. That gives me a very limited frame of reference to work with on the tennis front historically, but it doesn't mean I don't have opinions on the state of tennis in the United States. It's no secret to tennis fans that the USA has been mired in a slump on the men's side of the professional tour. The USA has had Serena Williams carrying the country on her back on the woman's side, and Sloane Stephens has shown that she has all the potential to be a force at the top of the women's game, though certainly nowhere near the level of Serena. In general, though, interest in tennis has waned compared to levels it has been in the past, and the men don't have anyone in sight that has a shot at the top 5 in the next few years, let alone a number one. Fans here remember the days where we had champions like Sampras, Agassi, McEnroe, Chang, Connors, et al. I have heard many different contributions to the discussion as to why we are struggling so much, but the two big things that stand out to me: athlete engagement and style of play.
Athlete engagement is a huge piece to the whole equation. One argument is that if our best athletes played the sport, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Sure, if LeBron James happened to be working on his serve instead of his jumper, maybe he'd be number one in the world right now. I don't so much concur simply because freakish athleticism isn't commonplace at the LeBron James level on the tour from any country, and it historically hasn't been. There is a great lack of engagement in the sport as a whole, though. There are several factors that contribute to this, and I think that media presence, rather, lack thereof, is high on that list. Today we live in a high speed age with internet streaming and thousand of channels, but it comes at a cost. For hardcore fans, it has enabled access to more tennis than ever possible in the past, but it has cut out a large number of the more casual viewers. You go from a large number of people having a little access on common channels to fewer people have a ton more access because the average viewer isn't going to spend extra money for the tennis channel. And, of course, big television companies and cable providers want to milk every penny they can, so you see more and more coverage on the tennis channel and less and less everywhere else. Tennis flat out gets bumped from ESPN programming for just about anything, too: fishing, NASCAR, talk shows, college cheerleading, spelling bees, poker, you name it, it's televised instead of tennis. Certainly visibility is not what it once was.
Along the lines of the technology we have available, kids have more things to occupy their time with aside from sports. Growing up today in a country with a great deal of disposable income, kids have their handheld games, computers, video games, etc. That's not to say children don't still enjoy sports, but there's not quite the same need for it as before. Due to the prevalence of the football and basketball video games, too, there's perhaps more gravitation to those sports than tennis than before as well. You certainly cannot say the same about tennis video games. I don't think this point can be understated. In a prior post I mentioned how playing Madden 2000 was what got me into football. Personal anecdote aside, though, I don't think it is too much of a stretch to assert that technology does play a big role.
Style of play is pretty important as well. The game is now pretty well dominated by baseliners, particularly balanced baselines that have the ability to play defensive tennis. That is not to say that Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray or Roger Federer don't have brilliant offensive games, but all four of them have been able to keep themselves afloat in matches playing defense when their offensive games are not clicking. These men are tremendously fit and well suited for long rallies where consistency is key. Surfaces have become more homogenized in the past several years as well. Wimbledon plays much more slowly than it did in the 90s, and hard courts have slowed a little bit as well. Indoor carpet has vanished and replaced with indoor hard courts, which granted are still fast, but they don't have the same bounce. String and racquet technology is suited towards more spin and higher margin shots, and it really makes passing shots so much easier, preventing net players from being more prevalent like they used to be. All things considered, the style of play is less conducive towards aggressive play than it has been for some time, and the American strategy on court has more or less been to bash serves and forehands and play aggressively. Sure, a guy can get hot and go on a run, but it doesn't bode well over the course of a season, and it's certainly been the case in the results that the steady, more defensive players like David Ferrer have been able to excel with great consistency as opposed to more offensive players with less of a physical style, like Richard Gasquet, for example. It takes some time to adjust training strategy and player development to cycle its way through the game, so it stands to reason that it may been some time before you really see a change in tactics by US players.
Of course, we have to give credit where credit is due; other countries have had players working their tails off, and the game is deeper than ever before with more countries becoming more and more prevalent in the sport. I give these people all the credit in the world. It still does not take away from the decline of US tennis due to our own circumstances. I don't know what, if anything the USTA can do to reverse the trend. Certainly they are trying some things to increase engagement, and I believe they are working, but other countries don't have to try these gimmicks to drum up interests, and I feel the gap will continue to widen between other countries and the USA. There's a danger of it becoming a self-fulfilling cycle - there are no major American men's players that youngsters want to grow up emulating, so fewer kids go out trying to be Pete Sampras. Hopefully we will start to see the trend reverse, and not for the US's sake, but for tennis's sake; there can never be too many dynamic players on the tour!
What are your thoughts on the US decline in tennis?
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