The Death of US Men’s Tennis: No Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Sampras or Agassi successor in sight
Men’s tennis players from America were some of the best in the world for many years. The 1980s and the 90s leading up to the 2000s saw at least one dominant American player in the top ten rankings. Now, for the first time since tennis rankings started, there is not a single American in the top ten in men’s tennis. What happened to the talented American tennis players, where are the players to follow on from the great American tennis stars of days gone by? All is not lost though, because a couple of new talents are emerging on the scene and look all set to carry the mantle for US men’s tennis in the years to come.
America has produced some high quality tennis stars in the last few decades. Starting with the great Arthur Ashe, who was a dominant force in tennis many years ago, to the 80s when Jimmy Connors and the great John McEnroe seemed almost undefeatable, to the dominance of Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi in the 90s, US men’s tennis had a lot of names it could take pride in. There was also Michael Chang and Jim Courier who were good players as well in their time. Recently, Andy Roddick was supposed to carry the flag for American tennis but he failed to live up to expectations and there is now no dominant American tennis player in the men’s game.
Last week saw the shocking defeat of Andy Roddick by Gilles Simon at the Washington Classic and for the first time in the 37 year history of the ranking system of tennis, an American tennis player was not in the top ten of the world. While US women’s tennis is currently flying very high with the Venus sisters at the top of their game, the men’s side is seriously lacking in top talent. The last time an American won a Grand Slam was in 2003 when Andy Roddick managed to win the US Open. Since then, no American has managed to win anything of substance. Roddick’s defeat saw him drop from the top ten to sit at number 11, which is the lowest ranking for a top seeded American player ever.
The reasons for the decline are numerous but nothing concrete can be concluded. One of the biggest reasons seems to be the top two players in the sport at the moment, who many say are the best the sport has ever seen: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. It seems these two champions are just too good for anyone else to challenge their dominance and America cannot produce anyone to give them a tough time. Another reason could be that the Americans are just not that interested in the sport of tennis anymore and prefer to concentrate on the big three in the country: American football, basketball and baseball. With soccer becoming a very popular sport in the States, people seem to have forgotten about tennis. New talent is not appearing for America either, with only six players in the top 100 at the moment. Something needs to be done quickly to reverse the situation.
All is not lost for American tennis, as a few players of the future look like they may have the potential to become great at the sport, and some even look likely to break into the top ten very soon. The two biggest hopes for the country at the moment are John Isner and Sam Querrey. Isner was featured recently in the longest tennis match in history that took place at Wimbledon against Nicolas Mahut. This epic match lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes and was spread over three days. Isner eventually won the match and showed that he has the power and ability to become a dominant force in men’s tennis in a few years’ time.
America really needs to do something very quickly to right this situation in men’s tennis before it gets out of hand. There is still a lot of talent playing tennis in America, it just needs to be supported and nurtured to become the next big thing to come out of the country in men’s tennis. The world needs to see some more players like Agassi and Sampras very soon, or everyone will forget America ever dominated the game.
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