Opinion: There's clear progress in American men's tennis. But will it be enough to end Grand Slam drought?
NEW YORK — As usual, and very much as expected, another year has passed without an American male tennis player winning a Grand Slam singles title. Tuesday, in fact, marks the 19-year anniversary of Andy Roddick winning the U.S. Open and a day that will continue to have outsized importance until this country produces another player who can break that infamous streak.
But even with the elimination of the last three American men from the round of 16, this summer has been a bit of a turning point in the perception of what’s possible for the current crop of young players who have been considered a pretty significant cut below the top tier of challengers and future stars.
“I think American tennis is in a great spot right now,” said 23-year-old Frances Tiafoe, who capped off one of the best stretches of his career here Sunday with a competitive four-set loss to Felix Auger-Aliassime in the round of 16. “I'm happy to be a part of it, and I think we're all going to hit a pretty good stride here soon.”
There’s little doubt that the number of the American players who look they could factor in big tournaments has grown in the past couple of years when it was pretty much John Isner and nobody else.
Entering the U.S. Open, there were 14 Americans in the top 100 with three of them 21 or younger. That group in particular has posted some fairly impressive results this year with Brandon Nakashima making the finals in Atlanta, Jenson Brooksby reaching the Newport final and Sebastian Korda winning a title on clay in Parma, Italy.
There’s also been tangible steps taken by Reilly Opelka, the big serving 7-footer who made his first Masters 1000 final in Canada and reached his first Grand Slam round of 16 this week before losing Monday to Lloyd Harris of South Africa.
But there’s a difference between players who can have good careers and players who can win Grand Slams. Whether any of the American prospects are capable of closing that gap remains very much a mystery.
“It's frustrating,” Opelka said. “To some extent it's great that there is (14) Americans in the top 100 with a few knocking on the door. You look at Switzerland, they've got (23) Grand Slams and two guys in the top 100 or whatever. You look at the States and you've got over a dozen guys in the top 100, and you don't even really have a Grand Slam finalist. I feel like it's just a matter of time before one of those kind of can break through.”
DJOKOVIC: Ends US Open hopes of promising 20-year-old American
OPINION: The first week of the U.S. Open was the most exciting ever at a Grand Slam
CROWDS ARE BACK: Fans' return to US Open is having an impact on players, good and bad
Though so much of the narrative around American tennis focuses on the late 1980s and early 1990s when Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Jim Courier and Michael Chang all emerged at roughly the same time and stayed at the top of the sport for much of the decade, the increasing worldwide nature of the game will make it difficult for any country to dominate like the U.S. did back then.
For a long time from Bjorn Borg to Mats Wilander to Stefan Edberg, Sweden cranked out great players. Now, there’s only one Swede — No. 72 Mikael Ymer — in the top 100. Australia’s tennis history rivals anyone’s, and yet it’s been a similar drought to the U.S. since Lleyton Hewitt’s Wimbledon title in 2002.
In the U.S., it’s certainly not for lack of numbers or resources. Though there are plenty of theories as to why some of the highly-ranked American juniors since Roddick haven’t panned out or why some of the better pros have topped out at 20 or 30 in the rankings, the USTA has implemented several programs and new initiatives to try to identify more talented kids and support those players in various ways as they go through the system.
“We made a lot of mistakes, there's a lot of things we have to improve and evolve along the way. But I think that's coming to fruition now,” said Martin Blackman, the USTA’s general manager for player development. “We just have to keep pushing. There's no magic to us. It's about hard work, it's about professionalism, it's about players having a growth mindset, wanting to turn over every stone to find out how they can get better.”
Fair or not, American players have had the reputation of coming out of the development system as big-serving, one-dimensional players without a lot of adaptability.
What makes the current group so interesting is that they definitely don’t fall into those stereotypes. If anything, the question about Korda — whose father, Petr, was a former world No. 2 and won the Australian Open in 1998 — is whether he can develop a big enough serve to complement his all-around game. Nakashima is a pure ball striker with a lethal backhand.
Brooksby’s game is built around variety, with unorthodox strokes and a double-handed slice that he can employ to mix things up. In a tweet earlier this summer, Andy Murray compared him to Florian Mayer, a former top-20 player from Germany who was known for his creativity. Djokovic echoed that comparison after beating Brooksby on Monday in a highly competitive round of 16 match.
“He absorbs the pace very well, especially from the backhand side,” Novak Djokovic said of Brooksby. “Mayer just managed to play on the big stage pretty well against the players who try to penetrate the ball and kind of dictate the play, stay close to the line. He loved playing with the guys like that. Brooksby reminds me of him a lot.”
For all the excitement around that group, though, they still have a long way to go. Nakashima and Brooksby just broke into the top 100, and Korda has had an up-and-down summer since making the round of 16 at Wimbledon and getting into the top 50.
Blackman hopes that one big breakthrough result will open the floodgates like it did with Sampras and Courier when they saw Chang, their contemporary, win a surprise French Open title in 1989.
“Those guys say, We think we're better than him, we can do that,” Blackman said. "That kind of healthy peer pressure developed and created a great dynamic.”
But as Opelka can attest, it’s rarely that simple these days. He has had some excellent results this year and will break into the top 20 in the world after this tournament. But when he came up against No. 2 Daniil Medvedev in the Canada final, all of his weaknesses got exposed.
“And then there is still another level above him, which is Novak,” Opelka said. “So, no, no, I'm not there, I'm not close yet.”