Category: Men’s Professional Tennis

ATP Rankings Foretell Long Summer for American Men

horvath Leave a comment

The release of the May 23rd ATP rankings foretells another dismal summer for the American men in the Grand Slams. The 3 American men with the greatest chance of success are John Isner, Jack Sock, and Taylor Fritz.

Isner has been consistently ranked 15th to 20th. He is frequently seeded in the top 16 and uses his big serve to hold his seed. His best showing in a Grand Slam event came in 2011 when he reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open.

Jack Sock has been inconsistent in his short career. Sock’s best showing in a Grand Slam tourney came in 2015 when he reached the 4th round of the French Open.

The other long shot is newcomer Taylor Fritz. He is at the head of a group of youngsters who are expected to reach the elite ranks in the next 3 to 5 years.

The top 10 includes players from 9 countries. Only Switzerland is represented by two players, Federer and Wawrinka. The average age of the top 10 is 29.2 years. Generally, players above the age of 30 are on the downhill side of their careers.

Top Ten ATP Through May 23rd 2016

Ranking Player Age Points
1 Novak Djokovic 29 16,150
2 Andy Murray 29 8,435
3 Roger Federer 34 7,015
4 Stan Wawrinka 31 6,315
5 Rafael Nadal 30 5,675
6 Kei Nishikori 26 4,470
7 Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 31 3,355
8 Tomas Berdych 30 2,850
9 Milos Raonic 25 2,785
10 Marin Cilic 27 2,775

There are 8 Americans ranked in the top 100. They are excellent players who will occasionally have some great wins, but their lack of points demonstrates they are not capable of consistently competing with the top 10 players. The average age of the American players ranked in the top 100 is 25.9 years. Isner and Ram are over 30.

American Players Ranked in the Top 100

Ranking Player Age Points
17 John Isner 31 1,965
25 Jack Sock 23 1,505
34 Steve Johnson 26 1,190
37 Sam Querrey 28 1,135
53 Denis Kudla 23 855
67 Taylor Fritz 18 758
70 Rajeev Ram 32 752
76 Donald Young 26 712

Finally there are 9 Americans ranked between 101st and 200th.

American Players Ranked 101 Through 200

Ranking Player Age
103 Bjorn Fratangelo 22
121 Tim Smyczek 28
134 Austin Krajicek 25
140 Jared Donaldson 19
146 Dennis Novikov 22
147 Ryan Harrison 24
157 Alexander Sarkissian 26
169 Noah Rubin 20
188 Frances Tiafoe 18

The younger players in the above group are learning how difficult it is to make the transition from junior tennis to the pro tour. The older players are wondering if it is time to hang up the racquet.

It will be interesting to see how many of these players make it into the top 100 by the end of the summer.

Next stop, French Open.

Is it Fair to Bash the USTA for their Men’s Player Development Program?

horvath Leave a comment

Is the USTA Player Development Program getting the job done?

A quick look at the January 6 ATP rankings shows that 32 countries have players ranked in the top 100. They are:

  • Spain 14 players
  • France 11 players
  • Germany 8 players
  • USA 8 players
  • Argentina 6 players
  • Russia 5 players
  • Australia 4 players
  • Czechoslovakia 4 players
  • Columbia 3 players
  • Croatia 3 players
  • Italy 3 players
  • Kazakhstan 3 players
  • The Netherlands 3 players
  • Poland 3 players
  • Serbia 3 players
  • Canada 2 players
  • Switzerland 2 players
  • 15 countries have 1 player

Tennis is an international sport, but the combined total of ranked players from Croatia, Kazakhstan, and Serbia is greater than the U.S. total.

A closer look at the men’s rankings shows the following for the American men:

  • 14 John Isner
  • 46 Sam Querrey
  • 89 Tim Smyczek
  • 91 Michael Russell
  • 95 Bradley Klahn
  • 96 Donald Young
  • 99 Ryan Harrison
  • 100 Jack Sock.

If you asked 1,000 people to name the top American male tennis players in the U.S., they most likely couldn’t name one of these individuals. In fairness to the USTA, part of the problem is the popularity of tennis in many foreign countries. Some in tennis also feel that the best American athletes play sports other than tennis.  Still others will say that American youth lack the work ethic to be world class tennis players.

These factors play a part in the lack of dominant American tennis players; however, the major source of the problem is USTA Player Development. Pancho Gonzalez, Jack Kramer, and Arthur Ashe have to be rolling over in their graves at the state of American men’s tennis.

 

Rafa – A Guide to Mental Toughness

horvath Leave a comment

The book, Rafa, written by John Carlin in 2011 takes a look at the mental toughness that has made Rafael Nadal the most dominant clay court player in the history of the sport. Specifically, it talks compares Nadal’s mindset in the finals of the 2007 and 2008 Wimbledon.

The following quotes from the book provide a sampling of Nadal’s mental state on the court.

  • Because what I battle hardest to do in a tennis match is to quiet the voices in my head, to shut everything out of my mind but the contest itself and concentrate every atom of my being on the point I am playing. If I made a mistake on a previous point, forget it; should’ve thought of victory suggest itself, crush it. 
  • I always dreamt of playing here at Wimbledon. My uncle Toni, who has been my coach all of my life, had drummed into me from an early age that this was the biggest tournament of them all. By the time I was 14, I was sharing with my friends the fantasy that I would play here one day and win. 
  • But my defeat in 2007 (in the Wimbledon finals), which went to five sets, left me utterly destroyed. I knew I could have done better, that it was not my ability or the quality of my game that had failed me, but my head. And I wept after that loss, I cried incessantly for half an hour in the dressing room.
  • Losing always hurts, but it hurts much more when you had your chance and threw it away. I have beaten myself as much as Federer had beaten me; I had let myself down and hated that. I had flagged mentally. I had allowed myself to get distracted; I had veered from my game plan. So stupid, so unnecessary. 
  • Tennis against a rival with whom you are evenly matched, or whom you have a chance of beating, this all about raising your game when it’s needed. A champion plays at his best not in the opening rounds of the tournament but in the semi-finals and the finals against the best opponents; the greatest champion plays at his best in a Grand Slam final.  
  • I also know that, most probably, the balance of poorly chosen or poorly struck shots would stand at close to fifty-fifty between us by the time it was all over. That is in the nature of tennis, especially with two players so familiar with each other’s game as Federer and I are. You might think that after the millions and millions of balls I’ve hit, I’d have the basic shots of tennis sown up, that reliability hitting a true, smooth, clean shot every time would be a piece of cake. But it isn’t. Not just because every day you wake up feeling differently, but because every shot is different; every single one. From the moment the ball is in motion, it comes at you at an infinitesimal number of angles and speeds; with more topspin, or backspin, or flatter, or higher. 
  • The differences might be minute, microscopic, but so are the variations your body makes – shoulders, elbow, wrists, hips, ankles, knees – in every shot. And there are so many other factors-the weather, the surface, the rival. No ball arrives the same way as another; no shot is identical. So every time you line up to hit a shot, you have to make a split-second judgment as to the trajectory and speed of the ball and then make a split second decision as to how, how hard, and where you must try and hit the shot back. And you have to do that over and over, often 50 times and a game, fifteen times in twenty seconds, in continual bursts more than two, three, four hours and all the time you’re running hard and your nerves are taut; it’s when your coordination is right and the tempo is smooth that the good sensations come, that you were better able to manage the biological and mental feat of striking the ball clearly in the middle of the racquet and aiming it true, at speed and under immense mental pressure, time after time. And one thing I have no doubt; the more you train, the better you’re feeling. Tennis is, more than most sports, a sport of the mind; it is the player who has those good sensations on the most days, who manages to isolate himself best from his fears and from the ups and downs in morale a match inevitably brings, who ends up being world number one.

The book has much more and is a must read for any athlete wanting to improve his or her mental toughness.