The Future of American Tennis
When I read this New York Times magazine story on Donald Young a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help thinking it was a little premature. The kid’s only 17, for crying out loud. I’ll concede that the title, “Prodigy’s End,” is accurate, given that Michael Chang had already won the French Open at the same age. So Young’s not a prodigy. But neither was James Blake, or even Andy Roddick, really, who was a flawed player with a howitzer serve before he broke through at the US Open in 2003, when he was 21. And for all of Chang’s precocity, he never won another Grand Slam.
So it sort of annoys me that the default assumption about American tennis is that it’s dead. And since we’re in high tennis season, that idea gets kicked around ad nauseam in the papers. I don’t know how many more ill-conceived, poorly reasoned, and utterly predictable columns from people who don’t know shit about tennis I can stomach about the dearth of American tennis talent. The folks who perpetrate these columns start with the assumption that nobody cares about tennis in America. This, they reason, is because of the lack of household names in American tennis. And this, they further reason, is because Americans aren’t winning in tennis. Americans love winners, you see. Never mind that Venus Williams just won her fourth Wimbledon. Or that Andy Roddick and James Blake are ranked no. 4 and no. 9, respectively, in the world. Some people insist on assuming that because they don’t hear about tennis, nobody cares about tennis. And that because nobody cares about tennis, American tennis must be bad. The problem with this reasoning isn’t American tennis. It’s American sports writers.
Anyway, as far as I can tell, much of the Young backlash stems from his (premature, in hindsight) anointment as the next big thing in American tennis. He turned pro at 14 and ESPN the Magazine (the editorial mission of which seems to be hyping prepubescent athletes) profiled him not long after that. Some people aren’t happy about the fact that Young’s ranking is built primarily on wild cards—tournament directors have given him spots for which he wouldn’t otherwise get with his ranking. You can make the argument that he’s getting into these tournaments at the expense of other players, but no one ever accused the wild card system of being fair. And he doesn’t receive ranking points for just being there. Though he might have gained entry to the tournaments under questionable terms, he’s earned every ranking point he has. In April, he won his first professional event, a third-tier event in Little Rock, Ark. In May, he reached his first final in a second-tier pro event in Carson, Calif.
But again, he’s only 17. That’s why I was gratified to see Donald Young, bearer of both a nation’s collective expectations and resentment on his still-slight shoulders, win the Wimbledon boys’ crown this past weekend. Young, seeded no. 3 in the draw, defeated no. 1 seed Vladmir Ignatik of Belarus, 7-5, 6-1. With the win, Young reminded all of us that the jury’s still out on him. Incidentally, Young had the highest pro ranking (currently 291) of any of his fellow competitors, many of whom, like Young are either pro or play pro events. I wonder if in Belarus there’s some newspaper story about the end of the 16-year-old Ignatik’s chance to be a prodigy.
The win puts Young, a former Aussie junior Open champ and US junior Open doubles titlist, into some impressive company. Former Wimbledon junior champions include Hall of Famers Stefan Edberg, Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl. Current tour players with Wimbledon junior titles include world no. 83 Nicolas Mahut, no. 57 Gael Monfils, no. 30 Jurgen Melzer, and some guy named Roger Federer.
(On a cautionary note, the last American to win a Wimbledon boys’ championship was Scott Humphries in 1994. Who’s Scott Humphries? Coming out of Florida’s Palmer Academy, he was once heralded as the future of American tennis. He turned pro after a year at Stanford, topped out at no. 260 in 1996, before becoming something of a doubles specialist and finished with $630,000 in career earnings. He now helps coach American Mardy Fish.)
The moral of the story? Donald Young probably isn’t the second coming of John McEnroe. But it’s still way too early to write him—or American tennis—off.
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