Complacency in coaching
America was not worried though, and why would it have been? The country was in the middle of an unprecedented men’s tennis boom, claiming six of the top 10 spots in the ATP rankings at the start of 1990. But as complacency set in, the rest of the world – and especially European countries – caught up.
By the time former world No28 Patrick Mcenroe was brought in as the USTA’S head of player development in 2008, American men’s tennis was struggling. “There was some complacency,” he says. “We had so many great players in the past but it happened by chance. We had great facilities and coaches but we became pretty spoiled by Jimmy Connors, my brother [John Mcenroe], Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. “Our goal at the USTA was to have more of a coaching philosophy. The problem was we were behind Europe where they were doing a lot of these things already.
“The rest of the world caught up, and training got better with more sophisticated movement and ball drills. The movement, flexibility and athleticism of other nations improved.”
Mcenroe also had to contend with more players eschewing America’s very successful college system that had spawned the likes of Arthur Ashe and Connors, and instead turning pro straight out of high school.
With tennis becoming more and more physical, this proved to be an unsuccessful route for a lost generation of players like former junior world No1 Donald Young, who is now ranked outside the world’s top 200. Responding to Mcenroe’s pleas, the USTA belatedly started to invest substantially in player development to match what European federations were doing.
The benefits of that can be seen now with the emergence of young Americans like Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz, but the damage in the short term had been done.