Taylor Fritz, Jiri Lehecka more proof that the ATP's 21-and-under Next Gen concept has come of age

HIGHLIGHTS: Tsitsipas and Lehecka, two Next Gen ATP Finals alumni, battle it out in the Australian Open quarterfinals

I think at the Next Gen, I finally found my game. I found how to play what I want to play, and how to beat great guys on a big stadium. I saw all the media attention over there. It was some kind of a gate to the big (time) tennis. They showed us over there how does it look like when you were pro player. Jiri Lehecka, the 21-year old Czech pro who recently reached the Australian Open quarterfinals, on how the ATP’s Next Gen Finals helped grease the tracks leading to Grand Slam success

Back in 2017, when the ATP Tour launched the Next Gen ATP Finals, it was tempting to greet the news with a lavish eye roll, dismissing the marketing campaign that was created to identify and promote the heirs to Roger Federer and his distinguished peers as the members of tennis’ Big Four began to show their age.

Six years later, Federer may be puttering around in bedroom slippers, but his three confreres—Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray—are still lacing up their tennis kicks. There are no heirs; the bar is set too high. But while no fresh-faced star has emerged to dominate, successive waves of Next Gen alumni now populate the upper echelons of the game. (Players aged 21-and-under fall under the Next Gen label, with the Top 8 earning berths in the annual, season-ending tournament]. Indeed, the very expression “Next Gen” has become part of our larger tennis vocabulary.

The roll of former participants in Next Gen ATP Finals includes Daniil Medvedev and Carlos Alcaraz, two of just six men outside the Big Four to win a Grand Slam singles title since mid-2005 (the others: Juan Martin del Potro, Stan Wawrinka, Marin Cilic and Dominic Thiem). It also features two-time Grand Slam runner-up Stefanos Tsitsipas, Olympic singles gold medalist Alexander Zverev and recent No. 2 Casper Ruud. There are Masters 1000 champions aplenty, including Taylor Fritz, last year's Indian Wells champion who just won Delray Beach on Sunday. Eleven NGF veterans have had career-high rankings in the Top 10. Fifteen of them have been in the Top 20, and 23 in the Top 50. As Lehecka implied, the NGF has become a new bridge leading from the over-populated minor leagues over to the promised land of the ATP Tour.

“That [Next Gen] experience helped prepare me for having to play in bigger moments, in Grand Slams and other big tournaments,” Brandon Nakashima, the defending NGF champion, told me in a recent interview. “It gives us the chance to get a little experience in handling the bigger situations we may face.”

Nakashima said that following in the footsteps of so many now-familiar names made it feel like the program is “a great stepping stone” for the hundreds—thousands?—of young players hoping to climb the ladder to the pros, with few of them adequately prepared for what awaits them there.

Tsitsipas, the Australian Open finalist currently ranked No. 3, appreciates the career boost he received from the Next Gen program. After halting Lehecka’s unexpected run to the Aussie Open quarterfinals in January, Tsitsipas also said that while he doesn’t like putting labels—like “Next Gen”—on people, being part of that group helps young players to stand out and promote their “brand” in a way that just didn’t exist for most tour veterans.

There were solid reasons why some skeptics thought that the Next Gen initiative was a big, fat, nothingburger. The NGF does not offer ATP points, mainly due to its age restriction. The tournament has famously allowed real-time coaching and featured an experimental, minimalist scoring system, electronic line-calling, and a host of other novel features that trod a fine line between gimmick and useful innovation. (Note that many of these experiments have now migrated into the official game.)

Critics may carp about no-ad games, or sets decided by tiebreakers at 4-all, but formats don’t dictate results—players do. Dean Goldfine, the USTA National Coach who is helping develop Ben Shelton, the 20-year old who seems a shoo-in for this year’s NGF, sees no credibility problem in the competition.

“The history speaks for itself,” Goldfine says. “The guys coming out on top in these events (among them, Alcaraz, Tsitsipas and Jannik Sinner) have continued to do well on the ATP Tour. It’s not like they’re just playing two tiebreakers. You are playing best-of-five sets with no-ad scoring. If anything, that amplifies the pressure. Those matches, they’re pressure cookers.”

These guys (like Lehecka) are still sort of in the transition mode. I had my fair share of that. Now I’m looking forward to kind of moving forward from there. Stefanos Tsitsipas

The scale of the Next Gen Finals, currently played in Milan, Italy, and the attention the tournament generates, gives young players a taste of the intensity, stress and excitement of high-level competition.

“Experiencing that helped me in a positive way,” Nakashima says, “because the (no-ad) format has a lot of pressure points and then you have all this good energy from the crowd. It prepares us for when we will face bigger moments.”

Whatever fate—and other people's forehands—has in store for a player, being part of the Next Gen cohort is an honor worth cherishing, not least because it doesn’t last forever. For a gifted player on the fast track to stardom, it’s becoming a rite of passage, like that letter-of-acceptance to college, a driver’s license or a first apartment.

When Tsitsipas was asked what it feels like to have a new wave of Next Gen talent breathing down his neck, he said of his experience in the group: “At some point it fades out a little bit because you are an adult. You are not any more a kid. These guys (like Lehecka) are still sort of in the transition mode. I had my fair share of that. Now I’m looking forward to kind of moving forward from there. There's no other ‘Gen’ after that. It’s just adulthood.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could be Next Gen forever?