State of the Tennis Nations

Something wonderful is suddenly happening in Great Britain, what with all those British tennis players gaining traction in the rankings, the media, and the public eye. Andy Murray, double-medalist at the London Olympics and recent U.S. Open champ, is at the head of yet another, different “British invasion.”

Then there’s rapidly rising singles player and mixed doubles silver medalist (with Murray), Laura Robson. The 18-year-old played the final last week at Guangzhou and she’ll finish the year as the youngest player in the WTA Top 100. She’s deep into that elite company, too —presently, Robson is No. 57.  

Heather Watson has made interesting sounds as well, even if they haven’t come together into a full blown song. She qualified and then made the second round at the French Open; she’s just 20 and will undoubtedly improve. Anne Keovathong is also in the Top 100 (No. 80, and there’s Elena Baltacha and Johanna Konta, a Hungarian born in Sydney, Australia, now playing under a Union Jack.  

Murray isn’t the only British male in this mix, either. A few weeks ago, 18-year old Liam Broady made the U.S. Open boys’ final. Was it mere coincidence that he had that great result at about the same time that his role model punched through to win his first major?  

If you subscribe to the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory of tennis development, you’d surely say “yes.” And if that theory bears fruit again, we’ll see a fair number of excellent players emerging from the United Kingdom in the coming years.  

This generational florescence is nothing new, as most of you know. So let’s take a quick cruise through history to see just how individuals like Murray inspired—or failed to motivate—legions of young athletes to seed the rankings with countrymen. We’ll take the noteworthy nations alphabetically and restrict the survey to men today, and look at the women tomorrow:

Argentina became a tennis power thanks to one of the two great one-man tennis boom stories of the Open era (the other one being the saga of Bjorn Borg). Guillermo Vilas, who first played Davis Cup in the 1970s, was a four-time Grand Slam champ and, arguably, the No. 1 player in the world in 1977 (by today’s ranking system, he would have had the top spot—ahead of Borg).

Vilas opened the floodgates, and the stream of players that has followed transformed Argentina into a legitimate, lasting tennis power. Those successors include (among many others) his contemporary Jose-Luis Clerc, Martin Jaite, Alberto Mancini, Guillermo Coria, David Nalbandian, and Juan Martin del Potro.  

Given that Argentina didn’t have the strong tennis tradition of some other nations, you could argue that it provides the greatest example of what one individual can do for an entire nation—and for how long the effect can last.

Tennis in Australia has always been strong, mainly because of its relationship with Great Britain, but the continent-nation hit a peak that was sustained for about two decades when Harry Hopman became the Davis Cup team captain and coach. This was a boom created by a coach, not a player.

Hopman’s protégés included Lew Hoad, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Ken Rosewall, Tony Roche, et al. But much like the U.S., Australia ultimately became a victim of its own success. With the bar set so high, even the strong generation of Pat Rafter, Mark Philippoussis, and Lleyton Hewitt paled by comparison. Today, while Hewitt soldiers on, the Aussies are busy demonstrating that just as a rising tide lifts all boats, an ebbing tide leaves a whole lot of craft stranded on the rocks.

Brazil seemed poised to become the new Argentina thanks to Gustavo Kuerten, who won three titles at Roland Garros and finished as the year-end No. 1 in 2000 (thanks to a year-end championships win in which he became the first player to beat Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras in the same tournament). But it just didn’t work out that way; today, highly talented but deeply flawed No. 40 Thomaz Bellucci is the only Brazilian player ranked in the singles Top 100.

Canada has never had an international male singles star until Milos Raonic, currently No. 15, emerged on the tour. The nation bears watching, though, because it also has produced a great doubles player (Daniel Nestor) and outstanding singles Grand Slam champions—and contenders—in the juniors, including Filip Peliwo and Eugenie Bouchard. Something seems to be stirring in the nation with the most beautiful flag and best caribou hunting in the world!

Chile has produced some outstanding singles players, long before fame visited former No. 1 Marcelo Rios, Olympic gold medalist Nicolas Massu, and recently retired Fernando Gonzalez, a former Australian Open finalist who was ranked as high as No. 5. Those included Jaimie Fillol and Hans Guildemeister. But this is a nation where the tide apparently has not been strong enough to make much of a difference.

Nikki Pilic, one of the founding fathers of the ATP, put tennis on the map in Croatia (although at the time, he was playing for now disbanded Yugoslavia). But it was Goran Ivanisevic who helped establish the country as a tennis power, even after it lost the services of Serbian players who in the past would have joined with Croatians to represent Yugoslavia (imagine that Davis Cup team!).

Croatia is also one of those nations that, for reasons too complex to go into here, has lost a lot of native talent to emigration, a reality that creates more than a few asterisks in an inquiry like this one. Croatia currently has two men in the Top 100, Marin Cilic (No. 13) and Ivo Karlovic (No. 80).

The Czech Republic remains a prominent Open-era power despite the break-up into independent republics by the nations that once constituted Czechoslovakia. The Czechs even survived the defections to the U.S. of the two greatest players they ever produced, Martina Navratilova and Ivan Lendl.

One reason the Czechs remain strong (three men in the Top 100, led by No. 5 Tomas Berdych) is because they have a long tradition of producing Grand Slam champions, going all the way back to Jaroslov Drobny and Jan Kodes. The tide that lifted their boats occurred long ago, and the Czechs can be commended for keeping the water level high.

Ecuador, where towering player/coach Pancho Segura put his nation on the tennis map, hasn’t moved as far forward as some of its South American neighbors. Whatever movement Andres Gomez, the former French Open champ, made in the water did not amount to a tide.

France became a tennis power during the heyday of the famed four musketeers in the 1920s, but its fortunes have fluctuated wildly.

After a period of dormancy, Yannick Noah launched a new boom when he won Roland Garros in 1983. That tide has lifted a remarkable number of boats, yet it hasn’t produced another Grand Slam champion despite the fact that France has a whopping eight players inside the Top 70. When is Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (No. 7), Gael Monfils, Richard Gasquet, or Gilles Simon going to try on those big boy pants?

Like most of its neighbors in opportunity and tradition-rich western Europe, Germany has a storied tennis history. But given the prominence enjoyed so recently by Boris Becker and Steffi Graf, it’s disappointing that former No. 2 Tommy Haas (who basically grew up and developed his game in Bradenton, Fla.) has been Becker’s most celebrated successor. Germany does have six players in the Top 100, but the most highly ranked among them is No. 18 Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Italy is almost a mirror-image of Germany, even if Adriano Panatta and Corrado Barazzutti would never be mistaken for Becker and Michael Stich. If you want to enthuse over the tidal charts for Italy, you’d better stick with the women. Another nation with a tradition long enough to graph on a barely perceptible curve, Italy also has six players in the Top 100, led by No. 25 Andreas Seppi. Call it treading water.

Japan is still trying to build on the traction established by Shuzo Matsuoka, and recently advanced by No. 17 Kei Nishikori. Go Soeda and Tatsuma Ito are also ranked in the Top 100, suggesting that a mini-boom may be underway.

One of the true sleeping giants of tennis is Mexico. The nation that produced Pancho Gonzalez and, later, perennial top-tenner Raul Ramirez and talented Leo Lavalle, has gone uttery dormant despite having a terrific climate, plenty of courts (many of them clay) and a helpful proximity to that tennis hotbed, southern California. We know that the closer you get to the equator, the less influence the tides have. Does that help?

No player from Morocco has emerged to follow in the footsteps of Hicham Arazi,Karim Alamiand, and Younes el Aynaoui, a trio that made Morocco shine bright on the international stage. But nobody noteworthy has come out of the Netherlands either, despite the status of early Open-era star Tom Okker. Robin Haase, No. 50, is the highest ranked of two Dutch players in the Top 100.

The situation in Russia is rife with qualifiers and asterisks. Numerous Russians leave to play for neighboring nations and (new) republics, because those players are disgruntled with the situation at home, tempted by lucrative guarantees, or newly patriotic.

But it’s also pretty obvious that the tide in Mother Russia is ebbing. The three Andreis, former French Open finalist Medvedev, Cherkasov, and Chesnokov, set the stage that Marat Safin leaped upon, but any hopes that this might lead to a Russian dynasty have long been dashed. The Russians have five men in the Top 100, but no Grand Slam champ since Safin.

Serbia, perhaps even more than Great Britain, is the test-tube baby for the “rising tide” theory. You could say that with three players, including one certain Hall-of-Famer, in the Top 100 (no. 2 Novak Djokovic, No. 9 JankoTipsarevic, and No. 31 Viktor Troicki), the tide is approaching a peak, but bear in mind that these discussions really are about the next wave—if there is one.

Little Slovakia has shown the ability to hold its own despite the break-up of Czechoslovakia. Right now, it has No. 33 Martin Klizan, a former junior French Open champ, and No. 66 Lukas Lacko.

Spain has 13 men in the Top 100, the most of any nation. This tide began to rise long before Rafael Nadal won his first French Open title; the godfathers of the generation are Sergi Bruguera, Alex Corretja and Carlos Moya. The nation has been nothing less than a supernova—which sets it up for an enormous letdown in the near future. It will be fascinating to see how long Spain can keep the momentum going.

Following on the heels of Bjorn Borg, as many as four men represented Sweden in the top 10 at one time in the 1970s. (Who can forget that cover of World Tennis magazine, which reprised the famous original Beatles’ “Fab Four” cover, but with those Swedish players?)

Sweden’s rise from tennis backwater to major power remains the greatest of generational success stories, given how much smaller it is than other nations that have experienced the “rising tide” phenomenon.  

But since that Wilander-Edberg-Jarryd-Nystrom generation faded, Sweden has grown increasingly dormant, although Robin Soderling is (when healthy) a Grand Slam contender.

I know the Alps are high, but sheesh—doesn’t the tide at least crawl up into the foothills of Switzerland?  Meanwhile, the United States has become a cautionary tale (are you paying attention, Spain?), even if it does have an impressive nine men in the Top 100.

All this makes me think that while “a rising tide lifts all boats” is a serviceable observation in tennis, there’s an equally valuable one for those who would love to experience the thrill of being dominant, just once in their time: Be careful what you wish for.