Donald Young has mastered the juniors, but he’s struggled to take the next step. Will he fulfill his promise or go the way of other junior phenoms like Al Parker?
Donald Young is the best junior in the U.S., and he finished last season No. 1 on the ITF junior world rankings. The problem, of course, is that the gap between being the best junior and the best professional tennis player is far wider than the one between Roger Federer and the rest of the competition.
It’s a lesson Young has learned the hard way. His junior success and his It Boy buzz have earned him a series of wild cards into men’s pro tournaments. But his career record in ATP events is an ugly 0-9. Forget about winning matches; Young has yet to bag a set.
This season has been particularly difficult on him. At the NASDAQ-100, in March, Young lost to a journeyman, Carlos Berlocq, 6-0, 6-0. If that wasn’t bad enough, Berlocq fell to James Blake in the next round by the same embarrassing score.
“Playing against guys I see on TV, I’m happy to get games,” Young told me last year. Of course, Berlocq is hardly a household name.
Young’s loss in Miami prompted many experts, including Davis Cup captain and ESPN commentator Patrick McEnroe, to question the logic behind Young’s accepting wild cards into pro events. McEnroe said the losses would hurt the kid’s confidence and even suggested that his agents be fired for mismanaging his burgeoning career.
“It shocked me. I saw the pain in Donald’s face,” Young’s mother and coach Illona told the Desert Sun when asked about McEnroe’s comments. “Here you are looking for future American talent and you’re bashing the highest-ranked junior there is. I don’t get it. It just didn’t make sense.”
Although Young won the prestigious Easter Bowl championship this year, dropping just one set, he also was upset in the third round of the French Open juniors. The buzz among many in the junior tennis cognoscenti, a rabid bunch, is that Young has lost his aura of invincibility in the juniors as a result of his much-publicized defeats on the game’s big stage. Now, the theory goes, he’ll struggle to beat his fellow top juniors, let alone the Rafael Nadals and Roger Federers of the world.
Is this all a bit harsh for someone who’s just about to turn 17? Probably. After all, Young had a stellar 2005 season, winning the Australian Open boys’ title. “I’m happy with my season,” Young says of last year. “I won a dream Grand Slam, semifinals of Wimbledon, won Kalamazoo, the doubles [boys title] at the U.S. Open.
“I feel I’ve done my things,” he continues, acknowledging an unprecedented burden of expectation for an American junior boys’ player. “I could have done some other things.”
Donald Young doesn’t look like the game’s Next Big Thing. He wears his shirts hip-hop huge, his cap perched high and at an angle, both of which makes him look smaller than his listed 5-foot-9 and 145 pounds. Add to that a babyface complexion—he shaves twice a month whether he needs it or not—and he looks more like, well, a kid rather than a potential heir apparent to Federer.
“I watch TV, play video games,” Young says animatedly. “Halo. Topspin. I’m really into Topspin.” In this virtual world, The Donald can hit that big fast-forward button, and play not as the player he is, but as the one he wants to be. “I have five or six Donald Youngs, They’re all lefty,” he says. “And my newest guy is named Mama’s Boy.”
In the real world, The Donald can’t blow pro players off the court. He has amazing hands and an ability to attack the net and stick a volley or drop it softly so it lands like a rotten peach. But he’s still relatively small, giving up a few inches and more than a few pounds to the typical ATP pro.
And it’s not just the pros. At the French Open this year, the No. 1 seeded junior, Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands, was well over 6 feet and hit the felt off the ball. Will Young ever get that growth spurt he’ll need?
But let’s start the Donald Young Story at its Once Upon a Time beginnings. The Kid (played by a barely teenaged Donald Young) is hitting on an outside court in the suburbs of a cold Midwestern city. The crusty, grizzled veteran (played by John McEnroe) happens past and sees a flash of his younger self in this kid’s lefty groundstrokes and precocious spins. He offers to hit with the kid. They take a liking to each other. They have things to teach each other, as they always do in stories of this kind. You can almost hear the background music swelling for the TV movie on ABC Family.
That story is why Young was featured in Newsweek a few years ago, why he’s represented by IMG, and why he signed deals with Nike and Head before he got his learner’s permit.
As much as we love these stories, we hate them too. We want to prick the bubble, see Cinderella’s coach turn into a pumpkin. We tolerate the build-up because we relish the tearing down.
And that’s why Donald Young is in the victim of a full-fledged backlash. You could see it at last year’s U.S. Open. Even though Young won the U.S. Open boys’ doubles with Alex Clayton, the tournament was frustrating for Young. In the boys’ singles, he lost to steady Sun-Yong Kim of Korea in the quarterfinals.
“I got upset when I was playing bad,” Young says.
But the bigger match came in the men’s singles draw, as Young had the golden opportunity to answer The Question. “When are you going to win a match?” reporters asked at every press conference, the same way they asked Anna Kournikova about that tournament victory that would never come.
Young drew qualifier Giorgio Galimberti, who was ranked outside the Top 200 at the time. On paper, it was the perfect opportunity for Young to get off the schneid.
On DecoTurf II it was a different story. Young was playing a 29-year-old man, with biceps bigger than Young’s thighs, adorned with what looked to be prison tattoos. And in the straight-sets defeat it became clear how far Young has to go before he can compete against the big boys. The serve that merely starts the point against his junior opponents became a break waiting to happen. His forays to the net were met with stinging passing shots. And even a journeyman pro is notably stingy when it comes to giving away points.
There’s more than a bit of Federer in Young’s game. The kid has an ability to see angles that other players don’t, and impresses to improvise with his ability to change spin and pace. What’s missing is the punctuation mark, the shot that can finish the point. His serve is a work in progress. At last year’s U.S. Open, he smacked a serve at 131 m.p.h. “It was out,” Young said. “I just don’t do it [serve fast] all of the time.”
Young believes his game will blossom. “Hopefully I’ll be coming in a lot more,” he says, “attacking, playing my game, putting people in places they don’t want to be.”
But as he approaches his 17th birthday, with one year of ITF and two years of USTA junior eligibility left, there are those who are ready to relegate Young to the scrap heap of history, joining Billy Martin, Ben Testerman, Brian Dunn, and Al Parker as junior phenoms whose pro careers were less than phenomenal.
Even Young’s believers wonder about the wisdom of letting him take a pounding against the pros. But it’s not that easy, Young’s parents say. Raising a world-class tennis player isn’t cheap, and these wild cards come with paychecks.
“I don’t know of anyone who would turn down four thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, versus going to Qatar and spending four thousand dollars,” Donald Sr. says. “Nobody in their right mind would do that.”
Promoters have long memories. And by taking these wild cards, the Youngs are banking markers that they might need when he’s 19 and ready to make a move on the computer. “They’ll give them to somebody else,” his mother says.
“Get you butt beat now and eventually it’s going to be your turn,” Donald Sr. says.
(There’s also a misconception about Young—that he doesn’t play the minor league events, the Challengers. Wrong. He competed in seven as of this May, occasionally getting deep into the draw.)
Donald Young’s parents are smart, articulate, a little old-school, and appropriately protective of their son. His mom hates the gangsta rap that Donald listens to, and admonishes him to be polite and sit up straight. They’re also tennis people, each of them teaching pros.
The bottom line is that Donald Young is a work in progress, and the only fair grade at this point is an incomplete. Look at Young’s big hands and big feet and wonder what that body’s going to look like in three or four years. Talk to him and you’ll sense that there’s something hard inside Donald Young, covered by adolescent insecurity and baby fat.
Every time he shuffles off the court shaking his head, there is the sense that Young is taking names. He knows that in two years, he’ll put on four inches and 25 pounds of muscle and he’ll be able to punish a tennis ball the way he can caress it now. For the moment, Donald Young’s dilemma is about time and tide, the problem and promise of being a teenager.
What’s the biggest difference between Young and the pros he plays? “They’re 25. They’re full-grown,” he says with half a knowing smile. “I just have to wait.”
Allen St. John is a contributing editor at TENNIS. He’s also a sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal.