Isner (#17) just lost at Wimbledon to another superb Eastern European player. No US player has threatened to win a Grand Slam event since 2003.
What is going on?
I seem to recall a couple of sisters by the last name of Williams still going strong.
There are four U.S. Women players in the final 16 at Wimbledon.
For men, I think it’s because elite American athletes have been more likely to play football and basketball than tennis. Drew Brees beat Andy Roddick in tennis as a youth – if he had stuck with the sport, he’d probably be among the best right now (or a retired champ). If Odell Beckham Jr. had grown up playing tennis, he’d probably be among the best, or on his way. I think we’ve seen the same trend in boxing – especially at the heavyweight. If power forwards and centers like Dejuan Blair had grown up boxing, they’d probably be challenging regularly for the heavyweight boxing title.
Trivia: Musashimaru was the fifth (and by far the most successful) Hawaiian to reach sumo’s Makuuchi division. He retired in 2003. Since then, no American of any stripe has made it to even Juryo. There was a time when the newspapers here regularly carried sumo results and even articles; now they don’t even know the sport exists.
Tennis in America is one of those dealies like, say, cycling, or soccer, that’s really big as a recreational or amateur sport, but the commitment to compete on an elite level just isn’t there. And of course, the only sports we give a rip about (rightfully) are the ones that have at least one marketable star. Remember, too, that for a long time tennis was perceived in America as this stuffy, snooty country-club game (you can’t even make noise during a point, for crying out loud!), so getting this star has been largely a matter of luck.
You could’ve made a thread like this in the mid 80’s, when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were fading into retirement and there were no prospects on the horizon, and then this skinny little pitbull named flippin’ Chang bursts out of nowhere and mops the floor with everyone in Paris, and all of a sudden tennis is cool again. And then Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras enter the picture, and we’re rocking. Y’know, come to think of it, can anyone explain Agassi or Sampras? Is there anything whatsoever about their personalities or worldviews that says “American sports superstar”? An erratic hippie model rock star motormouth and Takumi Fujiwara with a racket?
As far as the Grand Slam is concerned, the biggest problem is that beating that one terrifying demigod who trained for the sport from infancy. With enough inherent talent and training, it’s possible to be one of the best, but being better than that tennis juggernaut, even once, is next to impossible. (Andy Roddick could probably tell you some stories.) It’s like that for a lot of world sports, too. How much money and time and effort do we pour into or Olympic gymnastics programs, and until 1996 it was a miracle when we made the podium at all? How many of our Greco-Roman wrestlers burst out of the box with fire in their eyes and lightning coursing through their muscles, then proceeded to get chewed up by Alexander Karelin? How many World Cup teams have we fielded that were The Strongest Team Ever or were going to Take It To The Next Level and got bounced in the second round like all the rest? Do we even bother with the Tour De France anymore?
There could be another hero. Eventually. But I wouldn’t hold my breath, and he’s likely to be every bit the enigma as the others.
Please don’t ask me to explain Serena Williams. The woman’s a freaking Terminator.
The problem isn’t “one” juggernaut - if it was, then there would be far more “Grand Slam winners” (as in “winning all four majors in the same year”); the problem is, there’s a number of them, and none of them are American.
Probably not as much money, or effort, as you might think. It wasn’t until somebody realized that being smaller is a considerable advantage in women’s gymnastics that things changed considerably. 1996 was a bit of a fluke; IMO, there is a definite “home court advantage” in Olympic gymnastics.
Besides - USA throws “time and effort and money” into figure skating (and talk about a “rich person’s sport”), and we come out all right.
Obviously Serena is the finest female player in the world but she would lose in straight sets to any decent NCAA male player.
Women’s tennis is on pay parity with men’s tennis so women have fewer opportunities elsewhere (they can’t earn double figure million dollar contracts in team sports).
In which professional tournament do the women play against the men?
Or do only the men count as “elite” players in your eyes?
Would you argue that Britney Griner (spelling?) is among the elite basketball players in the world?
(I chose her because I cannot name another female basketball player)
Ah, no female athlete can ever be an elite player. Gotcha.
Andy Roddick lost the 2009 Wimbledon final against Federer 14-16 in the fifth. That was damn threatening in my book.
You didn’t answer his question.
Sure he did. It was a bit meta, seeing as how the answer was to point out the underlying assumption that the question was based on, but sometimes that’s the right way to answer.
He probably would have won in 2004 as well if the rain had not come.
To be among the best players in the world you must play and win against the best.
Serena hasn’t done that.
Again, she could not win against a decent NCAA male player.
Since that’s not her competition, it’s not a problem. Would you say no flyweight boxer is elite since he’d lose to any middling heavyweight? Your premise is not particularly interesting.
In the US, a big thing is a college scholarship and for men, its darn hard to get one in Tennis. My state (Kansas) doesnt offer any at D1 schools.
So parents spend all this money on their kids tennis and really get nothing in return.
Womens tennis, is different. Almost all colleges offer tennis scholarships.
Golf is just as country-club, just as snooty, just as silent when shots are hit, and the US arguably didn’t have any charismatic superstars in the world top ten from the time Jack Nicklaus stopped winning majors until the time Tiger Woods started (well, except maybe Hal Sutton). And yet, all through that time, the US was by far the strongest country in pro golf.
So it must be something else.
Pretty sure it’s just the attractiveness of other sports – chiefly football and basketball. Drew Brees, if he had stuck with tennis, would be a top-flight player. As would many other of the best QBs, WRs, and DBs. LeBron James might even have been a great player had he played tennis from childhood on – imagine the first serve! And there are many others, I’m sure.
Refresh my memory: what colleges did the Williams Sisters attend? Or, for that matter, the best NHL or MLB (or NBA, for the few years before the one-and-done rule was instituted) players?
As for scholarships, a D1 school is limited to the equivalent of 4 1/2 full scholarships in men’s tennis (since most teams consist chiefly of six players, each can get a 75% scholarship), and 8 in women’s tennis (and note that all women’s tennis scholarships count as full, just as all basketball and FBS football scholarships do, so it doesn’t make too much sense to give out a partial women’s tennis scholarship). Plus, of course, there’s the obvious reason there are more women’s tennis scholarships; you have to cut men’s sports scholarships from somewhere to have a full set of football scholarships and maintain a balance between men’s and women’s scholarships that stands up to Title IX scrutiny.