2018 NextGen Talk

[El Dude]

I have them, as well. Bear in mind that the early 80s have limited records; not sure exactly what happened, but rankings are sketchy and/or incomplete from 1980-82ish.

16-17 year olds finishing in ATP top 100
1973: Borg 18
1981: Wilander 69
1982: Cash 44, Forget 70, Brown 97
1983: Edberg 53, Krickstein 94 (16)
1984: Krickstein 12, Becker 66
1985: Carlsson 50
1986: Agassi 91 (16)
1987: Agassi 25
1988: Chang 30 (16), Sampras 97
1989: Chang 5
1998: Hewitt 100
2003: Nadal 49, Gasquet 93

Notice that they're clustered in the 80s, then there's a big gap until 1998 when Hewitt just squeezes in. But the largest gap is 2003 to the present.

And here's a list of 18-year olds, going back chronologically (not including players above): Shapovalov, Zverev, Young, del Potro, Murray, Djokovic, Ancic, Federer, Vinciguerra, Coria, Safin, Hrbaty, Medvedev, Enqvist, Corretja, Santoro, Bruguera, Ivanisevic, Courier, Stoltenberg, Davin, Nargiso, Perez-Roldan, Skoff, Yzaga, Oresar, Lavalle, Muster, de la Pena, Arias, Sundstrom, Noah, Lendl, McEnroe, Martin, Mottram.

 

[Jelenafan]

Hey, at least you tried. You got one of three. Chang (#30 in 1988), Agassi (#91 in 1986), Krickstein (#94 in 1983).

Presumably Borg would have been top 100 in 1972 if they had ATP rankings.

Rafa was 17 in 2003, his first year finishing in the top 100, and Shapo was 18 in 2017.

Krickstein was crazy young and looked it. I swear he didn’t look a day over 14 when he got on tour.

Jimmy Arias was youngish too... but I’m guessing he was more 18/19 on his breakthrough.

 

[El Dude]

The rankings for 1981-82, when Arias was 17-18, are basically lost. But one source has Arias as #20 in 1982 at age 18; based on his performance, he could have been in the top 100 in 1981 at 17 years old.

 

[Moxie]

Hey, at least you tried. You got one of three. Chang (#30 in 1988), Agassi (#91 in 1986), Krickstein (#94 in 1983).

Presumably Borg would have been top 100 in 1972 if they had ATP rankings.

Rafa was 17 in 2003, his first year finishing in the top 100, and Shapo was 18 in 2017.

I know you said "finished the year at age 16," but, just to point out, Rafa was 16 when he first entered the top 100. I looked it up: 4-21-03, so before his 17th birthday. Just a little shout-out to @DarthFed, and I'm sure you know that's about our eternal mud-wrestle.

 

[El Dude]

I know you said "finished the year at age 16," but, just to point out, Rafa was 16 when he first entered the top 100. I looked it up: 4-21-03, so before his 17th birthday. Just a little shout-out to @DarthFed, and I'm sure you know that's about our eternal mud-wrestle.

I'd pay to see you two actually mud wrestle .

But yeah, year-end ages are easier to look up but less exact. It would be much harder to do what I did with the actual ages all players first reached certain rankings. I've done it with top players, but that's it.

 

[Moxie]

I'd pay to see you two actually mud wrestle .

But yeah, year-end ages are easier to look up but less exact. It would be much harder to do what I did with the actual ages all players first reached certain rankings. I've done it with top players, but that's it.

I appreciate what you've already dug up, which is very interesting, as always. Getting to exact ages requires what I did, which is player-by-player, and that's a bit much.

As to the mud-wrestling with Darth...he's young, but he lives in the land of sausage and beer. Me, in the land of heritage lettuce and marathon running. I'd kick his ass...plus, I'm right.

 

[GameSetAndMath]

From now on it would be easier to scout the budding talent, thanks to new world tennis rankings which will start releasing ranking from 2019.

 

[herios]

By the way, I was watching some of those matches in Milan.
What I perceived from the commentators was that according to them, they consider "Next Generation" only players under 22, thus eligible for the qualification Milan. This makes actually sense to me. Why would we still consider a player aged 23, 24, or 25 still next generation? They have been around for many years by then. And they fully qualify for current generation.

 

[Fiero425]

By the way, I was watching some of those matches in Milan.
What I perceived from the commentators was that according to them, they consider "Next Generation" only players under 22, this eligible for the qualification Milan. This makes actually sense to me. Why would we still consider a player aged 23, 24, or 25 still next generation? They have been around for many years by then. And they fully qualify for current generation.

The so called Next Gen from the past weren't this good overall! We had an isolated great player or 2 like with Borg and Vilas! A decade or so later, they started coming a little more fast and furious with Agassi, Courier, Chang, and Sampras! Today, they're exploding all over the place, but have a serious problem dealing with the elites; Fedalovic still rule the tour over a decade later! Nole lost to a couple of them at the end of the year though! :whistle:

 

[El Dude]

By the way, I was watching some of those matches in Milan.
What I perceived from the commentators was that according to them, they consider "Next Generation" only players under 22, thus eligible for the qualification Milan. This makes actually sense to me. Why would we still consider a player aged 23, 24, or 25 still next generation? They have been around for many years by then. And they fully qualify for current generation.

Historically speaking, the vast majority of players age 22 and older have reached their prime, so yeah - the <22 thing makes sense.

You know i like to categorize in five-year spans, starting in years ending with a 9 and 4 - that works really well for the entire Open Era, for the most part. But NextGen is a bit tricky, because it would technically be 1994-98, while players like Shapo and de Minaur are '99. Are they the generation after? Maybe its best to think in terms of cohorts of maybe three years. Anyhow, all such differentiation is artificial, but certainly handy.

 

[Moxie]

By the way, I was watching some of those matches in Milan.
What I perceived from the commentators was that according to them, they consider "Next Generation" only players under 22, thus eligible for the qualification Milan. This makes actually sense to me. Why would we still consider a player aged 23, 24, or 25 still next generation? They have been around for many years by then. And they fully qualify for current generation.

I realize that we use the term more colloquially, as to distinguish them from the "Lost Gen." NextGen as far as the tournament has a stricter qualification, but I don't think it helps us here. Where does that put Khachanov, Coric and Medvedev, all 22 and ranked in the top 20? Thiem is the weirdest floater, at 25, but I don't think he qualifies as Lost Gen. So, either you create an intermediate category, or you go with Next Gen for all of them. I'm happy with that.

 

[El Dude]

The term NextGen as the ATP uses it now has a technical definition: players younger than 22. It is like legal drinking age - it is always shifting. So right now, NextGen are players born 1997 or later. Crazy to think that in a few more months, Alex Zverev will no longer be "NextGen."

So in that regard, I think it works, because historically, most players have entered their prime by age 22. In the past I've seen players careers as consistently of three or four five-year phases: one is the developmental phase, roughly from age 17-21; two is the peak phase, roughly age 22-26 (although now seemingly getting older); three is the plateau phase, age 27-31; and four is decline, age 32+.

Now maybe everything is getting pushed back two or three years, so that development is age 17-23, peak is age 24-29, plateau 30-33, decline 34+.

So there's that, and then there's the generational cohorts, which I like to place into five year spans. I have said before that I like to think of Thiem as the "last" member of LostGen. He was born in September of 1993 (he and Vesely, both); I consider LostGen to be 1989-93, with the Generation Formerly Known As NextGen starting in 1994 with Lucas Pouille. So between Thiem/Vesely in Sept of 1993 and Pouille in Feb of 1994 is as good a place as any to mark the generational shift.

If we name each generation after its greatest player (or two), with the greatless generations having a different kind of name, then I suppose we better start calling the 1994-98 generation "Generation Sascha" or somesuch, as Zverev is (as of know) its greatest player. But maybe in a year or two we can change it to Generation Zversipis.

And then the one after that, 1999-2003, could be the Commonwealth Generation, ruled by the two young Canadians and Britain's Next Great Hope, Jack the Draper. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

 

[AnonymousFan]

Looking at top 4 seeds in the 2018 nextgen finals,
Fritz and de Minaur 3R...
Tiafoe and Tsitsipas alive in QF
All will have played Fed or Nadal