Americans in the Top 100

[Kirijax]

I started paying attention to professional tennis in 1979. Actually, I remember the occasion when it "clicked on". I opened my dad's newspaper one morning in June 1979 and saw the article "Pecci Upsets Vilas in French Open Quarterfinals." I had no idea who either were to be perfectly honest, but I remember the picture of Pecci with his black curly hair and remembering thinking that Vilas must be a great champion for his loss to be such big news. I was hooked after that. The newspaper printed the top ten rankings every Tuesday and I remember waiting every week for that. When I started watching tennis, this was how many Americans were in the Top 100.

There were 24 Americans in the Top 100 when I started watching tennis. Seven of the Top Ten. Twenty-three Grand Slam Championships. Amazing.

And now here's today's list of Americans in the Top 100.

Yikes. None in the Top Ten. Zero Slam Champions. And probably zero potential of a Slam. I always keep an eye on the Americans and Japanese players but considering the resources available, the USTA and other tennis groups have really dropped the ball. It will be interesting to see when the next american will come up and who it will be.

 

[GameSetAndMath]

Well, this has been debated often. The problem seems to be that other sports are taking
away the top athletes away from tennis. Also, team sports give people more psychological
comfort in comparison to individual sports. It takes greater tenacity to play individual sports.
Of course, this later point applies to players from any country. But, with football, basketball
and baseball competing, it may be really hard to get top athletes to play tennis. Money is
also a factor.

 

[Kirijax]

So true. The top 500 players in the big sports (American football, baseball and basketball) make a gazillion dollars jsut to warm a bench, while the No. 100 guy in tennis struggles to survive financially. It's a bloody travesty and I hope tennis can figure out how to support the players besides those in the top ten.

 

[Kieran]

Also, team sports give people more psychological
comfort in comparison to individual sports. It takes greater tenacity to play individual sports.

That's a good point. The same with heavyweight boxing. It used to be that this division was owned by (how can I phrase this without joining Benedict Cumberbatch in Coventry? :huh: ) fighters of a non-beige skin tone, but these lads are now looking at less dangerous ways of turning a buck, while also within the more cossetted confines of a team.

There probably is no solution to the American decline, other than to wait for the circle to spin round again. In a way, Swedish tennis has suffered a similar fate, and Spanish and Serbian tennis will suffer the same...

 

[El Dude]

I work with teenagers in the US and I can tell you that very few are interested in tennis. Football, baseball, basketball, and soccer are all far more popular - even hockey here in New England.

Actually, I wonder if the rising popularity of soccer has had an indirect but significant impact on the popularity of tennis in the US. And of course the fact that there hasn't been a truly great American player since Andre Agassi retired a decade ago (with apologies to Andy Roddick).

 

[El Dude]

I became curious about when the drop-off started to occur. In 1994 there were still 20 Americans in the top 100, including #1, 2, 6, and 10 (Sampras, Agassi, Chang, Martin). That dropped to 13 in 1995 and then as follows from 1996 to 2014: 12, 10, 9, 12, 8, 8, 11, 10, 10, 8, 8, 7, 8, 9, 5, 9, 7, 7, 5.

As you can see, a gradual but inexorable decline. And of course that is just total numbers in the top 100 - it doesn't say where those players are ranked. Just eye-balling it it is also clear that the overall quality has gone down.

Is there hope for the future? Well, there aren't many young up-and-coming players but three have caught my eye:

Jared Donaldson #178 (18)
Stefan Kozlov #412 (17)
Francis Tiafoe unranked junior (17)

Tiafoe seems to have gotten some hype, but Donaldson might be a sleeper. Don't know anything about Kozlov other than he's the youngest player ranked in the top 500. Anyhow, while there are a few young players to keep our eyes on, it isn't like there's a wave of young American talent on the horizon.

 

[herios]

I have a question, I did not live in NA until 1994, were the athletes in the top 4 team sport so outrageously well paid in the 70's and 80's ?

 

[El Dude]

I have a question, I did not live in NA until 1994, were the athletes in the top 4 team sport so outrageously well paid in the 70's and 80's ?

No. I'm going off memory so I could be off a bit, but I believe the first $1M yearly salary in baseball was in the late 70s - Dave Parker, I believe. By the late 80s the top salaries were in the $2-3M range. But then in the early 90s it skyrocketed. I think Mark Langston had the first $3M/yr contract around 1990, but then Barry Bonds was making $8M a year (or so just a few years later). It went up from there. There was another big jump in the late 90s with Alex Rodriguez's $25M/year contract. Now there are contracts over $30M a year.

That's just baseball but I imagine other sports are similar. Even adjusting for inflation, there is a steep increase in the 90s.

EDIT: A quick search yielded this:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/Salary_leagues.shtml

 

[herios]

I have a question, I did not live in NA until 1994, were the athletes in the top 4 team sport so outrageously well paid in the 70's and 80's ?

No. I'm going off memory so I could be off a bit, but I believe the first $1M yearly salary in baseball was in the late 70s - Dave Parker, I believe. By the late 80s the top salaries were in the $2-3M range. But then in the early 90s it skyrocketed. I think Mark Langston had the first $3M/yr contract around 1990, but then Barry Bonds was making $8M a year (or so just a few years later). It went up from there. There was another big jump in the late 90s with Alex Rodriguez's $25M/year contract. Now there are contracts over $30M a year.

That's just baseball but I imagine other sports are similar. Even adjusting for inflation, there is a steep increase in the 90s.

EDIT: A quick search yielded this:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/Salary_leagues.shtml

Aside the fact that the big champion material is missing in the USA men field, the number of good players going downhill then has to be correlated with this cash bonanza what the top 4 team sports are now.
Think about if John and Jane Doe had a son born in 1985, they perhaps thought:
Let's make our son a millionaire, at the end that is the ultimate dream.
They surely did not take him to the tennis court.

By the way, now there are 6 American players in the top 100, Smyczek won the Dallas challenger so he jumps up significantly.