herios said:
El Dude said:
I'm hoping Pouille is a bit of a latish bloomer. He's still young enough to be a top 10-20 type, although won't be elite. But still, maybe he could replace Gasquet/Simon/Monfils as a Frenchman in the top 20.
Pouille is actually ahead in development in comparison to Goffin, who became a solid top 20 player around 25y.
Goffin broke into the top 100 only after he turned 22 (22y and 3 months), while Pouille is iinside the top 100 about a year before David was.
I said it many times before, peaking does not happen before players turn 24 these days.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I just don't think we have enough info, or time, to say that you're right. First of all, it depends upon what you mean by "these days" and "peaking." If we look at the last two players to become true greats, Rafa became an elite player before his 19th birthday. Novak broke out around his 20th birthday. But both didn't reach their absolute peak until a bit later, for Rafa around 22, Novak around 24. But they were elite players at 19ish and 20ish, respectively. Andy was a bit later, but similar: elite after turning 21, his absolute peak around 25-26.
Those age ranges are pretty typical historically, with great players becoming great sometime in the 18-21 range, and having their best years sometime in the 22-25 range. I've also noted that second tier players often delay this a bit, entering their prime range a bit later. In other words, they take a bit longer to come into their own, and thus one of the quality of greats is that they become great at a pretty young age (as I wrote before, ALL true greats were top 10 by age 21 and all top 5 by age 22).
But as far as current young players go, the reason why I don't think we can say whether players are entering their prime later is because the current generation that should be in their prime (b. 1989-93ish) are simply not very good - there are no true greats, no near-greats, not even any Slam winners (yet). A year or two ago we might have thought they were just late-blooming, that the game had aged. Now I think it seems the more likely explanation is that it is just a very weak generation. It used to be Grigor Dimitrov (b. 1991, turning 25) and now its Dominic Thiem (b. 1993), cited as examples of late peaking players. But with Grigor its really become clear that he's just not very good, that his mental game holds him back from being what he could be. And I think we're seeing inklings that while Thiem might be a very good player, he's probably not a future elite.
I don't think it needs to be either/or, though: either a weak generation or players peaking later. It could be a bit of both. But for now, I'd rather veer towards the former - unless we start seeing the next generation do the same thing. But again, the Rafa-Novak generation didn't peak later, and the Kei-Milos generation is very weak, so I think we need to see more players of the Kygrios-Coric-Zverev generation enter their early 20s before we get a sense of whether or not players are peaking later or not.
