Hat tip to my friend Matt for sending me this article from the New York Times about US Tennis problems and the proposed solutions.
The article rightly points out that there are no American men left in the Australian Open (the top 16). When Serena Williams lost, that was it for American women, too. The underlying sentiment is that we have to do more at the grassroots level when kids are young and getting into sports, and it will ultimately produce more competitive players on a worldwide scale. The USTA created “QuickStart” which basically scales down the size of the courts, the racquets and tennis balls for young kids. They are doing it to entice more kids to play tennis and have early success rather than get frustrated and quit.
There were a few quotes that were disturbing to me about this new program:
1) The United States Tennis Association thinks it has found the answer. It had a “duh moment” in 2008, said the U.S.T.A. chairman and president Jon Vegosen, and realized that “we had to kid-size the game.”
They had this moment four years ago? What’s happened since then? The tennis world has passed the US by, mainly on the men’s side. Was it bureaucracy? I don’t know. Listen, folks. Tennis a hard sport. The quicker kids learn that, the better they will be long-term. Dumbing the game down is no good for anybody. Unless you’re 8 years old. Let’s keep analyzing, though.
2) “Other sports have done a better job at creating that progression,” said the former top-ranked pro Tracy Austin, now a Tennis Channel analyst. “Kids want success very quickly, and tennis deters a lot of them from continuing with it. In T-ball you get success right away.”
With all due respect to Tracy (was a big fan back in the day, and she’s a great analyst), I think she is dead wrong on this. I believe the expectations and the environment set for the kids is wrong to begin with. It isn’t about making the court smaller or using lighter weight tennis balls. It is about the kids and their families. I spoke at length with my old tennis coach over the holidays. He believes, as I do, that the pressure to be “well-rounded” (mainly stemming from parents) is what is driving the regression of American tennis. Nowadays, kids go from basketball practice to tennis practice to ballet to piano lessons. It is no wonder they have difficulty “sticking with” something for any period of time.
Further, kids want success quickly? That’s wrong. 8 year olds don’t know what they want, even if they say they do. The parents want their kids to have success quickly. I believe when kids are starting out, and showing some initial promise, the tennis pro should have a conversation with the kids’ parents telling them tennis takes discipline and a lot of time, and involves frustration along the way. If they want success quickly, they should practice hard, win a local tournament and get to know what competition is about. The fact that we’re catering the entire sport around 8-10 year old’s who have about 10 other competing interests is pathetic to me. It is a “jack of all trades, master of none” mentality stemming from the family unit. Don’t evolve the game in a way that has never been done. The sport of tennis is not broken, everything around it is.
3) Patrick McEnroe, the U.S.T.A.’s general manager for player development, said that among 8- to 10-year-olds, 75 percent had major technical flaws that came in part from “using the wrong balls and the wrong equipment on the wrong court.”
Again, with all due respect to Patrick (and in fact, I’m very familiar with his opinion and like him a lot as coach & commentator), this again is a head-scratcher. When I was 9 years old, and starting to play competitive tennis, I can tell you I had all kinds of technical flaws. I used the equipment everyone else did, and regulation tennis balls. It took me years to work out all the technical flaws, and in fact, there were some flaws I never did get fully rid of. To gloss over this, and adapt the game to kids who are that young, is silly. Again, the sport of tennis is not broken and never has been. QuickStart makes for a great press release, but it is not dealing with the root issues (which do not include the court, equipment or tennis balls; it is having a proper mentality).
What US Tennis officials are overlooking are the following which I think are the root of the issues. Like:
1) History
Like anything, history is always a terrific benchmark for future events. Sure, most things become evolutionary over time. But, not revolutionary as this QuickStart program aims to be. There were two golden ages of American tennis since I’ve been alive. The years around the late 70’s and early 80s conjure up household names (even today) of McEnroe, Connors (and even Lendl) fighting the likes of non-American names like Borg, Becker, Edberg, Wilander. Also, for American women: the Navratilova & Evert rivalry! Then, the early to mid-90’s when we had Courier, Sampras, Chang, Martin and Agassi (who actually played the longest). Since then, equipment has evolved and the game has undergone a lot of changes, but not what I would call major changes. Don’t believe me? After the mid-90’s dynasty, we had names like Roddick and Blake who got very well-deserved attention, both were very high in the world rankings, and praised for their physical style of play. They were the two biggest names in the sport on the American side who evolved with the changes in the game through power, speed and guile. None of the names I typed above did anything close to the “QuickStart” program when they were young. Do US tennis officials really believe they’ve found something revolutionary that the rest of the world hasn’t? Which leads me to the next point:
2) Marketing
The USTA should put some more money into marketing of the sport and players. In fact, they should have done this a long time ago. One problem is that tennis is hardly ever televised in the States and certainly not nearly as much as the 4 major sports and not even close to golf. Why not televise and market more solely American junior events? Or college tennis matches outside of once a year? Aside from these, marketing individual personalities is a great way to get past this. How often – now and historically – have you ever seen any product endorsed by a tennis player with American roots? And when something is endorsed by a tennis player, that person’s name is usually Federer or Sharapova. So you have American companies using foreign players to promote their stuff. If corporate America won’t change this stance, the USTA should by funneling more marketing dollars to the cause and making their own celebrities. If anyone has achieved a high world ranking, I could make the case they’re still incredibly marketable. You can start marketing players on a local basis first, then state, then national.
Now, the argument to this is that outside of Roddick, the US doesn’t have any players on the men’s side highly-enough ranked to merit marketing dollars being thrown behind them. Hogwash! Mardy Fish is #8 in the world. Roddick and Isner, #16 & 17. On the women’s side, Ana Ivanovic from Serbia is #22 and one could make the argument she’s had more marketing behind her than most male players in our country, or female players outside of Serena & Venus. Which leads to me to:
3) The importance of creating true Idols in this country.
Why do most kids do anything in this country? It is usually because they see someone intriguing on television or the internet. Pre-internet, I had any number of people I looked up to in the sport, which then spurred my interest in the game. I picked up a racquet and started hitting tennis balls against my garage because I looked up to players and the game looked fun. It was not because the game was “easy” or “hard”. I didn’t care how big the court was or what racquet I was using and certainly didn’t ask my Dad if we could play with lighter tennis balls. The thought didn’t even occur to me. I think this is much the same as any competitive player when they were starting out. Unfortunately, the USTA has now planted the seed that the sport of tennis is not really the sport of tennis when you’re young. I disagree with that.
So, has the game itself changed? I don’t believe so. I believe everything around the game has, to our detriment as Americans. If the game is not broken, why are we trying to fix it? I believe it all starts with family and this seeming disinterest in competition and the virtues of sticking with something for any period of time.
QuickStart will have nothing to do with changing the fundamentals of the game to adapt to kids at such a young age. I think this is about money, and getting more people engaged in the interest of money; because surely, it can’t be about producing champions.
Further, you can’t compare compare this program with Little League T-ballers. I’m sorry, you can’t. They are two completely different sports; one is individual, one is team-oriented. In a team-oriented environment, it is inevitably more fun for kids; but also tougher at that age to stand out and to know if you’re really good (elite) at something or if it is just the kid/fun factor of doing something with friends and relying on teammates. Tennis is, and always has been, a fairly individual sport. The sooner kids understand it, and everything that goes along with it, the better.
Adapting the entire sport of tennis and its historical significance to be more like baseball is a short-term fix, a short-term outcome to entice involvement and revenue and to get more kids to play tennis. Only, the sport kids start out playing in no way resembles tennis! In my opinion, it will do nothing to produce more champions in the future and will do nothing in terms of a long-term solution. It may help kids feel better about themselves from ages 8-10 (which I think is akin to giving kids a trophy for 14th place), but then they switch to a larger racquet on a larger court with regulation tennis balls – and then what? They get frustrated because they have to adapt, quit, and they look back on their years during QuickStart and wonder whey they did it and why the sport they played for three years is suddenly different.
One more thing: A large part of success in tennis is movement and learning how to move. This is one thing at very young ages is very important, probably more so than teaching technical excellence like Patrick said above. With QuickStart, you’re holding kids back from learning to move properly. They get used to moving one way on one-sized court and then find out it is a whole lot different in regulation size. QuickStart might unintentionally crush a kids confidence, too. He or she could be super-quick on the small court, without the ability to translate that quickness to the larger court.
As with anything, it takes a lot of work to become great at tennis. That is just a fact. Champions become champions because they want to put in the work and want to be dedicated to something. And that starts at the family level with proper expectations and candid communication.
The name of the program, QuickStart, implies “short cut”. The problem is: the easy way seldom works, especially in tennis.