davey25
Banned
http://tennis.fanhouse.com/2010/05/26/tennis-generation-lost-who-is-games-next-star/
PARIS – Svetlana Kuznetsova, defending French Open champ, had three match points against her Wednesday. Three. And she can't remember everything going through her head at that moment, but it wasn't strategy or details.
"I was thinking, 'You know, I really want to be here. This is really what I want the most. The one thing in the world I want is to be here right now, and I want to win so badly.' "
A day earlier, young American Sam Querrey, one of the big hopes for the future of U.S. tennis, split the first two sets, lost the next game, and then?
"I was done," he said. "I wanted to be off the court. I started thinking about leaving and pulling out of the doubles match and how much I wanted to go home."
You can guess what happened. Kuznetsova, the veteran, came back and won, and Querrey went home, withdrawing from doubles with friend John Isner.
"I haven't talked to Sam," Isner said.
Are you upset that he left?
"No."
Didn't even say goodbye.
But have you ever seen a sharper contrast than the attitudes between Kuznetsova, who has won two majors, and Querrey, who has not? Well, this isn't to praise one and bash the other.
It's to bash the entire young generation of tennis in general. That generation stinks.
I might have overstated that a little. But look at women's tennis. You think of teenagers filling the top of the rankings, of Seles and Hingis, Williams and Williams, Austin and Capriati, Clijsters and Henin.
Here's the list of teenagers in the top 25 in women's tennis today: Caroline Wozniacki.
And just two more of those top players are under 21.
Where are all the teenage champions? Why aren't they any good?
There are all sorts of answers, and the first one people will say is that the game has become more physical, too strong for a kid. Forget that. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, here goes: These kids today ... there's something wrong with them.
"You know what I think?" Kuznetsova said. "All the teenagers, they come, or their parents or their agents or someone, and they think they're so good, and I don't see them respecting the other players like we did when we came here. I played Kim Clijsters [and] for me, it was huge. I played Justine Henin, and you're like, 'Wow.'
"[Today] they come and they see themselves as equal to other girls, and it's not like that."
The point she's making is that today's teens aren't respecting the process, aren't understanding what it takes, feeling entitled.
"And then physically," Kuznetsova said, "I don't see good, prepared and [mentally strong] girls."
Bingo. And it's not just the women. On the men's side, where it takes a little longer to make it on tour, you'd like to think 22-year-olds would be ready to be champions. But Querrey, at 22, is one of just three that young in the men's top 25.
Sam QuerryAnd Querrey (right), albeit for the first time, displayed an incredibly lack of professionalism here. How can an up-and-comer feel that he doesn't want to be at a major championship? He was asking himself that. He also was tanking points.
Some U.S. veteran -- Are you listening Andy Roddick? -- needs to chew him out. Roddick said he wouldn't comment without having talked with Querrey first.
Let's talk about the No. 1 problem: Lack of mental strength. Tennis, especially women's, has a cookie-cutter approach to development. Drill a forehand, drill a forehand, drill a forehand. Hit harder, hit harder.
Tennis is not just a collection of shots and skills. And you'll note that almost every young woman plays exactly the same style of blasting away.
On top of that, kids are preordained as the Next Great Thing on wrong criteria, then built up with agents and promotions and public expectations.
Donald Young was slated as the next American star when he was 14. And the talk now from U.S. tennis is that the next great Americans aren't the ones who are 17, 18, but instead 12 or 13. That's where the gold is.
Well, here is a truth that no one will say about boys tennis: What a 12-year-old does on a tennis court has nothing to do with how good he'll be at 18. OK, let's say almost nothing.
Young is now 20 and ranked No. 147.
What about Melanie Oudin, who had the thrilling quarterfinal run at the U.S. Open? An admission: I actually asked her after her first-round loss here about the possibility of being a one-hit wonder.
She mentioned something about being 18, about losing embarrassingly in the first round of French Open qualifying last year while being ranked in the top 40 and in the main draw now.
In other words, a learning curve. Are we willing to wait for them anymore?
There are other reasons. The demands of the tour are so much now that there's a greater learning curve once someone turns pro? I guess.
The women's tour has some limits on the number of tournaments that 14- to 17-year-olds can play. That matters.
But we've been waiting for Victoria Azarenka, now 20, to become a champion, and it doesn't seem to happen. Marin Cilic, 21, same thing. Juan Martin del Potro did make it, winning the U.S. Open.
Last year's major winners were veteran Serena Williams, comebacker Clijsters and Kuznetsova. Henin, in her comeback, is favored at the French, as old-timers can just walk back in and bypass the kids.
I wonder if we can develop a cookie-cutter drill that makes a champion's brain and heart.
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