Any ideas? - what can we do to improve the quality of the NextGen tennis players?

[Razer]

Disagree, Sinner plays entertaining brand of tennis , it's just he looks boring af and has no personality.

Yeah sure

 

[NaBUru38]

Speed up the courts

The faster the court, the less aim you need, and the more boring the game becomes.

 

[tennis_pro]

Go back 20 years in technology.

Delete all the tik toks youtube shorts instagrams etc.

And give them less money. Today every average joe shmoe can earn a million dollars and lose motivation

and bring back fed

 

[chuckersthenut]

We need to nerf the equipment. Take some of the power/spin/speed out of the tech so players don't get punished for trying alternate styles of play. Need more variation in the youth.

 

[JoshDragon]

That would improve the quality of the world in general.

It would. One of my goals for next year is to greatly reduce my time spent on social media.

 

[cb4_89]

To be honest, the next generation of tennis players are simply nowhere near the level of their predecessors e.g. Murray, Wawrinka, Del Potro, Nishikori, Safin, Nalbandian etc. who were consistently able to challenge the Big 3 in their prime and even win many notable tournaments.

How in the world did Nishikori make it into this group? The Djokovic USO14 match? Dude never won a single match before or after that and was seen as a walking bye for Novak (and really any of the others). Safin and Nalbaldian were anything but consistent and even Wawrinka was only a 2-3 year period of inconsistent play with crazy peak play here and there. The level of disrespect you give to current players is mindblowing.

You basically find the best of the rest from the past literally 20 years after their careers have been played out and completely ignore the accomplishments of potentially even better players (Thiem/Medvedev/Alcaraz) while not even allowing the current guys to play out their careers. Medvedev might have another slam or two in him and Alcaraz can easily surpass every single person you mentioned (including Murray). Then you have guys like Sinner and Rune, who have slam winning potential (Sinner has ATG potential) but haven't even had a chance to play out their early 20s even.

This whole "weak era" BS being peddled just because Djokovic is still dominating while playing at a very high level is just sour grapes.

 

[mike danny]

How in the world did Nishikori make it into this group? The Djokovic USO14 match? Dude never won a single match before or after that and was seen as a walking bye for Novak (and really any of the others). Safin and Nalbaldian were anything but consistent and even Wawrinka was only a 2-3 year period of inconsistent play with crazy peak play here and there. The level of disrespect you give to current players is mindblowing.

You basically find the best of the rest from the past literally 20 years after their careers have been played out and completely ignore the accomplishments of potentially even better players (Thiem/Medvedev/Alcaraz) while not even allowing the current guys to play out their careers. Medvedev might have another slam or two in him and Alcaraz can easily surpass every single person you mentioned (including Murray). Then you have guys like Sinner and Rune, who have slam winning potential (Sinner has ATG potential) but haven't even had a chance to play out their early 20s even.

This whole "weak era" BS being peddled just because Djokovic is still dominating while playing at a very high level is just sour grapes.

We’ve already seen what the 90’s crop is capable of so we don’t need to wait for their careers to finish. It’s already confirmed that they’re not better than the best players from 20 years ago.

 

[Silentchimera]

There is nothing that can be done. They are simply not good enough. 4 slams for players born between 1987-2003 is truly shocking.

 

[mike danny]

There is nothing that can be done. They are simply not good enough. 4 slams for players born between 1987-2003 is truly shocking.

Delpo was at least a great player whose career was ruined by injuries and Carlos is already cery good and will turn out great.

1989-2002 is the weakest crop of players of all time

 

[AnOctorokForDinner]

How in the world did Nishikori make it into this group? The Djokovic USO14 match? Dude never won a single match before or after that and was seen as a walking bye for Novak (and really any of the others). Safin and Nalbaldian were anything but consistent and even Wawrinka was only a 2-3 year period of inconsistent play with crazy peak play here and there. The level of disrespect you give to current players is mindblowing.

You basically find the best of the rest from the past literally 20 years after their careers have been played out and completely ignore the accomplishments of potentially even better players (Thiem/Medvedev/Alcaraz) while not even allowing the current guys to play out their careers. Medvedev might have another slam or two in him and Alcaraz can easily surpass every single person you mentioned (including Murray). Then you have guys like Sinner and Rune, who have slam winning potential (Sinner has ATG potential) but haven't even had a chance to play out their early 20s even.

This whole "weak era" BS being peddled just because Djokovic is still dominating while playing at a very high level is just sour grapes.

The whole "potential" business only exists because of this sick era where mugs can prosper beating fellow mugs, lul. Their actual tennis is as feeble as it comes.

 

[THUNDERVOLLEY]

Everything in the game of tennis has been designed to favour ball bashing from the baseline, from the racket design, to strings, and small grip sizes, to the extreme grips that are being taught since childhood, to the death of the OHBH.

Agreed. I've said it before: men's tennis has been bleak for two generations. Its last, truly strong era was that populated by Sampras, Courier, Chang, Agassi, et al. However, after the Agassi effect, American tennis (but not limited to it) adopted the one-dimensional baseline-obsessed, net-phobic / net-ignorant style championed by Nick Bollitieri. The USTA has never--at least not in the past 25 years--wanted to develop creative outliers--that is to say, unique talents that are not cranked out by their favored or patented academies and low tennis I.Q. coaches. Jump to to the Roddick "era" and what do you have? Another flat-footed, strategy-challenged player known for a serve and barely leaving the baseline. Overall, its been downhill since then (and cannot rest on the achievements of just three men, with one now retired). With players and enforced types of development, how is the men's game going to improve for the "NextGen" players' tennins IQ and abilities?

 

[Silentchimera]

Delpo was at least a great player whose career was ruined by injuries and Carlos is already cery good and will turn out great.

1989-2002 is the weakest crop of players of all time

I was measuring from Djokovic's birthday to Alcaraz's birthday (22 May 1987 - 5 May 2003). It is a 16 year span with no ATG players. I agree Del Potro was a great player but he wasn't an ATG.

 

[DSH]

some brain transplants would go a long way

They need a third serve to be competitive against the old wolf.

 

[Vincent-C]

Switch many of them to OHBHs. It worked for Edberg. (Sampy, not so much).

 

[ark_28]

I am not yet 40 but I feel I am showing my age here! But I feel too much of the young generation want to look at instagram and making reels and improving their brand rather than having that all out focus on winning.

Call me old fashioned but back in the day your brand was winning or being there or there abouts and everything else then took care of itself.

 

[Hood_Man]

I've said this before but I suspect the situation we're in is the long term effect of the financial crash.

Players born in the early 90s up until the early 2000s would have been junior age or young enough to just be starting out when the crash happened, and a whole bunch of kids would have been prevented from starting or continuing their tennis training.

Hopefully we'll see an improvement with the mid 2000-born players when they come of age, as we have with Alcaraz.

 

[tudwell]

I imagine @travlerajm is onto something with his criticism of younger guys’ racquet specs – namely, that they’re too light – and also @Zoid’s analysis of the Next Gen forehand. And I think those two things are deeply linked – light racquets allowing for less economical technique to flourish, especially in the juniors, but then that technique hitting a ceiling at some point. I imagine it’s the difficulty of balancing competing priorities as a growing player: what enables short-term success as a junior is not necessarily what will enable long-term success as an adult pro. I think older generations simply didn’t have such light racquets available to them, so those technical inefficiencies didn’t flourish in quite the same way, which is why we’re only seeing it now in the last few years (although of course there were growing pains as players adopted graphite racquets and later poly strings; it’s not like the tour figured out optimal technique for these new technologies overnight).

 

[Sudacafan]

Lost cause.