Harry_Wild
G.O.A.T.
Golf, American football, football, baseball, basketball. All these sports have college scholarships in some colleges, maybe not soccer.
If less ATG athletes are playing tennis, where are they?
- Thread starter ADuck
- Start date
Swingmaster
Hall of Fame
Maybe they’re not attracting the cream of the crop, but theyre attracting the kind of good athletes that would consider playing tennis. Medvedev is a hell of an athlete, but he’s not Lebron James.
Swingmaster
Hall of Fame
Taylor Fritz is a good enough athlete to be in the top 30, but he’s also relatively slow. A guy like Fritz could’ve easily opted for Lacrosse and gotten a great, free education at Duke.
Poisoned Slice
Bionic Poster
I think it is safe to say that Kylian Mbappe will end up being part of the ATG list. Just right below Andy Murray. 
mike danny
Bionic Poster
Well, something is definitely wrong when there is only 1 guy under the age of 30 who is an active slam winner. And that 1 slam winner was extremely lucky to win it too.
daggerman
Hall of Fame
number* of
anarosevoli
Semi-Pro
This whole thought is completely wrong. Becoming a tennis player is decided at an age before puberty where it's impossible to say who would become an ATG top athlete. There is no choice for these top athletes to become tennis players later. So this whole point can be ignored. Simple fact: More people in more countries are able to afford everything, the quality should be better than it ever was, there will be more potential top athletes among them than ever before.
Ray Mercer
Hall of Fame
Tennis is definitely lacking right now in terms of young all time great players. The NHL has Connor Mcdavid and the NFL has Patrick Mahomes. These guys are freaks and clearly meet the eye test of greatness when watching them. There are also a lot of other all time greats playing in those leagues.
Swingmaster
Hall of Fame
Not exactly. You hear about a lot of guys reluctantly choosing tennis after first falling in love with soccer. Federer played multiple sports before he decided. Sinner left skiing to try tennis. Kyrgios, you know, basketball. Sigh.
as we discussed a few times in other threads, using your logic Roddick in a parallel universe is having 16 GS titles, almost as good as Novak
and when we look at their H2H, well, you know the story
yet, this doesn't prevent you from calling Roddick a weak era opponent
AnOctorokForDinner
Talk Tennis Guru
begone with this unscientific prescriptivist crock bitteschön
AnOctorokForDinner
Talk Tennis Guru
Sure talent only becomes visible after puberty lmao. No surprise the chief propagandist liked this.
Pandora Mikado
Semi-Pro
This means nothing in organized leagues with structures with salary cap restrictions for teams - basketball, football, ice hockey.
A team like LA Lakers can afford to pay all the money it wanted to a player - they have the market, the profits - but need to manage it all within a total limit for the team or else they pay huge luxury tax fine to the NBA. The value of a LeBron James is way above his maximum salary cap, this is well known.
ADuck
Legend
Point is though, if the lack of ATG's in this current gen is explained by the fact that a lower proportion of talented kids choose tennis than they used to and are being siphoned off into other sports, then we should be seeing those ATG's present in other sports. Maybe it's due to my lack of knowledge in other sports, but so far I've only heard a couple names who may or may not go on to become ATG's. This is not very convincing to me because when I was younger I was hearing multiple different guys in multiple different sports that were already establised as best in the world, all in their 20's.
Perhaps the problem isn't lack of talent, but something to do with the generation.
Ronaldo
Bionic Poster
Don't Hate, Participate! We have a Curling club locally..........................
GabeT
G.O.A.T.
I don’t know. I’ve yet to see any evidence that any of those players would have made it at tennis. The reality is that each sport has very specific requirements and being a “natural” athlete for basketball, say, doesn’t mean you’d be one for tennis.
Is the lack of ATG's in tennis not because they are fed into other sports but because the athletic pool of athletes is starting to shrink?
Yes, tennis started in country clubs etc., but had some really big grass roots growth in the 70's and 80's. A much bigger pool of athletes to feed the sport.
Many other sports have grown their systems and popularity, so we assume many of the athletes are being spread out. I think this is true to some extent, but I wonder if less and less kids are truly getting involved in sports.
As more and more countries develop, their overweight and obesity rates increase, surely this takes away the general pool of athletes.
I think it is more likely that tennis is competing with other non-sports activities then other sports.
My guess is you have more kids specializing in one sport and those involved are doing more in their sport, but the overall athletic pool might be dwindling and to really find an ATG you need a full population feeding into the athletic pool.
Yes, tennis started in country clubs etc., but had some really big grass roots growth in the 70's and 80's. A much bigger pool of athletes to feed the sport.
Many other sports have grown their systems and popularity, so we assume many of the athletes are being spread out. I think this is true to some extent, but I wonder if less and less kids are truly getting involved in sports.
As more and more countries develop, their overweight and obesity rates increase, surely this takes away the general pool of athletes.
I think it is more likely that tennis is competing with other non-sports activities then other sports.
My guess is you have more kids specializing in one sport and those involved are doing more in their sport, but the overall athletic pool might be dwindling and to really find an ATG you need a full population feeding into the athletic pool.
Bartelby
Bionic Poster
You could do studies and find answers on the question of how a country can increase the depth of its tennis pool, but once you are talking about the top three ...
you can not do a study to find an answer ... so people are just giving random opinions ... when the real answer is that there is no possible answer.
you can not do a study to find an answer ... so people are just giving random opinions ... when the real answer is that there is no possible answer.
droliver
Professional
That's a pretty gross oversimplification. Some of the best (American) football players, for example, could never be very good at tennis because they're either too big, too slow, or too muscular/heavy. Even some of the skill position players who have frames more like a pro tennis player and fantastic movement might not adjust well. Same with basketball, while you can imagine some of the guards being able to have been trained to be excellent tennis players, Lebron James is way to large a human to be able to hold up to the movement requirements of tennis over the course of a season. He would break down constantly with his frame
sredna42
Hall of Fame
They're on instagram
Tennis_Hands
Banned
Gary Duane
Talk Tennis Guru
I think that's a good point, but isn't it also true that if you are much bigger in the US other sports are recruiting you? I would think that any really tall guy in the US is also going to think he can get a whole lot more money in another sport and have a much more enjoyable life.
junior74
Bionic Poster
Trying to make Thiem and Medvedev Nadal and Djokovic' equals, is ridiculous (in my opinion).
When Nadal and Djokovic were as old as Thiem, they had more than 20 slams combined.
When Nadal was as old as Medvedev, he had 6 slams, on clay, grass and HC.
zagor
Bionic Poster
In sum: you overrate Thiem and Medvedev to a ridiculous degree.
Medvedev has reached one slam final by the age of 24, otherwise he routinely gets bounced early in slams and has never won a 5 setter to date. The dude has 4 1st rounds exits at FO in a row.
Thiem is an often shouted heir to the throne on clay who has still yet to win a CC masters title (in a period in which ***** Fognini won one). His sole slam title came in a ATP equivalent of Halep-Wozniacki AO final, where one choker had to be left standing at the the end by default.
The era in which those two dudes would be considered "ATGs" would have to be truly pitiful.
AnOctorokForDinner
Talk Tennis Guru
Have some respect for the Halepniacki final, it was much better in terms of good fight. Woz was in fact pretty clutch, it was Hahalep who choked once again with momentum on her side.
ForehandRF
Legend
Do you have a pretty backhand ?
travlerajm
Talk Tennis Guru
This is the elephant in the room. The evidence is overwhelming, yet everyone wants to blame it on other invented excuses (nutrition better for old guys blah blah).
ADuck
Legend
To me it's confusing and I'm not certain of anything. But I think it might be something as simple as social media. If coaching as gone backwards that would be surprising to me, but lets assume it has, I have a question for you. If the reason is too many coaches subscribing to the Federer/Nadal technique, wouldn't the odds of us seeing another Federer/Nadal have increased instead of decreased?
6august
Hall of Fame
Do you have a pretty backhand ?
My double-handed backhand is easily a national treasure.
Bringing up coaching is a great point. I don't necessarily think coaching has gotten worse. On the whole it is probably better. The hard thing for a coach is to be revolutionary or ground breaking. I think many academies now have the ability to give everyone great ground strokes, good serve and good fitness. So if you have a frame built for tennis, the willingness to train, access and money for today's good coaching, you can be a great player and make in in the top 500-1000. Then if you have some "natural" talent, you can probably break the top 100. But the coaches of now probably don't know how to create the next level of game or want to take the risk of the next level because you are going to fail much more until you find the combination that puts you above the rest.
I also think tennis relies heavily on technique and then fitness, whereas many other team sport rely highly on fitness and then technique. If you took someone who never played a field sport and is faster than most college athletes, they could still be a factor in soccer match. And with some training could probably have some success in a college setting. If you took someone with great fitness who never picked up a racquet, they could get to a lot of balls but good luck hitting them in. Even with a high level of fitness it would take them years to be competitive on the college level. So I think many field sports can have late bloomers that are physically gifted, whereas tennis really needs the technical foundation to master all the strokes.
I also think tennis relies heavily on technique and then fitness, whereas many other team sport rely highly on fitness and then technique. If you took someone who never played a field sport and is faster than most college athletes, they could still be a factor in soccer match. And with some training could probably have some success in a college setting. If you took someone with great fitness who never picked up a racquet, they could get to a lot of balls but good luck hitting them in. Even with a high level of fitness it would take them years to be competitive on the college level. So I think many field sports can have late bloomers that are physically gifted, whereas tennis really needs the technical foundation to master all the strokes.
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