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It’s funny what you sometimes find when rummaging through old closets and storage units.
A brown-tinted paper, with faded early Apple-computer digital type face, revealed itself to me while looking through a box of old tennis magazines and programs I had in a closet. It was an article I wrote back in 1988 while I was a freshman at the University of Georgia about the futility of American men at the French Open and the importance of clay-court training for young American juniors.
I was an aspiring tennis writer and at the time the manager/walk-on tennis player for the defending NCAA champion Georgia Bulldog tennis team. Back in 1988, there weren’t blogs, Facebook or LinkedIn to post an article. I was looking to write about tennis any way I could, even if it was just for fun and practice as an article I could print out and hand to a few friends and family. My sources for this article were three people in my Georgia circle, Dan Magill, the legendary men’s tennis coach at UGA at the time, Francisco Montana, who was, like me, a freshman at Georgia, who went on to become a world top 10 doubles player and Armin Steger, a young German player who was practicing with the Georgia team at the time, as well as my junior coach Bill Jenkins from New Canaan, Connecticut.
Now, 33 years later, I can publish one of my early tennis works as a 19-year-old here on WorldTennisMagazine.com. As you can read below, it provides a bit of snapshot in time for American tennis. Of course, a year after I wrote this article, Michael Chang broke the streak of years without an American men’s singles champion at Roland Garros.
Every spring as the worlds best tennis players make their pilgrimages to Paris for the French Open, Tony Trabert becomes a folk hero in the United States despite valiant attempt by John McEnroe and Harold Solomon Trabert remains the last American male in 22 years to capture a French Open singles title on the clay of Roland Garros. Now shunning away from the American crime on clay, most tournaments in the United States originally played on clay courts are changing to a cement surface. While tennis critics ponder the question of what is wrong with U.S. men’s tennis, the problem lies with the American tennis players lack of clay-court experience which is sculpting problems of great magnitude.
In 1988, the U.S. Pro Championships in Boston, the Tournament of Champions played at Forest Hills and the relocated U.S. Clay Court Championships in Charleston will be the only professional clay-court tournaments in the United States. Top American tour stops such as the D.C. Bank Classic and the Volvo International have replaced their clay courts with parking lots. Unlike the 1970s, when former top tenners like Brian Gottfried and Solomon were America’s best clay-court players and winners of many of the American clay court championships, a baseliner from the United States today is very uncommon.
But while American coaches may disregard baseline play in favor of a more attack-oriented game plan they overlook the necessity of patience established through groundstrokes which is a style and strategy used predominately on clay courts.
“Clay will definitely help your ground strokes develop a little faster,” says teaching professional Bill Jenkins of New Canaan, Connecticut, who coaches a number of nationally ranked junior players.
In clay-court play, it is very common that the two opponents will be trapped in arduous baseline rallies on slower surfaces which ultimately will be determined by the player who can hit one more groundstroke. On slicker cement surfaces, play as often swift with a lack of rallies due to the speed of the court and amount of net rushing. Thus players accustomed to the quick surfaces become impatient when not at the net or when the point has lasted longer than hoped because they are unacquainted with baseline play. These players usually lose these points by committing unforced errors or by going for low percentage winners. Sprouting young juniors must be taught the fundamentals of patience and groundstrokes. America’s eradication of clay courts does not aid their psychological and technical development.
Francisco Montana, a top American junior and holder of 10 national junior titles, puts across that on clay courts, “you learn to be patient. You gain the mentality to stay out on the court as long as you have to to win the match.”
Being bred and trained on clay allows players to establish the correct frame of mind on strategy and to learn how to construct points rather than taking up a game plan of attempting winners from every angle of the court.
“It is better to be trained on clay courts,” maintains Montana. “You develop a better foundation. You learn to work the points over and wait for your opening opposed to trying to end out the points too quickly on hard courts.” Jenkins remarks that patience and good ground strokes go together. “You don’t teach patience,” he said. “You teach great ground strokes and that leads to patience.”
America has a lack of haste-free baseline players because, according to Dan Magill, the University of Georgia men’s tennis coach, there’s not as many opportunities to come up on clay as there used to be. “It hurts us in the development of clay-court players,” he said. “You can’t possibly be a good clay-court player unless you play a whole lot on clay courts. We don’t have as many good clay-court players in this country as we used to because we just don’t have as many clay courts.”
One reason for the current success of European players is partially due to their extensive clay-court training. The abundance of the slower courts enable the European juniors to establish endless patience and never-failing groundstrokes.
Armin Steger, a promising young West German player, explains that during practice sessions on the red clay of West Germany, “the emphasis is more on groundstrokes.” Steger adds that the workout sessions consist of about 75% groundstrokes and 25% service, volleys and foot work.
“In Europe,” asserts Jenkins, “the junior players are taught to hit a million ground strokes in a row and in the United States they are taught to hit winners.”
The current top 10 rankings are stocked with players with clay-court attributes and absence of hasty hurried qualities as well as the European entourage of Ivan Lendl or Mats Wilander, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker and company, the two greatest players to represent the red white and blue, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, also experienced play on clay in their early stages as juniors. Although some of the premier European players may be classified more as serve and volleyers, they do not simply depend on their big service and crushing volleys but also possess potent baseline attacks.
Jenkins does not solely blame the switch to faster surface courts in the United States but that but that the hard courts “coupled with the fact that many instructors in the United States teach games to kids that promote net play and serve and volley, bypassing the most critical part of tennis and that is groundstrokes. It’s not a question of no attention being spent on ground strokes it’s just not enough. Too much time is being spent on serve and volley.”
The inability to turn out baseline players hurts the United States not only in the world rankings but in Davis Cup as exemplified from recent defeats on South American and European clay. Magill remarks, “When we play a Davis Cup match on clay down in South America, Mexico or Europe, we are at a disadvantage unless we can have somebody who has had the opportunity to come up on clay courts.”
The disappearance of clay courts from clubs, junior training facilities and from the American professional circuit only leads to the emigration of Americans out of the top 10 rankings. Before seeking national coaches, regional training sites and other methods of improving the present state of tennis in the United States, clay courts must be resurrected. If not in the spring of 2007 one may hear an aged Bud Collins broadcast from Paris the time-worn lament, “And again there will not be an American men’s singles champion crowned here at the French Open since Tony Trabert.”
