The fall and rise of U.S. tennis. Now they need a grand-slam winner (2024)

As we enter the second week of Wimbledon, U.S. tennis finds itself in a curious position.

On the one hand, America is in a historic trough — currently in its longest ever drought without a grand-slam title for the men and women combined. A total of 12 without one (Wimbledon would make it 13), beating the previous worst of 11 between 1963 and 1966, which was before tennis turned professional with the advent of the Open Era two years later.

In terms of just the Open Era, the previous record for the U.S. is a winless run of eight between 2017 and 2020.

America’s most recent slam success came at the end of that run, when Sofia Kenin won the Australian Open in 2020, and since then the nation’s torchbearers for so long, the Williams sisters, have either retired — Serena did last year although she left the door slightly ajar for a return — or, in the case of Venus (43), are expected to soon.

On the men’s side, America is in comfortably its longest ever grand-slam drought, which goes back 20 years to Andy Roddick winning the 2003 US Open. That’s a run of 77 tournaments, smashing the previous worst of 20 between 1963 and 1968. You have to go back to Pete Sampras in 2000 for the last American man to win Wimbledon.

And that 0/77 figure comes straight off the back of an extraordinary run when American players won 27 of the previous 53 (more than half), going back to the 1990 US Open. The next best of any nation in that period was Spain, with five.

Scratch beneath the surface however, and the picture is a lot more encouraging. The depth in men’s and women’s American tennis is very impressive. Starting with the men, there are two Americans in the top 10 for the first time since 2012 (Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe), three in the top 15, four in the top 25 and seven in the top 50. Last year they ended the year with nine men in the top 50, the most of any nation (the next most was Spain with six) and a marked increase from previous years when they sunk to as low as two at the end of 2013, and hovered around the four or five mark before and after that.

America’s current tally of 11 men in the world’s top 100 is the highest (France is the next best with nine, but most of their players are ranked between 51 and 100), and the US actually has the most players in the top 10, top 20, top 50 and top 100, including exciting youngsters like Ben Shelton, 20, and Sebastian Korda, 22.

The women’s game has even more impressive depth (again, more than any other nation), and has done for some time. Fifteen players in the top 100, seven in the top 50, three in the top 20, and two in the top 10 — the world No 7 Coco Gauff, still only 19 and already a French Open runner-up and the No 4 Jessica Pegula. And if we zoom out to the last 20 years or so, the Williams sisters have ensured America has been tennis’s most successful nation when it comes to winning majors on the women’s side.

The current challenge is transforming America’s depth into grand-slam champions. At Wimbledon, we’ve already seen a number of high-profile exits: Gauff in the first round (to Kenin) before those top-15 ranked men Fritz, Tiafoe and Tommy Paul were all eliminated before the last-16 stage.

It leaves Pegula and Madison Keys as the only Americans in the women’s draw, and Christopher Eubanks as the only man as we move towards the quarter-finals (Keys and Eubanks still have their last-16 matches to play).

But this is where one’s perspective is so important. If you work in talent development, having so much depth is a testament to the fact that your processes are working, that there are clear pathways to success. This is certainly the view of Martin Blackman, a former American player and the general manager of United States Tennis Association (USTA) player development. He also believes that having so many players ranked close to one another creates a virtuous cycle. “Something that’s really powerful is that whenever you have players reaching the top 100, it creates such a healthy peer pressure of American players who all want to be the best Americans,” he says. “They all want to play Billie Jean King Cup and Davis Cup (tennis’s most prestigious international team events) and that just makes everyone play better.”

The perspective of a casual observer though is different. Which is to ask: how has the country that had the almost uninterrupted success and lineage of Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Chris Evert, Monica Seles, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, the Williams sisters et al, from the start of professional tennis in the late 1960s to only a few years ago, failed to produce many (any in the men’s case) champions of late?

One argument, on the men’s side at least, is that the unprecedented scale and length of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic’s combined domination of men’s tennis has meant very few nations have had a look in over the last two decades.

After spending the last week speaking to various experts on this topic, including the Americans trying to end the country’s drought, a very interesting picture emerges. Of a nation that has completed phase one of lifting the country up from its very dark days a decade or so ago, when years of complacency and an assumption that they would always be the best caught up with them. A nation that is now hoping its strong strength in depth, created after a lengthy rebuild, will translate into the ultimate aim for every tennis player: winning a grand slam.

Towards the end of the 20th century, there was a power shift in tennis.

For the majority of the Open Era, America had been tennis’s epicentre. It was where the most tournaments were played, where the best academies were, and crucially where the best players were. The rankings were dominated by Americans, occupying six of the top 10 spots at the start of the 1990s. This was and had been the norm for a while, and it wasn’t uncommon in the 1980s for around half of the world’s top 100 to be American players. It really was a totally different picture back then.

But the end of the Cold War and increasing globalization contributed to a change where many other countries started investing properly in tennis and developing new coaching methods. The post-Cold War emergence of eastern Europe as a tennis hotbed was an especially important development.

America broadly just kept doing the same things, perhaps understandably seeing little reason to change when it was so dominant.

By the mid to late 2000s, the U.S. hit “rock bottom” according to Blackman — with only four women in the world’s top 100 on the women’s side at one point in the autumn of 2009. On the men’s side, 2014 was the nadir — five Americans in the year-end top 100, and only one in the top 30 (John Isner at No 19).

The USTA had recognised that they needed a reboot a few years earlier and in 2007 decided to invest properly in player development. Patrick McEnroe was brought in to oversee the programme a year later and told me in 2018 that America’s struggles were partly because “there was some complacency. We had so many great players in the past but it happened by chance. We had great facilities and coaches but we became pretty spoiled by Jimmy Connors, my brother (John McEnroe), Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras.”

“I think we were spoiled by having superstars and there was a culture of entitlement,” adds Paul Annacone, who currently works with the American No 1 Fritz having previously coached Sampras and Federer. “But no one is entitled to success — it requires a lot of hard work.”

As well as other nations emerging, other sports becoming more popular in the US like women’s football (soccer) and volleyball meant it was harder to get the best athletes to play tennis.

The USTA, which has coached at some point about 80 per cent of the American men and women currently in the world’s top 100 and pretty much all of those who are under 25, decided that to compete in this new world it needed to partner with the private sector and invest more in its players, providing subsidies for those from less privileged backgrounds. It also brought in coaches from the private sector.

In 2008, work began on a new player pathway programme, which ran in that guise until 2020 and served to produce the impressive current crop of very talented, highly-ranked American players. “We used to have great academies like Nick Bollettieri’s in the 1990s and before but investment and subsidies that other nations were making in the 2000s and 1990s we weren’t really doing. Subsidies to fund those people who couldn’t afford to pay for travel, etc. That really started to put us behind. And the game became much more global at that time.”

McEnroe and others decided that for America to regenerate as a tennis nation, it needed to have a more centralised programme. Eventually, they set up a network of camps from sectional to regional to national level. The USTA National Campus then opened in Florida in 2017, featuring 98 tennis courts on various surfaces, four pickleball courts and four padel courts spread across 64 acres.

These changes meant that the best players had access to one another more regularly and could raise each other’s level rather than having top talent spread across the country.

Danielle Collins, 29, who reached last year’s Australian Open final, says it made a big difference having this level of competition early on. “I knew Madison Keys (28) and Sloane Stephens (30) from when I was really little. To be able to play those types of players week in and week out at junior tournaments was great. And I think it was similar on the men’s side — Taylor (Fritz, 25) , Frances (Tiafoe, 25), Tommy (Paul, 26), they were all the same sort of age bracket and knew each other.

“So when you have friends that are a little bit rivals, I think it’s really good for the kids to motivate them. And when you have other athletes at your level who are also committed to playing the sport long-term, really interesting things happen.”

These players were also helped by a consistency of coaching that was put in place by Jose Higueras, who McEnroe employed as the USTA’s director of coaching for the elite player development programme soon after he started himself in 2008.

The USTA had not previously been as involved in player development as other nations and so Higueras, a coach previously to stellar names like Sampras, Federer and Michael Chang, was tasked with creating a pipeline to the professional circuit for a country of more than 300 million, pretty much from scratch.

Higueras travelled around the country pretty much non-stop, trying to lay down foundations. He had grown up on clay courts in Spain, and a big part of what he wanted to do was create more rounded players, ones who would be comfortable even playing on that surface — where you can’t rely on big serves and power. By the late 2000s, America had developed a reputation for pretty agricultural tennis — big serves, big forehands, often pretty ropey backhands (especially on the men’s side). Contrast this with what was happening in Europe, where Federer had emerged as tennis’s poster child with his grace and elegance.

“Jose’s coaching and philosophy in those first 10 years to bring everything back to the basics was foundational,” Blackman says. “Without that, I don’t think we’d be enjoying the success we are now.”

As well as technical basics, there was a sense that some American players weren’t working as hard as their European counterparts. Jim Courier was the U.S. Davis Cup captain between 2010 and 2018 and said towards the end of that stint that: “Being successful requires a hunger and a desire, and some of our best, most talented players don’t have that.

“We still have room to improve in our professionalism. America as a whole is not as sound as the players coming from say Spain, in terms of owning their games, owning their tactics, being prepared and 100 per cent fit all the time.”

Higueras, who grew up in a stone cabin with no electricity, tried to instill an ethos of hard work at all levels. But these kinds of institutional, fundamental changes take a while to implement. He always felt the project he began in 2008 would take a decade to implement, but he and the USTA were heartened when, in 2015, Paul, Reilly Opelka and Fritz won the boys’ titles at the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open respectively. Paul winning on the Roland Garros clay against his compatriot Fritz was especially satisfying.

Two years later, Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys played in the US Open final (all four semi-finalists had been American), with Gauff the girls’ runner-up. America also won that year’s Billie Jean King Cup.

The sense in American tennis is that the men are starting to catch up with the women, who since Kenin’s Australian Open victory in 2020 have had three slam finalists in Collins and Gauff (in Melbourne and Paris respectively) last year and Jennifer Brady at the 2021 Australian Open. No American man has reached a major final since 2009, and Pegula, a regular at the quarter-finals of slams, said with a smile last week: “American women’s tennis is great, we’ve had the depth for a few years right now. I think the men have finally caught up, to be honest.”

Blackman, who was the USTA’s director of talent identification and development in those early years between 2009 and 2012 before coming back to run player development in 2015, puts the big improvement of American strength down to a number of factors.

Starting with how players are coached. “It’s the concept of being more holistic. We use a performance team approach where the coach is the leader and the driver but he’s taking input from the mental performance coach, from the strength and conditioning coach, from the analytics expert, etc.”

The way coaches communicate is also important. “It’s about keeping it relevant to a new generation,” says Blackman. “When I was a young player in the late 80s, early 90s, coaching was very direct. They told you what to do and how to do it and if you’d done it well or not. Now it’s a lot more about the coach guiding the player. That makes for a more independent player and a better problem solver.

“And that plays into something we often talk about — what are the things that are in your control as a player? Be on time, be respectful, be engaged, give 100 per cent of your best effort.”

Developing the grassroots game is an important element as well. Tennis participation is way up in the U.S. — 23.6 million people were playing the sport at the end of 2022, an increase of 5.9 million, or 33 per cent, since the start of 2020 — which is an important part of how the USTA wants to grow the game. Collins believes tennis has become more accessible. She has been impressed by equipment changes that have made it easier for young people to play the sport.

“They play with softer balls that don’t bounce as high so you don’t see as many extreme grips,” she explains. “We’re a little behind Europe but you see some of the benefits now with some of the juniors. It starts red, then orange, then green — you work your way up to bigger, heavier balls. I was a really small kid so that would have been great. I really struggled playing with the heavy equipment, like a super heavy racquet that was for adults.”

The argument is that sports like baseball have age-appropriate equipment: you would never give a child a 36-ounce bat. But the equivalent used to happen in tennis.

Collins’ background is also interesting as she went through the route of playing college tennis while studying for a degree. More and more players have done that over the last decade or so, including Isner, Eubanks (the only American man left at Wimbledon) and even the British No 1 Cameron Norrie, and it has many advocates.

“It’s a very legitimate pathway,” says Annacone. “It’s a great way to help you mature and the facilities and resources give you the opportunity to play in an extremely high-level environment where you can develop with a little bit of a different pressure to the professional game.”

So what about the future? Do the experts foresee a grand-slam champion soon?

Annacone, who also works as a coach at USTA Southern California, one of the aforementioned sections that make up the USTA, is optimistic. “I’ve always been a big believer that things go in cycles. There were years when we were a bit doom and gloom and wondering what was going on. Now we have an amazing crop of young players and lots of different layers above that. We don’t have superstars yet but we have a lot of young players that could be.

“Fritz, Tiafoe, Paul and Opelka can all be top 15 players, maybe 10. Shelton just came out of college. He has a huge game so he could be in that group. So could Korda, (Brandon) Nakashima. They all have top-15 potential.

“On the women’s side, Coco (Gauff) is the one we’ve been talking about for a while now. She’s great and she’s only going to get better. Keys is unbelievably talented with a huge game.

“We’re going to see a lot of players that are propelled to new levels so what’s going to happen in the next 24 to 36 months is really important.”

“Things have improved a lot,” says Brad Gilbert, the former world No 4, one-time coach of Agassi, Roddick and Andy Murray, and an analyst for ESPN at Wimbledon. “In the next five years or so, it seems like there will be plenty of opportunities on the women’s side. The level there has been great for a little while and never really dipped.

“With the men, there are guys going deep at the majors. Do we have a Carlos Alcaraz at the moment? No, but we have strength in numbers, and it’s great to see more of the guys spending three months in Europe for the clay-court season and giving themselves a better chance for later in the year. I think we’re close.”

James Blake, the former world No 4 and American No 1, says: “There are going to be opportunities for the men and I wouldn’t be surprised if out of the next 10 grand slams, excluding the French, we’ve got an American in the semi-finals in seven or eight of them. And if you keep putting yourself in those positions, one of them can break through.”

On the women’s side, the consensus is generally that Pegula and Gauff represent America’s best chance. The latter has a very exciting, powerful game and reached the Wimbledon fourth round four years ago when aged just 15. She already has that French Open final to her name, is ranked No 7 in the world, and said prior to Wimbledon: “I definitely feel like I’m on the pathway to getting one (a grand slam) soon.” Sorting out her misfiring forehand will be key to her fortunes, and her father has been in touch with Rick Macci, who once worked with the Williams sisters, to discuss some of the technical improvements she needs to make.

Pegula, the daughter of Terry and Kim Pegula, the multi-billionaire owners of NFL team the Buffalo Bills and NHL side the Buffalo Sabres, is 29 and a much later developer after suffering badly with injuries in the early part of her career. Having reached her first grand-slam quarter-final at the Australian Open at the start of her breakthrough 2021, Pegula has reached this stage at five of the last seven slams, including this year’s Wimbledon. Up until now, that regular last-eight spot is symptomatic of where American tennis currently finds itself — very close to the top but not quite there.

“Pegula is in great form and because of her power and balance her game matches up really well on grass,” Blackman says. “Her swings are quite compact so when your opponent generates pace and really accelerates, she’s really able to handle that. Plus her timing is so good, and that enables her to retain a really good court position and not get pushed back and have to play more defensively.”

Mary Joe Fernandez, a former U.S. Billie Jean King Cup captain and one-time world No 4, is optimistic about the chances of an American woman soon winning a major — possibly even this week. “Jessica has been in the quarter-finals seemingly every time, so eventually I expect a breakthrough from her. Coco Gauff has tremendous potential. They probably have the best opportunity but Madison (Keys) is dangerous here as well.”

Keys has won three grass-court tournaments, including last month at Eastbourne but there are question marks over her ability to find her best level in the biggest matches.

Fernandez, who lost her three singles grand-slam finals but won two in doubles, says to make that final step it’s about “getting that belief that you belong.”

Of the other prominent American players, former champions Kenin and Stephens are battling to rediscover their best form. Ditto Collins. None of those three made it past the third round here this year. There are plenty of exciting young players coming through, including 22-year-old Alycia Parks, who told The Athletic after her first-round victory that, “I give myself an hour of just ‘me time’ where I write down my goals, what I’m trying to accomplish for the week or in the moment. I do it most weeks.

“Win Wimbledon is on the list.”

It wasn’t to be this year but, at 22 and ranked No 51, she’ll be back and, with the joint-quickest serve ever in the women’s game, she has a shot. She also has plenty of self-confidence and star power, saying, “Tennis is kind of boring, apart from Serena (Williams, who she grew up idolising). I want people to be excited to come and watch me.”

On the men’s side, the only player left with a shot at ending the 20-year major drought at this year’s Wimbledon is Eubanks. The 27-year-old is another late developer, having gone through the college system and then even moonlighted as a tennis commentator while his ranking stubbornly refused to move up. This year has been a breakthrough season though for the world No 43, culminating in him winning his first title in Mallorca just prior to Wimbledon and then knocking out last year’s semi-finalist Cameron Norrie en route to his first-ever grand-slam fourth round.

He is hugely popular in the locker room, and is an insightful, engaging presence. The up-and-coming Shelton described Eubanks to The Athletic last week as being “like a big brother.”

He is still seen as far too raw, however, to have a genuine chance of winning this year’s Wimbledon.

Eubanks’ status as the last American standing came after disappointing exits for Fritz, Tiafoe and Paul. The latter two had high hopes after breakthrough grand-slam semi-final appearances over the last year. Tiafoe’s mindset was transformed by his thrilling run in New York last September, telling The Athletic last week that it gave him a “s***-ton of confidence”.

Paul, ranked No 15, said of his success in reaching the Australian Open semi-final in January: “Now I’ve done it, I know I’m capable of doing it. it’s definitely a confidence booster.”

As for Fritz, his underperformance at the slams compared to the rest of the tour continues. For a man who won Indian Wells last year (known as “the fifth major” and considered arguably the most important non-slam event) and has been a mainstay of the top 10 this year, one grand-slam fourth-round and a sole quarter-final in his career is underwhelming.

Shelton was also a quarter-finalist at this year’s Australian Open, and has thrilled the tennis world since pausing his college degree to turn pro in August 2022. He has a hugely exciting, attacking game and is already viewed as a future star in tennis circles. He is charismatic and engaging, and delighted the Wimbledon crowd in the two matches he played here last week — losing the second one to the Serbian, Laslo Djere.

The belief among the players is that having so many fellow American players around has a number of benefits: they can share tips with one another, take the pressure off each other and inspire each other to greater heights.

“It’s great,” says Pegula. “It takes the pressure off because we’re not the stand-alone American with all the pressure. Some of us share tips — I was texting Maddie (Keys) the other day. She was asking me how the Wimbledon courts were playing, because she wasn’t here yet.”

Tiafoe agrees. “Having guys like Tommy and Taylor around is great — we all have a good bond. I mean, guys doing well is only going to help push each other without even really talking about it. You see these guys are doing well and you want to continue to do it.”

“There’s a lot of depth in our country’s game, both with the men and women,” Gauff says. “It’s definitely inspiring to be around people and seeing them do well.”

Eubanks says: “It’s cool being at bigger tournaments with a lot of your friends.You feel happy for each other and it’s like: ‘Hey, man, let’s keep this thing going. This is fun.’ And I think it does add a little bit of motivation.”

The current American No 1 Fritz agrees. “It’s awesome. Obviously, I want to take it further, and be higher-ranked. We also have a lot of very good American players that are chasing me and trying to take the spot away from me.”

Blackman believes the competition works between the players because unlike in previous generations they all get on so well and are genuinely rooting for each other.

“You’re traveling round the world, living out of a suitcase so having your countrymen and countrywomen supporting you makes it a lot more enjoyable,” Blackman says.

“It’s not always been like that, and that’s not a criticism but culture is something you have to work for. We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had great Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup captains — like Kathy Rinaldi, Mary Joe Fernandez, Mardy Fish and Bob Bryan. And a lot of that camaraderie gets cultivated in those special weeks of Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup competition.”

The fact that so many of America’s stars grew up playing together also helps. “The group now, we’ve all grown up playing together — even Coco I played with when we were younger,” Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion says. “Having a group you grew up with and really care about is very helpful.

“It’s interesting because when I came on tour, I hadn’t played with Venus and Serena. (Lindsay) Davenport was still playing a bit but we had never had any involvement with them because they had played professionally for so long.”

After years of toil spent changing the culture and structures of U.S. tennis, it feels as though the nation is getting closer and closer to having another grand-slam champion.

The question is how can they take that next step, and is the weight of history an issue?

“We all know that there’s no avoiding that one,” Paul says. “We’ve all heard it a million times. It’s a goal for all of us. If you have any drive or you set the bar high for yourself, which I think all the Americans do, then it has to be.”

“I guess it’s something that’s kind of been around, but at the same time there have been a lot of really great runs by a lot of different Americans,” Keys told The Athletic. “I just try and focus on the next match.”

“I think it’s a privilege,” adds Parks. “Knowing the successful players before paved the way for us. We’re young, in their footsteps, making it happen.”

As well as the current crop of emerging players, there is also the next generation coming through after them.

Blackman says that 70-80 per cent of the USTA’s focus is on that junior space, and he cites the players who are or will soon be making the transition to the pro circuit. Names like Robin Montgomery (18), Katrina Scott (19), Ashlyn Krueger (19) and, on the boys’ side, Cooper Williams (18) and Darwin Blanch (15) are ones to look out for. Clervie Ngounoue, 16, is the No 2 seed in the girls Wimbledon event.

Keys mentions Montgomery, Krueger, Tyra Caterina Grant (15) and Ngounoue as ones to watch, while Kenin also name-checks the former two.

In the more immediate term, this next week and then the US Open in August and September will offer a better indication of how close the U.S. is to executing the next phase of its rebuild.

After her own exit from Wimbledon last week, seven-time major winner Venus Williams was asked by The Athletic if she felt like American tennis was in safe hands with the players now coming through.

“Oh, of course,” she replied. “I’m a big, big, big supporter of American tennis. Not only the women’s, but the men’s.

“I have high hopes.”

(Top image: Rachel Orr)