Player development: differences by nation [series]

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From TW:

Player development is a hot topic for most any tennis nation. The Spanish seem to churn out ATP men’s players and the Russians WTA Tour women like e-mail spam. Every time you turn around, there’s another one. So why can’t other countries do the same?

Throughout this year, Tennis Week will be examining the player development efforts of various countries worldwide, including those with a long history of great players and those hoping to establish a tradition that future generations will admire and uphold.

We begin our series in Australia, home of history’s most prolific Grand Slam tournament champions in Margaret Court (62 major titles) and Roy Emerson (28 majors), but a nation that has not seen one of its own come out on top in singles Down Under since unheralded Chris O’Neil won the 1978 Australian Open women’s title.

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Shake Up Down Under
Top Aussies Lleyton Hewitt and Alicia Molik starred in their home Slam, but Tennis Australia needs to lift its game
By Suzi Petkovski

Tennis Week print magazine
February 15, 2005
pgs 26-30

A shake-up of Australian tennis is underway as the country tackles an alarming lack of depth that bottomed out in late 2004, with Lleyton Hewitt the sole Aussie in the Top 100.

Even the home-Slam heroics this year of Hewitt, the first local in an Australian Open final since 1988, and Alicia Molik, the first Australian woman to make the Top 10 in two decades, could not allay concerns about who will succeed them. Only three men (Hewitt, Wayne Arthurs, and Scott Draper) and three women (Molik, Samantha Stosur, and Nicole Pratt) made the Australian Open main draw on merit. A doezen others entered via wildcards. Of the 20 Aussies who contested qualifying, none survived.

Two new powerbrokers – the Tennis Australia chief executive and a director of player development – will be appointed in the next few weeks and charged to make major changes in the game plan of player development.

The restructure was forced by a critical report from the Australian Sports Commission, the government sport funding body, which targeted the quality and management of Australia’s player development programs. The ASC threatened to cute some of its $800,000 annual contribution if wholesale changes were not made.

Geoff Pollard, in his 16th year as head of Tennis Australia, got hit for wearing the hats of both president and chief executive. He left the latter post in late 2004 and will hand over day-to-day running of Tennis Australia to the new chief executive, who is expected to be a tennis outsider with a business background. Australian Open Chief Executive Paul McNamee opted not to apply, after an extraordinary attack from Hewitt and lack of support from the TA board.

That Australian tennis has all the depth of an Esky (Aussie for portable beer fridge) at the end of Australia Day came as news to no one. In Davis Cup, which Aussies treat as a Dow Jones of tennis health, the flashing red of plummeting stock has appeared often in recent years. In the 2002 first round, minus the retired Pat Rafter, the ill Hewitt and the oft-injured Mark Philippoussis, Australia was obliterated 5-0 in the Buenos Aires dust. More alarm bells sounded in the World Group playoff against Morocco last September, when 2002 Wimbledon junior champion and Australian No. 4 Todd Reid crashed 6-2, 6-3 to world No. 428 Mounir El Aarej – not on clay in Marrakech but on grass in Perth.

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Until the transformation of Molik into a Grand Slam contender – with the best serve in women’s tennis according to Martina Navratilova – the state of play in Australian women’s tennis was dire. The country that produced all-time Grand Slam tournament titles leader Margaret Court hasn’t produced a major champion since Evonne Goolagong 25 years ago – or a semifinalist since Nicole Provis at Paris in 1988. Minus Molik, Australia went down to Thailand in the 2004 Fed Cup World Group II playoffs and finished the year at No. 19 in the International Tennis Federation’s Nations ranking, behind tennis minnows Indonesia, Canada, and Slovenia.

Ironically, Australian women began 2005 in a blaze of glory, with Molk and the vastly improved Stosur contesting the first all-Aussie final on the WTA Tour for 13 years in Sydney. Both playerswent on to capture their first Slam titles – Molik, 24, the Australian women’s doubles with Svetlana Kuznetsova, and Stosur, 20, the mixed doubles with fellow-Aussie Scott Draper. But only three Aussie women reside in the Top 100. As a tennis-rich country, Australia is looking to get more bang for its development bucks.

Annually, Australia spends $3.25 million on player development (about 25 percent of it government funding), a modest sum compared to the USTA (estimated at $14 million) and Britain’s LTA, whose budget has been put at 10 times that of Australia’s. Tennis Australia is looking to inject another $700,000 per year, with the goal of lifting 10 Aussie men and women into the Top 100.

It’s a far cry from the halcyon years, when a smiling, serve-volleying dynasty – Sedgman, Fraser, Laver, Stolle, Hoad, Rosewall, Emerson, Roche, Newcombe, Court Goolagong – held court. Aussie men won 14 of the 20 Wimbledon championships between 1952 and 1971, while in Davis Cup, under the iron rule of captain Harry Hopman, Australia produced 15 winning teams in 18 years. Aussie women champions were not so numerous, but even as late as 1978-79, after the retirement of Court, there were four Australian women in the Top 10, more than any other nation.

The downturn came the day grass died as a major surface, forcing whole generations to re-learn the game on higher-bouncing hard courts and plunging Australian tennis into a crisis of identity. The explosion of Open tennis and big money left Australia at the receiving end of an unequal economic playing field. The local season shrunk and the continuity of the Aussie assembly line faltered, as many former champions and leading coaches – including Hopman, Laver, Stolle, Emerson, Hoad, and Goolagong – continued their post-tennis careers overseas, their priceless experience lost to Australia. Competitorsfrom 33 nations contested the en’s 2005 Open. When Rosewall won the last of his Australian titles in 1972, there were just six nations in the field.

Because of Australia’s apparent success in mass-producing tennis stars, few, if any, countries are more gung-ho when it comes to player development. Starting with junior competitions between the eight Australian states in the 1920s, through to Hopman’s on-court commandos, to the sponsored elite junior squads founded by John Newcombe and Tony Roche in the early 1980s, Australians have always been aggressive molders of tennis talent. But since Aussie tennis slipped from its exalted position, the production line has assumed far greater urgency. Tennis players were among the first athletes admitted to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra when it opened its doors in 1981. Four years later, Tennis Australia established McDonald’s Junior Tennis Australia (MJTA), the first nationwide player development program.

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Both schemes produced botched returns and were savaged by critics, including former champion Court, who argued squad training would blunt the competitive drive of champions and produced homogenized mediocrity. The early years of the AIS were experimental at best (a resident of the time describes feeling like a tennis guinea pig), and while the sports laboratory model (the AIS was based on Eastern Bloc sports factories, the most successful Olympic nations at the time) might have boosted team sports such as hockey, or even swimming and gymnastics, it was a disaster for an individual, international sport like tennis. Another criticism was the AIS’s isolation from the main tennis centers and its severing of ties between players and their private coaches. Chances were, if an Aussie player did rise to the top (such as Pat Cash or Pat Rafter), they owed little to the “system”.

Gradually, if belatedly, the system was decentralized. At-home AIS scholarships were offered to young players, and the AIS, always poorly positioned in Canberra, relocated to Melbourne Park in 1996.

But having swung from highly centralized, sport-factory model of the AIS in Canberra to the individualized Targeted Athlete Project (TAP) in 2002 – and still facing despair over depth – where to now for Australian tennis?

Opinion is not in short supply among Australia’s former players and other tennis experts. Davis Cup captain John Fitzgerald believes Australia is “desperate” for more clay courts to give youngsters a solid grounding in stroke mechanics, fitness, and point construction. Todd Woodbridge agrees, likening the spread of synthetic grass courts in the 1970 and 1980s to a cancer that devastated Australian tennis. “We need to rip up every one of those courts,” Woodbridge said at the Davis Cup last September. “For (juniors) to become competitive at a professional level, they need to go out and hit a million balls on clay or slow hard courts and learn how to defend.”

Cash, former Wimbledon champion and Australia’s leading light in the 1980s, believes technique is lacking in many Australian juniors, even though many of the world’s best coaches are in Australia. Leaching coach Terry Rocavert is calling for more tournament play, both international and local, arguing players should be competing almost every week. Former Australian No. 1 John Alexander and former No. 1 doubles player Paul NcNamee are advocates of hard, academy-style training – the Harry Hopman method.

Peter Johnston, Tennis Australia’s director of men’s tennis for the last five years and a veteran of player development since the mid-’80s, says bolstering the competitive opportunities at home is a top priority, as it can have the most immediate impact. Australia as 27 challenger and satellite events, which run from September to April. The United States has about 100 such events. While more tournaments are being established at home, overseas bases are being sought to fast-track player development by providing the volume and depth of competition that’s lacking Down Under. In 2005, Emilio Sanchez’s facility in Barcelona, which produced reigning US Open champion Kuznetsova, will be a base for AIS players.

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For all its many advantages – abundant courts and sunshine, quality coaching and a culture that reveres sport – Australia faces several challenges in producing world-class players. In a population of 20 million, the athletic talent is stretched across countless sports, with Aussies into everything from surfing to aerial skiing. Four codes of football are played (Aussie rules, rugby league, rugby union, and soccer), and they get a jump on tennis by luring players at school and at next to no cost.

Even as the world grows smaller, Aussie tennis players still feel the tyranny of distance, as they develop their games far from the main tennis centers and are relatively untested in the puppy-eat-puppy post-junior years, especially against battle-hardened Europeans and South Americans.

So while Australia boasts and Grand Slam event and wall-to-wall pro events in January, Aussies often fail to capitalize on wildcards in the big league because they lack intense year-round competition. In 2004, 15-year-old Olivia Lukaszewicz, ranked No. 786, endured a baptism of fire on Rod Laver Arena in the Australian Open first round against world No. 1 Justine Henin-Hardenne. The youngster lost 6-0, 6-0. Far more disturbing was her first-round loss in the juniors by the same score. Both Henin-Hardenne, the 2004 Australian Open champion, and her coach felt compelled to question why such an untried junior was given a wildcard on the biggest stage and whether the experience did Olivia more harm than good. (This year, Lukaszweicz lost 6-1, 6-1 to Jennifer Hopkins in the last round of qualifying.)

While participation numbers are still healthy, Australians play their tennis now largely in short, sharp after-work bursts, rather than as a Saturday-afternoon recreation for the whole family, and there is a ‘disconnect’ between recreational and elite streams. Unlike Spain and France, were clubs play an important role in development by staging money tournaments, Australian clubs see their role as purely recreational, leaving all the development, tournament organization, and expense to the state associations and Tennis Australia.

The states play a crucial role in the grown of tennis. Victoria, for instance, staged its first state championship in 1880, 25 years before the inaugural Australian championships. A national focus is difficult to put into effect, and the states will always want to do their thing. Says Johnston, who has worked at both state and national levels: “There’s so many links in the chain. It’s a huge coordinating job to harness all the forces. It’s about creating a framework that enables the best to emerge.”

The good news is Australian tennis has been in crisis before and made a rousing comeback. In an arguably more bleak situation in 1992, Australian had no man in the Top 50. Defeat in a World Group playoff tie in Hungary in 1996 saw the proud Aussies go from the Davis Cup penthouse to the doghouse for the first time. Yet the renaissance was as stunning as it was sudden. Rafter won back-to-back US Open titles in 1997-98 and gained the No. 1 ranking in 1999. Hewitt made history as the youngest ever-man to rank No. 1 in 2001. Three Australian men contested four straight Wimbledon finals: Rafter in 2000-01, Hewitt in 2002 and Mark Philippoussis in 2003. In Davis Cup, Australia contested four finals in five years, wining in 1999 and 2003.

Plenty of nations would gladly swap places with Australia, but of course the Aussies want more. “It’s not panic stations, but we believe we should have greater depth,” says tennis director Mike Daws. “As a well-developed tennis nation, we’re not getting the rewards we should.” The changes will involve tweaking and refocusing, rather than dismantling. “We are in control of what we do,” says Daws, “but we want to fast-track it.” Meanwhile, what a luxury to have two aces in Hewitt and Molik to fly the flag in the business rounds of the Grand Slams.

And having playing the system game to the hilt for the last two decades, Australians recognize the limitations of paternalistic development schemes. “We’ve got to provide the right environment, simple as that, and make sure players understand what is required,” says Daws. “It’s a dog-eat-dog sport played by 150 nations. You must be totally dedicated.” The success story of Russian women, who have risen to the top without the benefit of a strong national system, underlines the importance of forging individual paths to success. Players can and must be nurtured and developed, but champions are self-made.

Suzi Petkovski has been covering Australian tennis for Tennis Week since 1997.

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Throughout this year, Tennis Week is examining the player development efforts of various countries worldwide, including those with a long history of great players and those hoping to establish a tradition that future generations will admire and uphold. This the second installment in the series.

The Reigning of Spain Begins Mainly with the Training
A search for lessons from Spain’s success in developing world class tennis players
by John Officer

Tennis Week print magazine
March 22, 2005
pgs 34-38

The rise of Spanish tennis has been evident for some times, particularly as roll is called among the men. Sergi Bruguera, Carlos Moya, Alex Corretja, Juan Carlos Ferrero, and, most recently, Rafael Nadal have blessed us with their smooth and flowing games and combined in Davis Cup play to reach the finals in 2003 and capture the cup in 2000 and 2004. Both championship runs included triumphs against the United States, but while the Spanish, last year, celebrated a second title in five years, the United States took a bit of solace in reaching the final for the first time in seven years.

For a dramatic contrast of the successes of junior development, consider that 15 years ago, at the end of 1990, the United States had 23 men in the Top 100, while Spain had seven. Most recently, America, with a population of more than 293 million, counted seven men among the Top 100, while Spain and its population of 40 million – California alone has more than 36 million – placed 17 men among the world’s elite. Spanish women have not had the same impact on the game as the men, but the overall results are consistent: the United States had 27 women among the Top 100 at the end of 1990, while Spain had but two – although they were Nos. 7 and 11, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and Conchita Martinez. Today, there are 14 American women and seven Spanish women among the world’s best.

Given this reversal of fortune, there is certainly no shame in looking at the Spanish system and trying to learn from their success. To begin, the Spanish national tennis federation, Real Federacion Espanola de Tenis, sets overall policy and manages the Spanish National Training Center in Barcelona. The center, the equivalent of the US high performance training centers in Key Biscayne, Fla., and Carson, Calif., is run by Spain’s trio of Davis Cup captains (the G3): Juan Avendano, Jordi Arrese, and Jose Perlas (coach of 2002 Roland Garros champ Albert Costa). Each year, six to 10 boys and girls are “in residence” and receive full scholarships.

The Federation offers financial assistance, with coaching and travel, to an additional 35 to 40 players between the ages of 14 and 18 who also train at the national center. The advantages to a national training center are that the coaches have the student’s full attention without constant interruptions from parents and can build the players’ games on what will work on the professional circuit, not simply on the strategies to garner junior ranking points. However, the Federation has proven itself flexible enough to set up alternative arrangements for certain players. Although Tommy Robredo, Feliciano Lopez, and Moya all came through the national system, Nadal and Ferrero stayed in their hometowns of Manacor, Mallorca, and Villena, respectively, to train with their personal coaches. The Federation agreed to pick up the full tab, despite this different approach.

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Suggesting a more grassroots approach to development, Spain, a little more than twice the size of Oregon, is broken down into 19 regional federations. (By way of contrast, the USTA consists of 17 sections.) These regional federations are free to sponsor players at their discretion. For example, the Catalonia Tennis Federation sponsors 15 players annually and has five training centers of its own, three of which are in Barcelona, one completely devoted to approximately 750 beginning players. The other federations sponsor an average of 10 students per year. That brings the total for sponsored players in Spain, either nationally or regionally, to approximately 240.

In addition to the federation training facilities, there are also private academies and club teams. Of the former, one of the most well known is the Top Team Tennis Academy, founded by Luis Bruguera. That facility comprises seven clay courts, as well as one hard. Students are assigned instruction by level, not age, and each court has one instructor and between two and four students. Players rotate between courts, focusing on only one goal or drill.

Xavier Torner, the director of Top Team, is a convincing advocate for the clay surface as very important for proper player development. He also points out that the drills utilize hand feeds for proper technique and racquet acceleration and emphasize controlled rallies to develop patience. He maintains that it helps concentration skills, speed, and agility because the rallies last longer. Consistent with all the programs I studied in Spain, Top Team’s training plan includes three hours of tennis and two hours of fitness. The goal is for players to be happy on the court and focused both on short term as well as dream goals. Instructors meet up to five times a day to discuss camper progress and to remind themselves to insure that players keep their goals foremost in their minds. Another striking factor was that tuition for Bruguera’s Top Team costs $25,600, about half the $50,000 one can expect to pay for tuition at a top private academy in the States.

While many people deserve credit for Spain’s current reputation as a creator of great tennis players, Pato Alvarez is, by most experts testimony, largely responsible for the earliest emergence of Spanish prominence. Alvarez directed the tennis program at the Spanish tennis federation from 1979 to 1989. He coached the top coaches in the country on proper stroke techniques and training methods. Additionally, he served as the long-time coach of Ilie Nastase, Jose Higueras, Emilio Sanchez, and Javier Sanchez, among many others. For 35 years he has developed Spanish players in their strokes, movement, and mind and strives to maintain a trust and inter-dependence in player-coach relations, as well as cultivating a willingness to fight for points.

As for what makes him different, he has the students drill following game play, which follows a short warm-up. His contention is that playing sets makes more sense when the players are fresh, and drills are more meaningful after first getting some feedback. Following play, his favorite drill is for the coach to stand in the corner of the service box, volleying back to the player on the baseline and helping to create more dynamic footwook.

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Perhaps the most important element in Spain’s rise to power is the willingness of former tour players to return home and train the next generation. Among former players who are very involved in developing Spain’s future is Manuel Orantes, a Hall of Famer who sets a tremendous example for other tour players to follow. Orantes, the 1975 US Open champion, owns Club Bona Sport and operates a junior tennis academy as well. He felt he was given a lot from the Spanish tennis federation and wanted to return the favor. He was involved in the development of Corretja, Albert Berasategui (who won 14 titles and reached No. 7 in the world in 1994), Costa, and Sanchez-Vicario, the first Spanish player – male or female – ever to reach No. 1.

Manuel Santana, who preceded the G3 as Spanish Davis Cup captain and, as a player, won French, Wimbledon, and US titles, was among the leaders in emphasizing to players that they put the best interests of Spain above their own individual whims. His ability to lead by example helped instill in both Sanchez and Bruguera the desire to give back to Spanish tennis upon their retirements from the tour. Sanchez, who won 15 singles titles and ranked as high as No. 7 in the world, runs a tennis academy in Barcelona where he trains Svetlana Kuznetsova among others. Bruguera also hits regularly with the campers at his father’s camp.

In addition to the various federations and private academies, club sports are big throughout Europe, and Spanish clubs are involved in tennis player development from ages 6 through 10 and then again in sponsoring aspiring tour players after age 16 by providing a home base for training, as well as financial support in some cases.

In the summer of 2003, I had the opportunity to visit the Real Club de Tenis Barcelona and Club La Salut, both in Barcelona and both very well designed. Particular attention is placed on the design of the tennis courts. There is ivy growing on the fence surrounding the courts. The fence barriers are four feet between the courts and draped in shrubbery. The surface is strictly clay. The swimming pool and fitness facilities at both clubs are place so as not to interfere with the tennis. It is very unlike what I have seen in the United States, where the typical private tennis club almost always plays a secondary role to golf.

League play is crucial to the popularity of tennis in Spain. There is junior competition for ages 12 through 18, and it is considered prestigious to compete for your club team up through the 16-and-under level. Typically, the best players at 17 are already playing ITF or ATP futures and satellites. Of course, those adults who do not go on to the highest levels are encouraged to continue to compete for their clubs. Nationally, adult competition takes place between clubs at three different levels. The “A” level is for professionals, the “B” for qualified amateurs, and the “C” division for others interested in competition.

It is expected that Spanish players develop an allegiance to a particular club. In the past, a player needed that club affiliation to enter tournaments. The national championships are held on a weekend in November, and it is not uncommon to find ATP Top 20 players competing against each other. It is the equivalent of Andy Roddick and James Blake competing for their respective club teams at the same time the USTA National Championships are being held. Certainly this is a thrill for the club players, who in addition to participating in their own event, have the chance to see the top pros representing their clubs. The Real Club de Tenis Barcelona sponsored Moya, Felix Mantilla, Costa, and Robredo. Club la Salut had Corretja on its side, and the Barcino Tennis Club team included Ferrero. That is an impressive field from which to pick a club team champion. The players train on a regular basis at their particular club. It is not uncommon for club members at Real Club de Tenis Barcelona, for example, to watch Mantilla and Moya practice together. Contrast that experience for juniors seeking role models to the way so many US pros often train on private courts or at an academy far away from the average player.

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The Spanish structure for tournaments also provides excellent opportunities for the aspiring player to compete in both men’s open events as well as satellites, futures, and challengers. Orantes felt easy access to professional events was a major key to Spain’s rise in power.

In 2003, male players had a choice for some 30 futures events in Spain, four satellites and five challengers. Considering the proximity of Portugal and France, an additional 51 events were available to Spanish players within a reasonable drive. (The 2005 USTA Pro Circuit calendar lists 50 men’s events taking place throughout the country.) While not all the connections are clear, it is worth noting that the research I did in 2002 noted that tennis is ranked No. 25 in terms of US popularity, while in Spain, only soccer, cycling, and basketball are more popular.

What can be learned from Spain’s success? First, it took the heard work of people like Pato Alvarez and Manuel Orantes. They spearheaded the development of a teaching process that was clear in the desire to develop professionals who could master the correct stroke mechanics.

Players are also presented with a fairly standardized path for development, which includes beginning training at their home club and then joining an academy before being sponsored by a private club and, perhaps, beginning a career as a professional. Perhaps because of this standardization and the ease with which developments in technique can be dispersed throughout the system, you can generally recognize the Spanish players from their style of play and stroke patterns. Throughout the system, there is also a desire to improve each player’s ability to play at a high level for three to five sets. As a result, in recent years a more rigorous fitness program has been implemented, with a typical program including two hours of fitness and perhaps even grueling hill training.

However, the most important reason the system works is that the Spanish tennis professionals work together for the good of the country. They have a very mature attitude toward competition in that they feel there is room for everyone. The people at each phase are happy to play their part in the process. The disposition of the Spanish people was evident in the interviews I conducted. There is a strong element of humility that runs through their philosophies. An example of this was my final meeting with Orantes. I reached Manuel at his club, where he left the court to take my call. We had traded phone calls the day before, and he was aware I wanted to interview him. It was my last day in Barcelona and I asked about seeing him at some point. He immediately offered to have me come to the club that morning, and when I got there, he gave me every bit of an hour to ask questions. He is a genuine person who loves tennis and wants nothing more than to give back to Spanish tennis and tennis in general. How many US champions or leaders of our sports’ organizations would have been even close to that available? There is an old saying in this country that “it all starts at the top.” It surely goes a long way to explaining the dramatic rise of Spanish tennis as well as the decline of US tennis.

John Officer, head tennis coach at the US Naval Academy, is a former ITA Region 1 and USPTA national college coach of the year. This article is drawn from research he conducted as part of a 2003 Naval Academy Research Grant and which he has presented in a slightly different format to the ITA Coaches Convention.

[TennisHack]

Throughout this year, Tennis Week is examining the player development efforts of various countries worldwide, including those with a long history of great players and those hoping to establish a tradition that future generations will admire and uphold. This is the third installment in the series.

Don’t Cry for Us…
Against all odds, South American players are fighting their way to the top, development system or not
By Douglas Robson

Tennis Week print magazine
April 19, 2005
pgs 38-42

“There are more Latin Americans here than in Latin America,” grins Guillermo Coria, while answering questions comfortably in front of a throng of mostly Argentine journalists on the eve of the NASDAQ-100 Open.

Coria, of course, is speaking in Spanish – the de facto lingua franca of the two week tournament played on Key Biscayne in late March.

With no Grand Slam tournament of its own – much less an ATP Masters Series event or top tier WTA tournament – the NASDAQ-100 is the closest thing South America has to a major. Which is ironic, since the continent has overcome ruptured economies, flimsily assembled junior programs and near-religious devotion to soccer to become a force once again in tennis.

Leading the resurgence is Argentina. Despite the sustained brilliance of Guillermo Vilas and Jose Luis Clerc in the 1970s and early 1980s, the country has only recently recaptured its former glory with the emergence of Top 10 players Coria (named after Vilas), David Nalbandian, and Gaston Gaudio.

“There were players before,” says Vilas, mindful that Alberto Mancini, Martin Jaite, and Franco Squillari made it deep into majors and hovered around or cracked the Top 10. “But when you see many, that’s a school, that’s something,” the four-time Grand Slam tournament champ says. “There is not just one guy who maybe learned to play in Texas.”

It’s hard to argue with the numbers, though the idea that Argentina – or any South American country – has a well-oiled development system is questionable, at best. But the region is back, particularly on the men’s side.

As of March 21, Argentina boasted three male players in the Top 10 and 11 in the Top 100, more than any country except Spain (17). Overall, Latin Americans accounted for six of the Top 20, fully 30 percent.

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