Player development: differences by nation [series]

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The female contingent is less impressive, with only one player, No. 19 Paola Suarez of Argentina, ranked in the Top 20, and four South Americans in the Top 50. But the women are gaining ground, particularly with talents such as a resurgent Fabiola Zuluaga of Columbia, a semifinalist at the 2004 Australian Open, and 20-year-old Argentine Gisela Dulko, a three-time junior Grand Slam tournament doubles champion who won six ITF Women’s Circuit singles titles in her first two years playing pro events full time.

If South American tennis is enjoying a renaissance, players, coaches, and officials say it’s not because well-funded and entrenched systems in Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Sao Paolo are finding, training, and producing world-class tennis players. On the contrary, most of the region’s top players say the development infrastructure continues to lag far behind those in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

Perhaps the best evidence of this is the lack of team success enjoyed by the continent: no country from South America has ever won Davis Cup or Fed Cup, a record of failure that speaks to the lack of systematic development.

“Marcelo, Fernando, and me, the family helped a lot with money in our careers, not the federation, not the country,” says 2004 Olympic gold medallist Nicolas Massu, referring to felling Chileans Marcelo Rios, a former No. 1, and Fernando Gonzalez, a Top 20 player. “Normally, always my family pays everything. We are far from the countries from Europe. We need to do the same as these countries.”

Gaudio, 26, who came out of nowhere to win the 2004 French Open – and was among three Argentines to make the Roland Garros semis – sounds bitter about the lack of help he received from local officials. Asked if junior development programs in his country are improving, he says, “Actually, I really don’t know because I don’t care about the federation anymore. They didn’t give me anything. I don’t know if they are doing something.

“…They didn’t help the guys that were growing up. They didn’t’ care about the juniors, and that’s why we didn’t get even one great player (after Vilas) during that time.”

Gaudio’s assessment may be a bit extreme, but no matter. Today, South America has churned out a bumper crop of players despite crumbling economies, lack of media attention, soccer-mania, and distance from the major tennis markets in the world.

What the continent has going for it are relatively cheap equipment, consistently warm weather, increasing media interest, and a pool of ex-pros who remain in the game and are spreading their knowledge and experience, not only among their countrymen, but to other South American players as well.

“Because of the economic situation, most of the ex-tennis players stay dedicated to tennis directly,” explains Argentina Horacio de la Pena, who coaches Chile’s Gonzalez. “When I used to play, we had like 11 players in the Top 100, and now, out of these, eight or nine are working in tennis, most of us coaching. We have a lot of experience on the circuit, plus a lot of experience playing. Plus, we are around the circuit; so we know what’s happening all the time. So our advice is much better than the ones who have not been on the circuit or didn’t play.

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“There are so many of us working with the players. When I grew up, I had no one to look for. There was Vilas and Clerc, but they didn’t care. There was nobody else to ask for help.”

What is the key to Argentina’s success? One is that the bumper crop of men all practice and train together at the capitol’s two adjacent main clubs, the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club and the Vilas Racket Club.

“We have a very good relationship with each other,” explains No. 12 Guillermo Canas, the last South American to win a non-clay court Masters Series event, as he did at the 2002 Canadian Open. “We practice together. That is very good for us because it helps us improve every day. But we don’t have a system like Australia or like the French Federation. Maybe we have a good luck to have this kind of tennis.”

Part of the upsurge of tennis in Argentina, South America’s second-largest country after Brazil, is attributable to the legacy of players such as Vilas. While he is criticized by some for not doing enough, he has been, at the least, an iconic inspiration, sort of a hands-off benefactor.

But because many South American tennis federations remain poor and cash-strapped, the pattern of one legend paving the way for an onslaught of followers has not developed as it did with Bjorn Borg in Sweden, Boris Becker in Germany, and Martina Navratilova in the former Czechoslovakia. For instance, Maria Bueno’s three Wimbledon and four US National titles in the 1950s and 1960s did not engender more champions from Brazil. Andres Gomez’s 1990 French Open title didn’t produce any major-winning imitators from Ecuador (though Gomez’s first cousin Nicolas Lapentti came close as a semifinalist at the 1999 Australian Open), and Argentina still awaits the next Gabriela Sabatini, who won the 1990 US Open.

“For a small country like Ecuador to have players on tour is a very difficult thing,” says Nicolas Lapentti Sr., who also has sons Giovanni and Leonardo playing competitive tennis, though not yet to the level of Nicolas Jr., who rose to No. 6 in the world in November 1999. Like many Latin American players, Lapentti’s kids have had to travel outside their country for better competition and training. Nicolas Jr. and Giovanni have trained at the Nick Bollettieri/IMG and Harry Hopman academies in Florida, while the youngest Lapennti, 14-year-old Leonardo, is spending time at Jose Luis Clerc’s center in Acapulco.

Likewise, Coria left Argentina at age 13 to train at Patricio Apey’s academy in Key Biscayne, as did Sabatini. Zuluaga spent two years at the Nick Bollettieri/IMG academy before the homesick player returned to her native Columbia.

“The infrastructure is very small, there are not very many courts or opportunities to open up and let everybody play tennis,” says Lapentti Sr. “Poorness is one of the problems of our country, and almost all the good players have come out of the same club, the Guayaquil Tennis Club.”

Still, Lapentti says things are better than they used to be, with more academies and better coaching. Gomez, in fact, is head of the Guayaquil Tennis Club academy, and both his sons are promising players. “They both look good, especially the little one, [14-year-old] Emilio,” he says.

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About a decade ago in Argentina, a national program to find and nurture young players was established, which helped young stars such as Coria and Nalbandian. Promising players also have profited from the Copa Ericsson, a satellite circuit set up in 1997, allowing South American players to earn valuable ATP ranking points without traveling far from home. The Argentine financial implosion killed the tour in 2002, but it helped players such as Coria and 2002 Wimbledon runner-up Nalbandian launch their careers and also gave rise to the region’s only ATP-level event in Buenos Aires.

“At the time, there were no challengers, no events; so these kids couldn’t get funds and they didn’t have the money to travel to Europe and other places,” says NASDAQ-100 tournament chair and founder Butch Buchholz, who helped put together the Copa Ericcson and is trying to revive it. “What you see now is a direct result of that.”

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) has had a minor hand in the region’s expanding prospects. The ITF spends approximately $500,000 annually to fund entry-level pro tournaments, provide grants to help junior boys and girls travel on the Confederacion Sudamericana de Tenis (COSAT) circuit, and to train South American coaches, among other initiatives. The ITF also provides money for the best under-14, under-16, and under-18 players to travel and play in Europe. The alumni of this program, which begain 1989, include Coria, Nalbandian, three-time French Open champ Gustavo Kuerten, and Nicolas Lapentti Jr., among others.

But besides basic funding, other more insidious problems and inefficiencies persist. Nelson Nastas, former president of the Movimento Tenis Brasil and member of the ITF board, is being investigated for embezzlement and other crimes. Nastas’s corrupt administration, along with a captaincy change and the national tennis federation’s lack of player development, caused former No. 1 Kuerten to quit Brazi’s Davis Cup team.

On his website, Kuerten stated: “When we win, we players are praised. When we lose, as we did against Canada last year, we take the blame.”

For the most part, players still struggle to make ends meet. Occasional largess from a generous individual or corporate sponsorship can be the difference between making it to the pro level and languishing at home. For the last 12 years, healthcare company Sanitas has sponsored a team of top Columbian men and women, which has been a big help to Zuluaga and her peers. Still, the dividends have been slim; no one has broken through to the Top 50, save Zuluaga.

“They pay everything for us, coaches, fitness trainer, doctors, physio,” says the 26-year-old player. “There are a lot of people trying to play tennis there, but the people that are not on this team, it’s not easy for them. There were a few guys who played Davis Cup (in March), and they have no sponsors so they cannot travel. If they win this week two matches, then they can go to the next tournament. The government does nothing for the sport. Just three-four months before the Olympics, they give a little bit to the good players, but soccer is the main sport and it takes all the money.”

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How, then, does South America get so much bang for its development bucks?

Plentiful courts, plenty of sun, and a sports-mad culture certainly play to its advantage. The incentive to leave behind impoverished backgrounds is another. Some observers also point out that many South Americans abandon school earlier than in other parts of the world, a risky move that can sometimes pay off.

Opinions vary on whether recent standouts, such as Rios, Massu, and Gonzalez from Chile and the current crop of Argentines, will inspire others to follow their footsteps.

“We don’t have good juniors now,” says Massu.

Says Coria: “Obviously the good results of the Argentinian players in particular helps the young players to look at them and encourage them to get better.”

In other words, the role models are there, but it’s still up to the individual. Players, coaches, and others say becoming world class tennis players remains a combination of hard work, money, and, frankly, luck. Whether the improving, but still rag-tag, development systems stratching from Caracas to Buenos Aires can sustain the level of today is a question mark.

“I see a lot of potential in many 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids,” says former Argentine pro Hernan Gumy, who now coaches compatriots Canas and Agustin Calleri. But with the Argentina peso now one-third of its value compared to three years ago, young players face increasing financial hardship, he says.

“If nobody does anything fast, it’s going to go away. These kids may not make it. It would be a shame [if] they can’t take advantage.”


Douglas Robson is a frequent contributor to Tennis Week and also covers tennis for USA Today.

[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 fourth installment in the series.



En Garde
The French have player development down to a system that can’t be beat[/i]
By Whit Sheppard

Tennis Week print magazine
May 24, 2005
Pgs 38-43

Perhaps it’s only fitting that, in a nation that reveres engineering acumen (think the TGV high-speed train, the Eiffel Tower, Airbus’ new twin-deck A380 plane) as much as the cultivation of things that contribute to la joie de verve (think the 35-hour work week, up to 500 different kinds of cheese, some of the world’s best wine and foie gras), the French tennis development program is a highly-structured, carefully-plotted system that continues to give France an influence in the tennis world beyond the sum of its various parts.

In a nation of nearly 60 million inhabitants, one without a native-born Grand Slam champion since Yannick Noah beat Sweden’s Mats Wilander to capture Roland Garros in 1983 (2000 Roland Garros winner and naturalized Frenchwoman Mary Pierce was born in Montreal), the French system of identifying, training, and supporting junior players from age 7 onward continues to deliver results envied by all but a few tennis-playing nations.

In the ATP’s latest Indesit Entry Rankings (as of May 9), 10 French players were in the Top 100, lead by former Top 10 player Sebastien Grosjean at No. 27. Only Spain, with 15 players in the Top 100, and Argentina, also with 10, can claim equivalent or greater depth on the men’s side. The United States, with a population five times greater than France, currently sports seven of the world’s Top 100 men, led by third-ranked Andy Roddick.

Add to the mix for France three Davis Cup titles since 1991 and two more appearances in the Davis Cup finals, and you get a sense of the efficacy of the French development program on the men’s side.

The French women have fared almost as well, with eight Top 100 players in the latest Sony Ericsson WTA Tour rankings, including three in the Top 20 (No. 3 Amelie Mauresmo, No. 16 Nathalie Dechy, and No. 19 Tatiana Golovin) and two Fed Cup titles and a runner-up trophy since 1997.

The seat of power in French tennis is situated a stone’s throw from Court Centrale at Roland Garros in leafy western Paris, in the offices of the Federation Francaise de Tennis (FFT), the Gallic equivalent of the United States Tennis Association. The 20-acre site also houses the CNE, or National Training Center, where the most promising French juniors are trained, housed, and funded by the federation.

Among current French tour players, Grosjean (who was shown the door by the federation at one point because of his lack of height), Dechy, Mauresmo,rising player Gael Monfils, Nicolas Escude, Fabrice Santoro, Michael Llodra and Emilie Loit are alums of the FFT’s development regime. Players such as Richard Gasquet, Paul-Henri Mathieu, and Nathalie Tauziat have also benefited to some degree from the federation’s support.

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The continued success of the French in international team competition begs two important questions: To what do the French owe their great success in Davis Cup and Fed Cup, and why have they so far not been able to achieve equivalent success in Grand Slam singles play?

Eric Deblicker, longtime director of the high-level French men’s development program and, since September 2004, Gasquet’s full-time coach, has this to say about the disparity between team and individual results among the French players:

“Davis Cup is very important in France and has been ever since we beat the Americans in Lyon in 1991,” says Deblicker, emphasizing recent history, without the intent of ignoring the Davis Cup success of the Four Musketeers, whose 1927 triumph against the United States inspired the construction of Roland Garros. “The spirit of the team is the major factor. It’s a priority for French players to play for France. With Davis Cup, our players don’t play tournaments the week before, as the team gathers to train and eat together straight through the tie. They’re very happy to work together and everyone is behind the captain (former Top 10 player Guy Forget).”

As for producing another French Grand Slam tournament winner, Deblicker says, “We are trying to fix this challenge for our young players like Mathieu, Gasquet, and Monfils. We have to instill this mentality in them and our first priority is to win at Roland Garros, as it’s our home court.”

Ironically, it has been the emergence in recent years of Roland Garros on the world tennis stage, from an afterthought behind the US Open and Wimbledon to a must-watch, must-visit Grand Slam event, that has helped fill the FFT’s coffers with the vital cash that helps fund the development of French junior players. The tournament generates an estimated $35 million to $40 million per year.

Former French tour player Georges Goven, who heads the federation’s high-level women’s development program, remembers when times were different. “The money that comes in from Roland Garros is key,” says Goven. “With it, we can afford to put very capable people in the right places in France.

“Forty years ago we had only five or six people paid and working full-time for the federation,” Goven adds, crediting former FFT and ITF President Philippe Chatrier, for whom Court Centrale was renamed in 2001, as the originator of the development program in the early ’70s. “Now we’re more like a mid-sized business, with around 300 people on the payroll.”

The road to a coveted place at the CNE or INSEP, the National Institute of Sport and Physical Education, where the most talented 16- to 18-year-old boys train before coming over to the CNE at age 19, is an arduous one that somewhat mimics the French higher education system. In that crucible, pools of thousands of prospective students are whittled down through a series of concours nationals, or nationwide entry exams, to gain entrance to France’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. Entering classes of 100-400 are the norm at these specialized Grandes Ecoles, which out-Ivy the Ivies with their stringent selection process.


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The tennis version of this paper chase typically begins at age 7, when each of France’s 2,500 or so tennis clubs are encouraged to select two or three gifted players ages 7-10 and provide them with special group and individual instruction. Anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 players make this first cut-off and enter the national system.

The next step is to winnow this group down to the 160 or so players (girls 10-12 and boys 11-13) who are regionally selected to make it to the next level, the Avenir National, by coaches empowered and monitored by the FFT in Paris. The objective at this stage is to continue the players’ formation while identifying which players will move forward under the auspices of the federation to the penultimate level in the system, Les Poles France.

Next, only 12-16 of the most promising girls (ages 13-15) are chosen to continue their training at either the CNE in Paris or a similar center in Toulouse, in the southwest of France. A total of roughly 30 junior boys (ages 14-15) go through equivalent training at one of three regional centers.

Only after having passed through these three preliminary stages to the most promising French juniors get their tickets punched for the high-level training in the Groupes Espoirs at INSEP or the National Training Center (CNE).

Casting a glance at the progression of current French tour players through the national development system, three of the four native-born French players to have reached a Grand Slam tournament final since Henri Leconte did so in 1988 at Roland Garros – Arnaud Clement (2001 Australian Open), Cedric Pioline (1993 US Open, 1997 Wimbledon), and Nathalie Tauziat (1998 Wimbledon) – accomplished their success largely independent of the FFT’s development program. (The fourth, Mauresmo, was runner-up at the 1999 Australian Open).

Gasquet, named ITF World Junior Champion in 2002 after winning the French and US Open junior titles, is a good example of the buffet approach to the development offered by the FFT. Originally coached by his father, a teaching pro, Gasquet entered the system at the Groupes Espoirs level in 2002. He spent one year training at the CNE at Roland Garros before receiving private coaching, subsidized by the federation for another year, for a total of two years in the program.

Developing patience from the baseline has reaped dividends in 2005 for the 18-year-old Frenchman, whose ranking has climbed to No. 56 after winning two consecutive clay court challengers in Italy before bouncing world No. 1 Roger Federer in the quarterfinals of the recent ATP Masters Series Monte Carlo.

“We’ve never had a player so young and so talented at 12, 13 years old (as Gasquet),” says outgoing National Technical Director Jean-Claude Massias, who, after a nine-year run as the FFT’s national technical director, is ceding his place to Patrice Dominguez. “He was truly better than all the others there. But he lost a couple of years. There was a lot of pressure on him, his father protected him a lot and he didn’t do what was necessary with the physical plan or train as much as we advised him to.


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“I’m not surprised at his recent results,” Massias continues, “but we were quite worried a year or so ago, has he was not progressing well, was defaulting matches and looked unhappy on the court. Having great talent doesn’t always ensure that a player becomes a great player and we were worried about Richard.”

It wasn’t until Gasquet began working intensively with Deblicker, with whom he initially came into contact while training at the CNE, that his results began to approximate his considerable talent.

Says Massias, “I’m only surprised that it (Gasquet’s strong results) happened so soon after starting to work with Eric [Deblicker].”

Adds Deblicker, “Richard was like a lot of very talented players. He wanted to finish points after two or three shots. But he was playing the wrong way. We’ve worked with him on extending rallies until he has better positioned himself to go for a winner.”

The shy Gasquet, who speaks with a bit of a stammer and can’t be described as an eager media subject, has even learned to handle off-court notoriety and show a sense of humor as well. Appearing recently on a French chat show, one of Gasquet’s fellow guests was a noted porn actress. He said afterward, “It was a bit embarrassing. I’d never met anyone who did that job before.”

Monfils, 18, has seen his star on the ascension after compiling at 31-2 match record and winning three of the four 2004 junior Slam tournaments (Australian Open, Roland Garros, and Wimbledon). With a current ranking of 81, the lanky all-courter has delivered similiarly impressive results on the men’s tour in 2005, opening the year with a win over defending Roland Garros champion and world No. 6 Gaston Gaudio in Qatar, advancing with a wildcard to the round of 16 at the NASDAQ-100 Open in Miami and beating crafty French veteran Fabrice Santoro to win his first title on the men’s circuit in early May at a challenger event on clay in Tunisia.

Monfils was identified as a player of promise at age 11 and passed successively through all levels of the national development system with the exception of the final rung of the ladder, Les Groupes Espoirs. The FFT, in fact, encouraged him to skip the last step, deeming him ready for the big time and matching him up with former pro Thierry Champion as his coach.

The success of the French program ensures that the pipeline continues churning out another generation of talented French players after Gasquet, Monfils, and 19th-ranked women’s player Golovin, who teamed with Gasquet to win the mixed doubles at Roland Garros last year. Male contenders include hard-serving Jo-Wilifred Tsonga, the 2003 US Open boy’s singles champion and the world’s No. 2 junior that year; Gilles Simon, a 20-year-old ranked just outside the Top 100 who finished 2004 with a string of French futures wins; and Josselin Ouanna, who was runner-up to Monfils in the 2004 Australian Open boy’s singles. On the women’s side, 14-year-old Gracia Radovanovic, runner-up this year in the prestigious Les Petits As tournament, and 18-year-old Aravane Rezai, who has won three women’s circuit events since last October, are two players who bear watching.

With a solid organization, a war chest of cash and continued popularity of tennis in France (second only to soccer in the number of participants nationwide), the French tennis development system shows no signs of slowing down. It seems almost as inevitable as another bumper crop of Burgandy or Beajolais that French players will continue to flourish on the world stage and one day break through to give L’Hexagone the Grand Slam champion to succeed Noah that it so craves.


Whit Sheppard is a Paris-based sportswriter. He has written for the Houston Chronice, the Tampa Tribune, and the Buenos Aires Herald, among others. This is his first entry for Tennis Week.

[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 generation will admire and uphold. This is the fifth installment in the series.

The British Are Coming…Someday
The birthplace of tennis is hardly a hotbed of talent, but there is a plan to change that
By Joshua P. Roberts

Tennis Week print magazine
June 21, 2005
pgs 60-63

Ask Tim Henman what’s wrong with British tennis and there is a weary sigh before he answers. As polite as the Englishman is, he can’t help himself. He’s been asked to explain a million times why his the only British-born man in the world’s Top 100 and while, each time, he trots out a series of plausible explanations, the 30-year-old knows that all the discussion and analysis in the world won’t provide his country with the players it so desperately needs.

With a nation of tennis fans glued to Wimbledon every year and a rabidly critical proess, there is no shortage of people anxious to point out what the problems are to the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), the sport’s governing body in the UK. The line of people waiting to offer solutions is an awful lot shorter.

The reason for the criticism is simple. Each year, under an agreement with the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club that dates back to 1920, the LTA is given the profits from the Wimbledon Championships in order to fund the development of British tennis. In addition to the surplus it gets from Wimbledon, tennis is also one of the 20 sports that benefit from the £130 million (approximately $239 million) the British Government sets aside for sport. The LTA also has a list of blue chip sponsors for it’s tournaments, squads and initiatives, including Ariel, Mercedes Benz, insurance giant Hastings Direct, construction firm Marsh and a host of others. In 2003, the last year of published accounts, the LTA’s revenue was £36.4 million ($66.8 million), and it’s 2003 accounts listed nearly £49.2 million ($90.3 million) in reserve, the kind of money that many struggling tennis nations would die for.

As well as financial resources, Great Britain also has a large population to draw from – though certainly not as large as the United States – but the LTA has failed, thus far, to turn that into large numbers of recreational players, let alone professionals. There are 60 million Brits, but only three men in the Top 200. Belgium has a population of 10.2 million and has six; Croatia has a 4.4 million population and four men in the Top 200.

The figures are even more depressing when it comes to British female players. The UK has just one woman in the Top 20 of the women’s rankings: Elena Baltacha.

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For all the doom and gloom that hangs over British tennis, though, the Lawn Tennis Association believes that it is at least moving in the right direction, albeit far too slowly for those who clamor for the realization of the LTA’s mission – “More Players, Better Players.”

Under the stewardship of CEO John Crowther and his energetic and voluble Performance Director David Felgate, who coached Henman for nine years, the organization has laid out three aims to get players into the game and to keep them there all the way through the professional ranks: start, stay and succeed.

To that end, it invested £15 million ($27.5 million) in its nationwide network of clubs last year, which have now been organized into a hierarchy, with the so-called Performance Clubs benefiting from incentives designed to bring the standard of players and facilities up. Of that £15 million, £3.7 million ($6.8 million) went into getting athletically gifted children to start choosing tennis ahead of other sports, such as cricket, rugby and soccer, which is by far the most popular sport in the UK and receives year-round saturation coverage on cable and terrestrial television, radio, and in newspapers.

The UK’s tennis clubs, like the sport as a whole, have long been criticized for being too elitist, valuing the needs of rich, middle-class, middle-aged recreational doubles players above those of promising young kids looking to emulate their hero Henman. At least nowadays, clubs are expected to justify their funding by showing how many youngsters they are bringing into the game.

“We’ve had an 80 percent increase over the last year in the number of kids under 11 playing tennis,” according to LTA Marketing Director Steve Curzon. “We’ll then have more kids competing at a local level, more kids competing to get into the academies, more fighting to be No. 1.”

Visit the Westway Sports Centre in West London, built with LTA money, and it seems the LTA’s efforts are, indeed, working. The local area, Ladbroke Grove, is a multicultural area full of low-income families, yet on any given day, squads full of youngsters from varied backgrounds receive coaching, alongside older recreation players, on the club’s eight indoor courts, and there appears to be no shortage of talent.

Facilities such as Westway are essential in a country famous for its inclement weathers, but the UK needs more tennis courts, period. There are 40,000 tennis courts in Britain, which equates to one for every 1,500 people in the country, as compared to 45,000 football pitches in England alone. The UK currently has around 1,200 indoor courts, but the LTA admits it wants to build another 5,000 to bring it level with countries such as France and Sweden, which have long understood the importance of providing places to play that are impervious to the uncertainties of the Northern European climate.

“We want four out of five players in this country to have a fantastic club within half an hour’s drive,” says Rebecca Miskin, the LTA’s director of Tennis Operations. “Trying to make tennis a sport for everyone when it’s been a social hobby for a few requires a shift of mindset.”

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