Well, our server is back up and running, so I can finally add my own thoughts to the rest of yours on Mike DePalmer Jrs. "open letter" to the USTA - a blast that's just as valuable for the discussions it opens as for its contents.
Please bear with us as we wind up American week here at TW. I won't get to post my thoughts on the Jimmy Connors/Andy Roddick alliance until next week, but I have special guest blogger ready to weigh in with his thoughts on academies. Hint: he's going for the "Spectator Slam" this year. . .
*
THE PROBLEM WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF JUNIOR TENNIS IN AMERICA
I read with fascination that the USTA is changing their headquarters from Key Biscayne to the Evert tennis academy. It amazes me that with all the great players this country has put out over the years the USTA had little or anything to do with their development other than sanction junior tennis tournaments or provide financial aid for kids to travel with a coach. Now the USTA thinks that by changing facilities that now they are going to develop talent. Oh, and by the way didn’t they just build a state of the art training facility in Carson, California?
If the USTA would like to learn how to run a tennis academy they should spend time in Bradenton, Florida at the IMG Sports Academy (formerly known as the Nick Bollettieri tennis Academy). This is by no means an endorsement add (sic) for Nick Bollettieri. You may not like his sunglasses, million dollar tan or his uncanny ability for self- promotion but there is no denying that there are no ten tennis academy in the United States that has (sic) developed more kids into world class tennis players than Nick i.e. Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Tommy Haas, Max Mirnyi, Monica Seles, Mary Pierce, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sherapova (sic) and the list goes on. All from the same facility for the last 26 years.
*
Hey, Mike - Let’s not forget Aaron Krickstein, Bonnie Gadusek and Jimmy Arias! But seriously, Mike’s point is well taken. Remember, though, that the USTA, for various reasons, is still relatively new – and relatively torn – on a critical Big Picture issue this subject raises.
That is, just how involved should the USTA be in development when the traditional, family-and-coach based, entrepreneurial (go ahead, call it Darwinian) approach has been so effective, for so long. The bottom line is that up to now, most of the great American (Whoops! Sorry, no offense! Gringo) champions have two things - and maybe only these two things - in common:
1 – They don't come from the kinds of families that fit the country-club, white-bread stereotype.
2 – Their development was either driven, or heavily facilitated, by hands-on, completely involved parents. Furthermore, the vast majority of those parents were relatively harmless and wholesome tennis nuts - not, as the conventional logic has it, monster freakazoid eat-your-children scumbucket child abusers.
Actually, if you look at the parents of most top players with open minds, you’ll see the the Jennifer Capriatis and Maria Sharapovas succeeded in spite of rather than because of their driven parents.
Much as I love tennis, I always thought there was something Orwellian and borderline de-humanizing in state's involvement in the development of tennis talent in places like France, Germany and, now, the Brand New Big Brother on the Block, China.
The best thing you can say about statism is that it levels the playing field for less wealthy societies, yet it has been most successful in relatively affluent societies. Go figure.
Some of the nations that have “caught up” with the U.S. have done so through an official, state-sponsored effort. But the encouraging news is that the “free states” – the former Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Russia, the U.S. – have been highly competitive despite having none of the statist advantages.
It’s important to keep in mind that “statism” and the activism of a non-profit, tennis advocacy group like the USTA are two different things. But at some point, each of them bumps up against the richest and, thus far, most productive “development” tool of them all – a tennis conscious family willing to back a child, totally.
In addition, the USTA is familiar with Nick Bollettieri’s operation (who isn't), and considered the option of a partnership with him, but this raised a number of concerns that, while not necessarily dealbreakers, were factors.
For one thing, IMG (International Management Group, which own the NBTA and also represents Chris Evert) is a more institutionalized presence at the NBTA, which creates conflict-of-interest issues more pressing and obvious than those that will exist at The Evert Academy.
Believe it or not, simple logistics (nearest airport, highway access, etc.) also played a significant role in choosing Evert’s site. I get the sense that the USTA said something like, this is our one, big, last shot at getting it right. Dot all the i's and cross all the t's, folks. . .
*
Many of Nick’s top staff have never even played college tennis but have been with him since the academy was first built in 1980. They have honed a system for as many as 200 kids that stay 9 months out of the year go to school and work on their tennis and yet year after year they produce players.
So what does it take run a successful tennis academy?
- You need to have a director who has experience with junior development not some former world ranked pro that makes an appearance once a month to give a motivational speech and then watch the kids hit balls for a couple of hours. This job is stressful, demanding and requires a lot of time on the court.
*
I don’t think Chris Evert or any of the other top pros want to usurp the role of professionals in junior development, or pretend they have expertise in that area; in fact, I would be a lot more skeptical if Billie Jean King, Evert, et al started posturing as hands on directors of the HP program. They were both pretty realistic about what they could contribute, and how.
Slightly off topic but highly relevant: One of the key, infrastructural elements missing from the various incarnations of the HP program in the past has been continuity (of vision as well as budgeting), and the USTA team now assures us that it is fully committed for the long term. We’ll see.
*
- A development program that teaches coaches how to coach. The USTA has a lot of former touring pros working for them but just because you were a good player doesn’t make you a good coach. Remember, you are in the developmental stages with kids that are living at an academy 9 months out of the year. You have to have a program that will allow them to continue to develop throughout the course of the year without getting injured or burned out. Also, you have to be very knowledgeable with stroke development, strategy, and match play. This is not learned over night and it is up to the tennis director to teach the staff.
*
On paper, the High Performance team (led by Paul Roetert) is highly qualified, experienced, hard-working and professional in exactly the way Mike says they need to be. I know many of the coaches, myself, and feel very confident in their abilities. In my experience, former touring pros make fine coaches – so much so that I’d like to see Mike DePalmer be one of the HP team.
*
- How come no one has ever asked some of the greatest college coaches i.e. Dick Gould, Dick Leach, Tom Chivington, Mike DePalmer Sr., and Allen Fox on how they recruit talent? These are some of the best minds in the game that have been instrumental in developing kids at a young age. The resources that we have far exceed that of any other country and they are not being used.
*
I’ve made my thoughts on statism – and its perils – clear above. And while all of the college coaches Mike cites are terrific talents, they carved out specific niches far away from the developmental arena. Which is fine.
I think that identifying motivated and gifted 12 year olds is somewhat different from recruiting college players, although I’m sure any of the coaches mentioned above could make that transition (a comment poster at a previous entry also listed some of the women coaches who also fall into this category, whom Mike left out of the discussion here).
*
- You have got to have all the kids at one facility. The belief has been that America is too big it would be impossible to have everyone at one academy. I couldn’t disagree more. Kids from all over the world come to the IMG Sports Academy to train. Some as young as 6 years old (Maria Sherapova). By having the best kids in one place you can’t have any better competition than that and competition is one of the tools that breeds success.
*
I agree with Mike on this 100 per cent, and have to add that I wrote a story with Jim Courier a few years ago, in which Jim recalled his Junior Davis Cup days in vivid detail. One of his main points about that Golden Generation (Sampras, Chang, Wheaton, et al) was that they routinely went at each other as juniors, tooth-and-nail - and greatly benefited from the degree-of-competition in one of those familiar "A rising tide lifts all boats" scenarios.
Two factors probably had a strong but subtle influence on the decline of American tennis in the last dozen or so years:
1 – The fear of “burnout” (created by the case histories of Andrea Jaeger, Tracy Austin and Jennifer Capriati) caused the WTA, USTA, and others to become highly suspicious of the very principle of competition among youngsters. This resulted in, among other things, a temporary elimination of official 12-and-under competition, and a host of programs designed to emphasize the “fun” rather than the competition.
Meanwhile, kids all over the rest of the world were competing.
Finally, the USTA realized something that Billie Jean King, among others, knew all along. Kids that don’t like or want to compete shouldn’t train to be high level tennis players. Kids that do, and are made of championship timber, often can’t get enough competition. The de-emphasis of competition at an early age was a silly, superficial, idealogically driven misreading and response to the repercussions of a deceptive buzzword, frequently misued: burnout.
2 - As the financial stakes grew larger and rankings became increasingly critical, junior players showed a growing tendency to duck their peers (the exact opposite of the Golden Generation's approach). It proved easy to hide in a nation as large as the U.S. But the top 12, 14, 16 year olds ought to be playing each other as often - rather than as rarely - as possible.
*
It is a travesty that the USTA has to go overseas to look at how France and Spain run their tennis academies when the most successful tennis academy is in their own backyard in Bradenton, Florida.
*
I’m hoping that Steggy re-posts her original, now deleted comment from the American Man. She was very strong on this point, and on challenging Mike on exactly what the NBTA did for American tennis. I would only add that the USTA has a pretty good idea of how Nick did things; nothing wrong in taking the trip abroad to see what those other folks are doing.
*
If the USTA doesn’t get their act together and hire a tennis director with experience in junior development and willing to put in countless hours then the new tennis academy at Evert’s will be “smoke and mirrors.”
America has put out the greatest players of all-time both men and women. It is a great idea to get John Mcenroe (sic), Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, and any other of the greats to donate their time but it is up to the day to day operations of an academy that will make the real difference to the development of the next generation of stars of America.
*
I’m not sure Chris Evert, the USTA, Paul Rotert, or even Nick Bolliettieri would disagree with anything expressed in these last two paragraphs. I sure don’t.