What are the chances in Open Tennis?
View(s):Junior sports are for those under 18 years of age. Our first experience is school sports, in age groups of 12, 14, 16 and 18 years. The age-based system is to introduce sporting skills appropriate to growth. In effect, it also evens out biological advantges in competitions giving better skill based experience to enter sport.
For competition ‘Open-Tennis’ with higher levels of challenge offer the best development platform. To develop, players must play ‘games’ regularly and compete in ‘Open-Tennis’ with adults. As one would see, this contradicts age group development. Age group events have lower intensity and cannot complete competitive sport development. This aspect must be understood. Even at international level, less than 5% of the juniors who reached the first 10 in the ITF world junior ranking, made it into the top 100 of the men’s and women’s rankings in the past 15 years. Even today this has not changed.
Tennis development, from the time of Victorian England to the present eastern European academies used and are now using ‘Open-Tennis’ effectively for development. Earlier, Australia, USA and Western Europe had a good player development base. In all such instances, early entry into Open-Tennis was the secret of their success. Many highly successful players went to Open-Tennis early in life. The William sisters, Steffi Graf are good examples.
Important first impressions
‘Open-Tennis’ shows the realities of game-making and they are the right ‘first impressions’ for success. Other experiences can place ineffective development in players. Coaches without ‘Open Tennis’ experience orchestrate conditions for teaching convenience and to exhibit artificial success; this is adding to the problem in development. Coach’s certification process has not been able to correct this defect. At present, juniors in Sri Lanka are spending too much time, effort and money and getting the wrong first impressions.
Isolation and Individualism
Sri Lanka is isolated when it comes to open-tennis. Some decades ago, our players broke the isolation on their own steam visiting neighboring countries. This has stopped and the distraction of the age group Tennis is dominating. Also many expect the national systems to break this isolation with free assistance. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka never had free assistance in Tennis and for that matter it is unlikely to appear in the future, either. The few trials with free assistance to players left a bad taste and no results.
Good performance is the result of individual commitment and not that of orchestrated systems. Many development programmes which failed were conducted without respecting this fact. It is happening in many countries today and in a small island like ours, commitment and isolation issues are very prominent. The effort to get away from isolation is solely up to the players. Isolated junior events and programs which we have intensified for over 20 years has not produced good results.
Clubs played an effective role in the past to give juniors the early right exposure into open-tennis through their integrated service to ‘membership’. This obvious aspect of ‘membership’ which we have taken for granted, is a highly productive one nationally in many sports. In the effective connectivity of players for open-Tennis it was the best formula we ever had. It sees very little encouragement now.
Talent or Age-Group success?
Another misleading aspect is ‘talent’. Often biological advantage and closed age-group successes are seen as talent. Talent can be identified only in ‘open’ events. Best example of ‘talent’ is Boris Becker who won the Open-Wimbledon title at 17. This is not a common achievement in the history of sport. Becker also had the biological advantage of northern birth. Martina Navratilova, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer are examples of talent. They are like Beckham and Pele in Football. Talent is not rare either, but committed and focused talent is very rare.
At present only the ITF junior events break Sri Lanka’s isolation. To instill early right impressions in juniors, many countries have stopped their local age group rankings. Such countries use the ITF, ATP and WTA rankings as their national guide. In Asia, Korea, China, Taipei and Japan are doing this successfully.
Breaking the isolation
Last week’s International Tennis Federation had a junior Group 4 event in Colombo. ITF has 5 such groups. Few Sri Lankan players played in the main draw. The highest ranked boy in the draw was Ho Jun Lee of Taipei (543) and girl was Ria Vaidiya of Singapore (288). Among the Sri Lankans – Nishanthan Nadaraja – Boys (917) and Nithmi Waduge-Girls (1303). It was an event mostly for player’s over 500 marks in world junior ranking. It was a good event to break our isolation. Advanced juniors worldwide move into the Open-Tennis of ATP and WTA around 15 years of age. One experienced coach told me that “age group events after 15 are like ‘candy floss’ to an unhappy child. It stalls development.” He is right.
Nature of Tennis
Tennis is a late maturity sport. Prime for men is around 23 years and peak at 27. Women’s prime is at 21 and peak at 25. Those who take to Open-Tennis early can achieve good results when they enter their prime.
I presume all this is known in Sri Lanka. The reason it is being ignored is because of the ‘distraction’ of age group success has become the ‘attraction’ for many players, parents and coaches. Innocent juniors are paying the price with their life. I know, I will not be popular for stating this but after a certain age, what a player needs is to develop and not learn strokes and techniques. These evolve according to competition needs as natural progression. What is needed is the maturity in the art of ‘game-making’, that is to know when and what to do in a match. This is the most powerful ‘weapon’ to win in and has to be acquired through Open-Tennis.
George Paldano, former international player; Accredited Coach of Germany, ITF and USPTR; National, Davis Cup and Federation Cup Coach – georgepaldano@yahoo.com
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