US Open series takes its toll
On August 28 the final Grand-Slam of the year, with its mega prize money, will be staged in New York. This, the oldest Tennis event which started in 1881, marks the 139th year of the National title of the USA.
This year’s professional bunch in August, have come through 8 months of hard competition. In January and February of this year, they played on the hard courts of the Middle East, China and Australia. From March onwards, Europe’s slow Clay courts got them to work hard until June. Tired, they faced the fastest Tennis courts, ‘Grass’, until the end of Wimbledon in July. Then began the unforgiving concrete-base hard courts of North America, which is on now. Most of them have money in their pockets, but are physically burnt out. The run up of events to the US Open, is called the ‘US Open series’. Still, it is a good time to earn a little more money, but wringing the mind and body is an issue.
WTA Events – Bianca Andeerscu
At long last, after about 50 years, a Canadian girl won the Roger’s Cup. It is the Canadian Tennis Title. Bianca Andreescu, another girl-in-waiting for a Top 5 position in WTA ranking in the near future, picked her second major title convincingly. She is a Canadian of Romanian origin. Often, like many others, she too, was sporting bandages on her thigh and upper arm. Her build, for Tennis, has to be described as heavy. Serena Williams praised Bianca’s maturity and grit while conceding the match to her in the final.
The WTA Women US Open series is taking its toll on the very tired players. Simona Halep and Serena Williams withdrew from the Canadian Open in the final rounds of the event, physically broken down with unbearable pain, two weeks ago. Serena has not surfaced to play since then. Halep appeared with a strapped ankle in Cincinnati, only to lose to Madison Keys of USA. Keys won the event, a win that she badly needed for her re-emergence.
Big name burden
Australian and French Grand Slam winner Ashley Barty is not living up to expectation. Neither is 2018 US Open and 2019 Australian Open winner Naomi Osaka. This is the trend every young winner of big events has shown immediately after their phenomenal success. Experts say there is a price to pay for prominence. It is not easy to get on to court with the ‘must win’ attitude. The stress of it gives the opponent psychological advantage. Maturity is the only road available to overcome this.
ATP Events – Daniil Medvedev
Among the Men, the over-30s club is selective in appearances. In this US Open series, many good players opted not to play, to preserve themselves for the Grand Slam in New York. This is permitting the second rung to be prominent. Roger Federer at 37, unexpectedly went down to World No.72 Rublev, in Cincinnati. Tennis would be reluctant to lose sight of Federer’s fluency in stroke-making. After Pete Sampras, he has been the most complete player with all-court variation.
Russian Daniil Medvedev proved himself to be a force of the future. On the road to win the Cincinnati Open last week, he beat Novak Djokovic again. That made him mark 2 wins against Djokovic to date, against 3 losses. Good players say Medvedev is very difficult to read. This means he can pull off shots and angles which are logically restricted in shot selection. On many occasions, Djokovic looked surprised. What’s more, Medvedev has won 15 of the 19 matches he played in the last few weeks. His court manners and charm is making him a crowd favourite.
Tennis development dilemma
The gap between the quality of the professional Tennis compared with that of local Tennis of many developing countries is too wide to bridge now. Countries which have surged forward in professional Tennis have, although not openly stated, reduced the emphasis of Junior development to a bare minimum. Tennis has registered the biggest dropout rate in many countries, compared with other sports.
However, developed countries have branched out very prominently targeting professional Tennis. Canada was never this strong in player base. What is the difference between professionals and activity players? Professionals are physically strong, with tactically functional strokes, tactical and capable of tactical dialogue within themselves, to handle a match situation and take the large physical workload, to finish the match. None of these will develop through ‘activity Tennis’ and in its events.
At local level, in most countries, competitions are mere ‘Activity events’. Their promotions are ‘Tennis activities’ and not development targeted to enter the professional cadre. The older global institutions, with their agencies in most countries, are aiming at activity Tennis promotion. This is understandable. These agencies are being sponsored by equipment and clothing based companies, which want a market share for their products. Nothing wrong about it, but be aware of it.
In this sense, one feels the lack of opportunities young players are subject to without competition Tennis development programme. These players’ efforts are commendable, but the opportunity base is the issue of Tennis today in development. A change here has to happen, after all, afternoon ‘activity Tennis’ was never the road to professional Tennis standards.
George Paldano, Int. player; Accredited Coach of German Federation; National coach Davis-Cup, Federation Cup captain/coach – geodano2015@gmail.com –